I heard about WeChat three hours after arriving in Beijing. I thought, “This is an unnecessary app. I have WhatsApp, I don’t need WeChat.” Boy, was I wrong! We all need WeChat; my life has been so much easier since I got it, and I wish the rest of the world would get WeChat too. I have made many, many friends through WeChat. I have had many questions answered, many shopping experiences, and also great services at home. Here I’ll share some of my favorite WeChat contacts. Do you have any great WeChat contacts? Let us know! Find part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.

Pollution Masks

Jeff is your go-to man for AQblue masks. This mask is colorful and comes in handy kids’ sizes. It’s an effective way of staying safe in the Beijing pollution. That’s something we have not seen much of in the last few weeks, but just in case I always have my pink mommy and me masks in my purse for me and my toddler. Find out more here or add Jeff on WeChat: jdb186

Tennis Classes

Need to up your ball game, or do your kids want to learn tennis? This lady is a pro, teaching Beijing how to make that grand slam. I have seen her teaching kids as young as five, so get your child ready to be the next Venus or Serena. Add her on WeChat: kate9596

Clean Air

Living in Beijing and getting rid of all your air purifiers? It’s possible if you install the CleanFlow positive pressure system. This machine can replace ten Xiaomi air purifiers while taking up no more space than four, and will keep your home pollution-free. Charlie can take care of all your water and air issues: from equipment, testing, monitoring, and leakage, to sealing and mold issues. Find out more here or add on WeChat: ct385617

Vegan food

Going vegan does not have to be boring, you can still eat cream cheese and baked goods. This lady lives in the kitchen so we all can eat healthy and vegan. I am quite surprised at what she can make with nuts. Kangsu Kitchen delights your vegan belly with products like cashew gouda, beet sunflower seed burgers, and much more. Add on WeChat: DSonnek-Bouchard

Shared Harvest

Shared Harvest is a farm that brings weekly vegetable boxes to your door. Each week they send you a list of the veggies they have on offer, and you pick what you like. You pay RMB 3000 to open an account, and each week they will take off what you spend till you get to zero. Add on  WeChat: wxid_y9wkwgbke7g322

Wine

Beijing is filled with wine it seems, but this wine service is special. Signature Wine is a monthly subscription club. They find high quality wine, and provide information and tasting notes for each bottle. All this delivered to your door in a pretty box – what more does a parent need? Find out more here or add Mike on WeChat: MikeSig

Photos: Pixabay and courtesy of vendors

We hope we’re not the first ones to break this to readers, but air pollution in Beijing is unfortunately just a fact of life. Though it does bring a damper on a good day, most of the haze lingers during winter, as household coal burning from neighboring zones, like Hubei, is a major source of pollution.

What’s In It?

The Beijing government has pointed to several sources of air pollution, including but not limited to, car exhaust, coal burning, factory production waste, fireworks (during Chinese New Year), paper burning (during traditional holidays), and cooking waste. The upside is, according to statistical trends, the air pollution should improve with time and further government restrictions.

Dealing With It

Since Beijing pollution is a fact of life, staying indoors unequipped and unguarded will not help to deal with the smog blues, but only make you feel worse. Even once you purchase the equipment to help you physically, keep in mind that there is the potential for mental health troubles due to pollution. Scan the QR code for more information. [QR A]

Other Pollutants

Though air pollution is often the largest concern for most families, don’t forget to check for other indoor pollutants, like lead painting in older buildings, and water vapor from showerheads. Check out more information about these pollutants by scanning the QR code.

This is our checklist for what you need to protect yourself and your family whether inside or outside.

Inside the Home	Out and About
– Air purifiers – Air monitor – Tape for drafts on windows – DIY pollution stopper for door drafts – Plenty of crafts for indoor days – Showerhead filter – Water filter or ordered water	– Mask for adults and children – Portable air quality monitor or – Pollution app and data for phone (see p 32) – List of places with air filtration inside, see p 18 for more information

 

Mask Fit

Other than actual testing in a lab and material of mask, fit is king. The cost of the mask doesn’t matter as much as the fit on the face, so make sure to follow these guidelines.

1: To test the fit around the nose, put on a pair of glasses and see if steam fogs up the lenses.

2: The nose should have a tight fit around the nose bone using a wire or plastic seal.

3: Not all masks are reusable, but some are washable and some need replacement filters. Some masks are not

able to filter out oil-based pollutants, while others are. Make sure to follow the manufacturer’s guidelines.

4: Without a seal all the way around the face, the mask is essentially worthless.

5: Some masks have parts and should be regularly cleaned according to manufacture’s guidelines.

