This morning as usual I checked the air quality index in Davis and Beijing. It indeed stunned me to know that the indices were 28 and 368 respectively for Davis and Beijing! This means that Beijing, the capital of China, is seriously polluted and Davis is just free from any pollution!  One important thing is that Beijing has been polluted for the past days and yet the highest air quality index for Davis over the past days as I have observed is never more than 60. In one sense I seem to be lucky to have the opportunity to stay here for a year. Yet at the same time I simply cannot imagine how hard it will be for me to re-adapt to the horrible lasting pollution there in Beijing in a year...