An "odd" day in Beijing

As a test for the Olympics the Government is for four days trying to bring down the airpollution in Beijing. This by just letting 50 percent of the cars use the streets per day - getting 1 million cars away from the streets.

So, today and Sunday all cars with an "odd" last number in the license plate is allowed to drive and tomorrow and Monday all with an even number.
I was amazed - it worked! Traffic was almost as back in Sweden and almost no one with a wrong number was driving. The penalty was 100 RMB which is quite a lot of money for many people here.
Today a drive from south of Beijing to our factory in the north that normally takes 1 hour just took 35 minutes.

There is a rumour that one month before the Olympics the situation will be the same - odd numbers one day, even the next day. For a short while like over this weekend I think it will work but not for a longer periode. Chinese people is creative and very soon we will see cars with changeable licensplates...







Not eveybody was following the rules!
This busdriver got caught by the Police
and had to pay 100 RMB for driving on
the wrong day!

Welcome to Park Avenue 4:16 D

August 1st we moved to our new apartment at Park Avenue and it have been some hectic days before getting settled.

When we returned from Europe the landlord had furnished the apartment with items from IKEA according to the list we made before we went away. Everything was in place, TV, Internet, telephone, DVD - all installed and tested.

We are lucky to have very good landlords - a young couple that live in another apartment in the centre of Beijing.

Park Avenue is at the south gate of Chaoyang Park so it is a little bit more east of the centre than San Quan and we are not anymore able to just walk to the shopping and restaurants but the apartment is new, bigger and it is also closer to drive to the factory and the office.