Exercise – Don’t Skip It

One way to keep smog blues at bay, but is often overlooked, is exercising indoors even when pollution is heavy. When the smog is heavy, you might not feel like staying fit, but a little bit of exercise will go a long way in helping mind and body. These supplies are easily found on either JD.com, Taobao.com, Decathlon, or other area sports stores. Remember that kids and adults both need appropriate play.

Mats
Weights
Exercise ball
Tents and tunnels
Dance and other workout videos
Expo markers for windows and floor tile
Colored tape for PE type games
Stationary bike set up
Indoor trampoline
Balls and blow up pool

Curious about more?

Scan for a roundup of many different articles covering air and household pollutants. 

 

Photo, “Foggy Penalties”, provided by Tiffany Raab, Year 13, British School of Beijing, Shunyi

 
This article originally appeared on p 38-39 of beijingkids May 2017 Home & Relocation Guide.
Download the digital copy here.

The first time my son had to wear an anti-pollution face mask was when my husband and I took him to the biggest public hospital in our town. As I have written before, my strong-willed toddler son is NOT A FAN OF DOCTORS, no matter how nice they are, and no matter what method they use to bribe him. Cookies and toys don’t do the trick; he’ll walk away with new stickers without the doctor being able to perform the checkup. That’s how strong-willed he is, though, truly, a trait I have come to love.

When we first moved to my husband’s hometown in Northeast China, we didn’t realize how bad the pollution could sometimes get. We live in a fourth-tier city of three million and on average, the pollution is lower than in Beijing and we do have plenty of blue-sky days, but spring is notorious for bad air caused by field burning in surrounding areas and other pollutants. Spring air is also filled with sand that gets blown our way from the not-so-far away Inner Mongolian steppe.

Usually, our son just stays home with me or grandma if the pollution gets bad, which is why he didn’t need to wear a mask up until the age of 33 months. Knowing how strong-willed he is, and the fact that he had been sick with a fever for ten days, making him even less cooperative than normal, I expected his resistance. Just that he didn’t resist. He is either outgrowing toddler tantrums, or I unintentionally taught him really well to love wearing a mask. We have an electrical mask, the kind you charge overnight. As soon as I told him he could turn on the filter himself by pushing a little button, there was no resistance, only cooperation.

I had unintentionally been preparing him for wearing this cool technical gadget for months (I assume this is what it must look like in this almost three year old toddler’s eyes). After my husband had bought the anti-pollution masks a few months prior, my son would ask me to read the manual to him and explain all the steps used for charging the batteries and changing the filter over and over.

He loves reading instructions and manuals as bedtime stories and during the day. It is probably no surprise that his love for reading manuals developed at the same time the “Why Phase” started. He will dig up instructions for putting together furniture, will look for me with the diaper packaging in hand, asking me what all the signs mean, and will ask me to read him simple recipes with drawings, step by step, as his bedtime story. The masks my husband had bought are actually for grown-ups, so when reading him the manual, I never had any intention of reading it so he would not resist wearing it one day. My son’s anti-pollution mask hadn’t arrived yet, thus we just put one of the grown-up masks on him. All the reading the manual really paid off. It prepared him for wearing the mask, and even made him eager to do so.

As we took him to the hospital, he even seemed happy about it. When we arrived, he stated that we were at the airport, a place he loves. Although I’m sure he knows very well that the hospital is not an airport (he had been to the hospital once before), and even though he still tried to resist doing the checkups in his usual strong-willed manner, he seemed to be excited over this outing with mom and dad wearing this special face mask.

When I sat with him in the car waiting for my husband to come back with the results of the blood tests after the checkup and the batteries of my son’s mask stopped working, he was all ready to disassemble the mask like he had seen in the manual to change the filter and batteries. He had definitely been paying more attention to the contents of the manual than I did while reading.

Luckily, the results were fine and showed that my son was already on the mend.

Ruth Silbermayr-Song is an Austrian illustrator, German teacher and mother of two. She writes about life in China as a foreign woman, her cross-cultural marriage to a Chinese man, and child rearing bridging cultures and languages on her blog China Elevator Stories. Her story of pregnancy and parenting in China has appeared in the anthology “Knocked Up Abroad Again”.

Photos: Ruth Silbermayr-Song

Before you choke down another lungful of particulate-smattered air, let’s run through the facts: 1) You can’t bring yourself to drop thousands of kuai on an air purifier, and 2) even if you could, you wouldn’t want to lug one of those gigantors home with you when you finally left Beijing. Masks are a cheaper, much more portable way to protect ourselves from Beijing’s “fog,” whether you bike, walk, bus or subway to work and play.

This article first appeared on the Beijinger. For the full post, click here.