The other day, I scanned through the friends’ “Moment” on the phone app WeChat (Chinese equivalent to WhatsApp), a couple of photos caught my eyes. My friend titled them with “G20 Sky”. I thought they were shot somewhere in Europe. Naah, it was Shanghai. The photos show a line of beautiful houses with a lake in the front, more important, the sky on those photos is clearly very blue, only a few patches of clouds scattered.

Surprised, well, I was. Remember the smog in the city? It was so well documented, that it symbolised the fast paced growth with the environment. 60% of pollution is from transport. There had even been a cottage industry producing air protection masks and air purifiers. Then, how come with such stunning blue sky?

My friend returned my query, ah, it was for the forthcoming G20 Summit. With such an important economy forum approaching, as always, air pollution is kept to the minimum for major events in the metropolis. Even though the summit was to be taken place in Hang Zhou, a town two one hours by train, the scale for the air excellence is getting bigger with time.

Air quality has been a sensitive subject for quite some time. There is hourly real time PM2.5 reading for the clarity of air, which is issued by Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Centre since 2013. You cannot blame people’s obsession about the air quality.

Look at my friend’s photos and the comments, it seems that the authority is doing everything they promised to keep the sky blue, as some of the stats suggest over the past few years, not only just guaranteed for the important events.

I just had a read on PM 2.5 (Air Pollution Index) for this day in Shanghai, at 99, categorised as moderate. London 58, read from the same source.