My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

A huge dust storm rolled out of the Gobi Desert in China, and caused major air quality problems in Beijing. Here’s a shot from the Taiwan Public TV news:

What does this have to do with Taiwan, you may ask? Well, the wind blows from Asia right onto Taiwan, which means that Taiwan gets to “enjoy” the dust storm as well. The dust storm hit Sunday morning. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in Beijing, but everything that was left outside, like cars and bikes, got covered with a fine coating of orange-brown dust. It was really disgusting. All day it was very hazy, like there was a forest fire in the vicinity, and there was a faint burning smell in the air, like someone had set of firecrackers in the distance.

The government advised everyone with respiratory problems to stay indoors if at all possible. We had planned to go to the Taipei zoo and see the pandas, but Ian is fighting a cold, and we didn’t want him to develop any complications from breathing the dust, so we stayed home and kept the windows shut.