nitrogen dioxide

The sun is shining brightly and the temperature is about 24 degrees but today -as apparently it has been for the last week - the whole of Nanjing is enveloped in a beautiful silvery mist caused largely by the exhausts of innumerable cars.

And I, who gave up smoking ten years ago, have all the symptoms back of being a smoker...

Think about this, folks, when you insist in seeing the internal combustion engine as essential and irreplaceable.It is not half as essential or irreplaceable as our lungs. Or the air our lungs would like to breathe.

Nonetheless, the deadly silvery mist does make everything look very beautiful. Even at Nanjing Nan Station, home to the gaosu or bullet train, and the second largest railway station in the world.

If we all eschewed the private car and stuck to trains and pedal power we'd find it a bit easier to breathe, and maybe the weather wouldn't be so damn peculiar.

Just saying