Well after one week of odd/even traffic restrictions, I stood on the pedestrian overpass on Chao Nei Dajie and looked west. On a good day, you can see Xiang Shan and the Western Hills. Today you could see about 200 meters and then the street dissolved into a smog bank so thick it was positively science fiction. On the plus side, the streets have been much more civilized of late with half the cars removed. Traffic flows better and the number of heinous snarls replete with the useless and repetitive blaring of horns has been nicely minimized. While I haven’t seen any noticeable improvement in air quality downtown, taking half the cars off of Beijing’s streets isn’t the worst idea in the world and for what it’s worth I’d be all for making these restrictions permanent. On the subject of traffic, and since nobody asked, making Nanluoguxiang and the streets around Qianhai, Houhai, and Xihai pedestrian-only would be a nice step in improving the quality of those neighborhoods and demonstrating the Beijing government’s progressive attitude to planning an urban space not beholden to the internal combustion engine. YJ won a lottery for Olympic baseball tickets an Olympic baseball ticket.