A girl from Beijing and her friend have photographed the city's sky once a day for 365 days in a row. By reviewing the photos, they determined Beijing had just 180 "blue sky" days during that time period, which differs from Chinese government official statistics stating that Beijing had 285 "blue sky" days. The website ditan360.com exposed the discrepancy.

From June 1, 2009 to May 30 2010, Lu Weiwei and her friend Fan Tao have been persistent about photographing Beijing's sky each day. In the photos with a blue sky in the background, one could see people wearing sunglasses.

Lu says that she wanted to count the number of Beijing's blue skies and deliver the message that the air quality of the city does affect everyone living there.

In an interview with Beijing News, Lu said she decided to take pictures of the sky, since she couldn't ride her bicycle to work on some days, due to bad air quality. She hopes that citizens will soon awaken to environmental issues by looking at the sky everyday and make efforts to reduce pollution.

As for the discrepancy between the number of "blue sky" days counted by the Chinese government and Lu and Fan's count, an official with Beijing Environment Protection Bureau explained that "blue sky", to environmental agencies, means air quality reaching or exceeding certain levels based on the monitoring of pollutants, which include air-related particulate matter, sulphur dioxide and nitrate dioxide.

"The official 'blue sky' is different from what other Beijing citizens may deem as acceptable. We call it 'blue sky' when air quality has met the standards, even if it is a rainy, snowy or cloudy day," the official said.

Lu, however, said that the feelings of the citizens are what really count, even though scientific statistics may be more accurate. The happiness of people often originates from the moment they look at the sky. They would not feel convinced by reading statistics that differ from reality. It's not a 'blue sky' if they see a haze of Beijing's West Mountain, according to Lu.

(CRIENGLISH.com  October 27, 2010)