It&#x27;s 6:30AM here in the Chinese city of Kunming. I just returned from a 5AM trip to a market to buy some herbs for Christmas dishes. On the way I passed one of our many street cleaning water-tank trucks, which basically drive around all Chinese cities spraying the road and nearby traffic with water and a fine mist (just what you want at 5AM on an e-bike in the winter morning!). While they most operate in the early mornings and are no doubt targeted at dislodging and collecting road-top detritus, they have been about for ages and are very much ubiquitous. A separate fleet of trucks drive about spraying water on roadside gardens, which in some kind of cuddly holdover from socialist central planning are in fact very numerous compared to most western cities (with the exception of the center of older French cities, perhaps). Despite the construction boom going on, it&#x27;s all Himalayan blue skies here! I pity the poor people in those polluted east-coast cities, and those in the north with their wintery outlook, and particularly those in the northeast like Beijing where not only do you have <i>both</i> problems, but the time dedicated to negotiating traffic every time you leave your house is soul-crushing...