Blue skies pave way for green lifestyles
I have developed the habit of walking to work and for leisure if weather and distance permit. My smartphone counts the steps I take every day and sometimes I compare the record with my friends.
When I was assigned to cover this year’s annual sessions of the National
People’s Congress and
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
National Committee, I worried that the busy schedule of interviews might prevent me from sustaining my green lifestyle.
On Friday, an idea occurred to me: I could abandon doorto-door taxis and take the subway to meeting places and interviews during the coming days.
My office is about 1 kilometer from the nearest metro station. In terms of density of metro lines, Beijing is similar to London and Paris. You can walk to a station from any point in downtown Beijing in less than 20 minutes.
The deputies and members at the two sessions, who number more than 5,000, are staying in various hotels in Beijing, and I could access their hotels by metro.
With more lines still being constructed, Beijing has made stunning progress over the past decade in subway construction. I can still remember when attending a meeting in London in 2007, a participant used the sharp difference of metro line density of Beijing and London to argue that the gap between China and the West was huge.