China Gets a Little More Fresh Air

On a Tuesday afternoon in late July, a newlywed couple prepared to pose for their wedding portraits in front of Beijing’s historic Drum Tower. Lily Chen, 28, in a sparkling white gown and tiara, checked her makeup in a mirror—and then looked up the Air Quality Index (AQI) on her smartphone.

Using data from the U.S. Embassy’s air-pollution monitoring station, a popular website and app display air-quality information in real time. At that moment, just a few minutes after noon, the level of particulate air pollution was 96 on a scale of 500. That’s comparatively tolerable for the capital, where the index exceeded 500, its nominal maximum, during the 2012-13 winter “airpocalypse.” “We’re lucky—we have blue sky for these photos,” Chen says. “Otherwise we’d have to fix the sky with Photoshop.”