Burn this

This week was Qing Ming, China's big ancestor-worship holiday - traditionally a time for family outings to ancestral graveyards to "sweep the tombs" (although that seems to be a custom that prevails more strongly in South China; up here in the North, people are not that enthused about travelling anywhere for the holiday). The festival is also celebrated by burning grave offerings: play money despatched by fire, to keep your forefathers solvent in the Great Beyond.

There are one or two other smaller festivals during the year which involve similar rites.

And then there are the semi-regular "rubbish burning days". It would seem that a lot of domestic trash - at least in the poor slum districts around where I live - is just burned by householders on the edge of the street outside their front door. This happens about once a month, and I am told that the city authorities decree approved days for it - though on what, if any, rational basis I cannot begin to imagine.

"Rubbish burning days", and the "money-burning" religious holidays, never seem to happen on days of clear skies and fresh breezes (of which we've had a lot for the last 2 or 3 weeks). No, they always fall on the isolated day of cool damp overcast - so that all the smoke will be trapped at ground level. And believe me, if several million people are burning Monopoly money all at once, it makes A LOT of smoke.

I have commented on this before. I may well comment on it again. The shocking levels of pollution are probably the most inescapable and dispiriting negative feature of life in China today.

Hmmm, I suppose this is the first time I have written a post like this and actually named the country. I'm not sure what 'Label' to give this new phenomenon, now that my old 'Where in the world am I?' strand is defunct. 'Token China Rants' perhaps? Maybe not - I hope that I generally achieve a fairly tolerant and detached perspective in these posts, more wry than raging. This particular offering is more of a China Wheeze than a China Rant, with my lungs rasping as they are.

Perhaps just 'China Observations' will do. Yes, I'll plump for that.