The future is bright, the future is blue

There have been a lot of blue-sky days recently and even the homepage of my Gmail account has been sunny and bright.

For a few weeks previous, the Web page that is linked to Beijing weather reports had been dark and foreboding - just like the capital city itself.

It was kinda depressing. Not least when I would wake up and see the two chimneystacks from my apartment window spewing smoke that was almost immediately indistinguishable from the leaden clouds pregnant with particulate matter that obscured the heavens.

This synchronicity between real-life conditions and how they are reported has, over the past four years that I have been in Beijing, occasionally suffered from a disconnect.

I wasn't even sure any more what the word "blue" referred to at times, since supposed blue-sky days were often a steely gray. Smog was called fog.

I once mentioned this to a Beijing CCTV friend of mine, who became pretty defensive about the whole issue.

She admitted she hadn't traveled abroad, except to Seoul, but was of the opinion that, "All cities are the same" and further suggested that maligning the capital's bad air was indicative of a critical attitude toward the country as a whole.

This was not a typical response, as the tweeting on micro-blogging site Sina Weibo has shown over the weeks, criticizing the city's air quality, posting pictures of actual weather conditions and comparing these with the official version of events. This has spilled over onto video sharing websites, such as Youku.com and Tudou.com, which have featured scenes of the city submerged in gases that make Beijing look like another planet.

Netizens have become experts on particulates, or PM levels, and campaigners for reform on how these are measured - or, rather, included in the analysis of our air. Such discussion was not a factor just four years ago. There has been a real opening up.

Sina Weibo has led the way and has ushered in an era of citizen journalism. It's like having CNN in Chinese, with all the citizen reporters pointing out the pink elephant in the corner of the room: In this case air quality.

Just as interesting, perhaps, is the attitude of the authorities, which are clearly listening to this discourse - encouraging it even - and, furthermore, taking note. The upshot of this is that the mainstream press is also taking notes ("Netizens say" has become a kind of mantra) and adding to the chorus of disapproval on this issue.

My dad used to talk about London and its "pea green soup", a choking haze you could taste and would kill the elderly and weak in winter, until a clean air act blew the fumes away by expelling factories and later cars from the city center.

When I was growing up, newspapers in England were always going on about how toxic the air in Los Angeles was. This was the reason Michael Jackson wore face masks, readers were informed, little realizing it was actually because of his latest nose job.

These cities admitted they had a problem - Step 1 - then dealt with it - Step 2. You can't change something you don't recognize. And arguably, it's netizens, or rather citizens, who have created this awareness.

So, now that the Beijing authorities are sort of admitting that smog is smog and not fog, I'm cautiously optimistic there will be many more blue-sky days ahead for the capital city.