Beijing Still Has a Massive Pollution Problem for Tourists and Locals Alike

Editor's Note: Skift launched a new series, Gateway, to broaden our news coverage geographically with first-hand, original stories from correspondents embedded in cities around the world. We are featuring regular reports several times per week from Beijing, Singapore and Cape Town, and look for us to add other cities soon. Gateway Beijing, for example, signifies that the reporter is writing from that city although his coverage of the business of travel may meander to other locales in the region. Read about the series here, and check out all the stories in the series here. Beijing ended 2016 and entered 2017 in the same way: under a cloud. In late December, Beijing announced its first pollution red alert of that year, closing schools the way snow would in the northern part of the United States. That was followed by an orange alert – one step down from a red alert, indicating sustained pollution over three days – from December 30 through January 1. Two days later, on January 3, China issued its first national red alert, although that was for severe wu mai – the Chinese phrase for that hip 80s LA term, smog. The Knock-On Effect for the Travel Industry Beijing was the toast of