Purple haze: lilac sky at night highlights China’s smog blight

Guardian ^ | December 23, 2015 | Tom Phillips

[TigerLikesRooster]

Purple haze: lilac sky at night highlights China's smog blight

Images showing Nanjing city shrouded in a violet fug - said to be caused by a pollution spike at sunset - follow two red alerts for Beijing over toxic air

A Nanjing sunset, when the purple twilight and dense smog combined to give the appearance of a purple haze. Photograph: Weibo

Tom Phillips in Beijing

Wednesday 23 December 2015 06.16 GMT

Photographs appearing to show one of China's most famous cities shrouded in a spectacular violet mist went viral on Wednesday, as millions of citizens choked on the country's latest bout of toxic smog.

The fluorescent purple haze that engulfed Nanjing - reportedly the result of a pollution-tinged sunset - was at one point the second most talked-about topic on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter.

"Who can explain what has happened to the sky?" wrote one concerned Weibo user, as tens of thousands of people posted comments on the phenomenon.

"It's the new, grape-flavoured smog!" replied another.

Even Xinhua, China's official news agency, weighed in, posting photographs of the unusual lilac vista on its Twitter account alongside the headline: "Pink smog?"

Some reacted angrily, claiming the Chinese media was viewing the country's pollution crisis through rose-tinted glasses and failing to challenge Beijing over its failure to stop the smog.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[nopardons]

YIKES....it’s pretty, but really awful!
And China isn’t going to do a damned thing about it; now or ever.

[LeoWindhorse]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHdlSolwktU

also the name give to a particular brand of LSD
in the same era

[spodefly]

Purple haze, all in my brain. Lately, things just don’t seem the same. Acting funny, and I don’t know why. Excuse me, while I kiss the sky. Purple haze all in my eyes. Don’t know if it’s day or night. You got me blowin’ ... blowin’ my mind. Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?

from memory :)

[shibumi]

"Images showing Nanjing city shrouded in a violet fug..."

I was all primed to make fun of what I presumed to be a typo but something made me double check.

Sure enough, "Fug" is a word. And it's entirely appropriate:

"... the stuffy atmosphere of a poorly ventilated space; also : a stuffy or malodorous emanation.

(Definition from Miriam-Webster Online)

[sushiman]

The Fugs - Kill For Peace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvA1bKLQtbM

[kaehurowing]

The Chinese smog is totally screwing up Korea also.

http://www.arirang.com/News/News_View.asp?nseq=186490

http://www.arirang.com/News/News_View.asp?nseq=186504

[Fai Mao]

You can’t really imagine how bad it is unless you have lived there. I love China but the pollution is just so incredibly bad. Not just the air pollution but the rivers are so awful that the fish all die.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Ughhhhh...its not an “appearance of a pure haze” its aan actual purple haze.

[Cowboy Bob]

Didn’t Obama say that America needs to be more like China?

[Former Proud Canadian]

It might help solve their population problem. Plus the new breed of Chinese that survive will have the fittest lungs.

[RayChuang88]

It's more than just that--the Japanese government are complaining that the horrible smog generated by all those uncontrolled coal-fired power plants in northeastern China are reaching Kyushu, western Honshu (the Chuugoku region, which ironically uses the same two Chinese characters for China when written in Japanese kanji) and the Hokuriku region of Honshu.

[o_1_2_3__]

If we’re lucky, it’s the end of time.

[o_1_2_3__]

A foggish fug, in other words.

[JoeProBono]

[katana]

Fugg: Also a cleaning product Redd Fox promoted in one of his infamous night club routines back in the 60’s. The same company that made Fugg produced a detergent called Sugg. The last line in Redd’s “commercial” was “If you can’t Fugg it, Sugg it”. Words to live by.