Day 46: A Present From China

Every so often during the year Korea receives a little present from China. Well, it's actually a fairly large present - Yellow Sand. Yellow Sand is a strange phenomenon that I had yet to encounter before moving here to Asia, and I'm still getting used to seeing it. What is it, you may ask?

Well, Yellow Sand is just exactly that - yellow sand. Massive windstorms sweep up billions upon billions of tiny grains of yellow sand from China's Gobi Desert, suck it up into the atmosphere, blow it all the way across China and the West Sea...and dump it on Korea. You'll wake up and go outside and everything will be covered in a very light dusting of yellow sand. It looks almost like pollen, but duller in colour and obviously much coarser. And man does it do wonders for Korea's air problems! (And by 'wonders', I mean exasperate the severe problem even more!) Between creating it's own air pollution via massive industry, power generation, and the private automobile, Yellow Sand just makes it a thousand times worse. Somedays I'll walk to work and it'll be crystal clear outside and the skies will be SO BLUE! And then the next day I can't even see a few hundred metres down the road because of all the smog and sand in the air - such extremes here! Sometimes the sand will fall during the night so when you wake up the skies will be clear, but everything will be covered in a light yellow dusting. So strange!

As a Canadian I've seen just about every other kind of precipitation that you can imagine, but sand from the sky is definitely a new thing for me. It's kinda cool to look at, but it's pretty gross to be outside in when it's in the air. It's hard to breathe and apparently is really quite destructive on your lung tissue over long-term exposure. (Luckily I'm only here for a year, eh?) I keep wanting to collect some of it to save, but such a fine layer falls that you can't really 'scoop it up into a jar' as I'd like to. Next time we get a major dumping of yellow sand I'll try and take some photos to show you guys! Just another unique marvel here in Asia...