Danwei has an interesting post about Beijingers’ time allocation and how it has changed during the last 20 years.
According to the survey, both men and women have a lot more free time today compared to twenty years ago. How do they spend it? Consuming media, sleeping and staying away from the kitchen.
They also spend 21 minutes more commuting between work and home. All of them in black Audi A6 4.2l cars, it seems.
Each day, one thousand cars are added to the already clogged roads of Beijing.
Which is one of the reasons this is what I see when I look out my window today; a light grey fog, made worse by pollution from cars and coal-fired heating systems.
Reuters reports this has caused “the closure of highways across an area as large as Britain“.
What I see today.
What I see on a clear day.
“Does your friend need an ayi”, the woman cleaning the floor in the China Mobile store asked our Chinese colleague. “I can be their ayi.”
We don’t. We’ve already hired one.
An ayi is a housekeeper, common among expats (and more affluent Chinese families, I guess).
The job market seems very informal here.
Came to Beijing a week ago, and have just started to find my way around the area where I live (Seasons Park, in the Dongcheng District).
I’ll stay here for nine months. Will write about what I see and experience.
The view from our living room: A mix of skyscraper skyline and abandoned buildings.
