Lovers' Avenue (image heavy)

[Michael in China]

That's the rather dubious name given to Zhuhai's main strip, a long stretch of coastal road which showcases the city's pretensions of being the "Chinese Riviera". For much of the year, that claim is patently spurious, as a claggy white haze obscures the Pearl River Delta in humid murk. But then along comes summer; the thunderheads play tag in an azure sky and everything seems right in the world.

I'm currently doing a bit of work downtown, which gives rise to a pleasant 20km bicycle commute and an opportunity to exercise the new 14/2.5 on the E-M5.

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Hong Kong headlands in the distance

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[scott0487]

Very nice shots and we get some poetic prose as a bonus ("the thunderheads play tag in an azure sky and everything seems right in the world"). Thanks very much.

Scott

 

[spatulaboy]

Beautifully done, I like the fishing boat and lady on bike. Where are the lovers? :tongue:

Also, I keep hearing about the hazy skies of China. How bad is it really?

 

[Michael in China]

Thanks for the kind comments.

The answer to your question about haze is, as you'd guess, more complicated than newspaper headlines suggest. China is, after all, much larger and more geographically diverse than Europe.

My corner of China is Zhuhai, cheek by jowl with Macau. It's "famous for its blue skies" (everywhere in China is famous for something) and the industry around here is mostly high-tech manufacturing:

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Canon employs 30,000 workers on this brand-new high-tech campus in Zhongshan.

It is very hazy here for around 8 months of the year (late autumn, winter & spring) but I do think that much of that is genuine atmospheric haze. Now, on a blue-skyed day, I can see a brown smudge of pollution, but no worse than I've experienced in any large, industrialised city.

Up in the North-East, on the other hand, it's all heavy and petrochemical industry. Pretty toxic.

Things are, nevertheless, getting better. Tree-planting is a national obsession for local and provincial government, and that can't be a bad thing. Also, controls being placed on sulpher emissions are having an effect. 10 years ago, I lived in a large, southern industrial city. The air was filthy; on a clear day I could see the sulpher cloud from the steel-mill stacks and, on a dirty day, the stacks were hidden in a murk of their own making. Now, emissions from the mill have been throttled and the city has become a much cleaner place.

I'm also heartened by the continuing interest in public transport, including highly-used bike rental schemes like the "Zhuhai Bikes" pictured above.

So that's my highly personal and anecdotal take on air quality in China.

 

[jyc860923]

hi mike

glad to see Chinese here and I love your shots. China is a huge country with its amazing diversity.

so what are the big industrilised cities you've stayed in and what was the air quality there like about 10 years ago? I haven't traveled much by then as I was a child in the toxic areas :/