China Air ?

We would love to do china river cruise, we are wondering about the air quailty, pollution levels in china are reportly not so good, would love some feed back

We would love to do china river cruise, we are wondering about the air quailty, pollution levels in china are reportly not so good, would love some feed back

We did Viking's Imperial Jewels of China trip a year ago, and it was the most extraordinary trip we've ever taken. Air quality/pollution in China is very variable. You can have blue sky days, and polluted sky days. Don't let concerns about any of that deter you. China is amazing.

It is an amazing place.

We did China & the Yangtze River with Grand Circle in April of 2007. See my blog http://jackthetravelingman-china.blogspot.com. There we 16 of us on the trip, and no one, to the best of our knowledge had any respiratory issues. This was a year before the Olympics, and China was working on cleaning up the air quality and improving the transportation infrastructure for the Olympics, but had not made much progress yet. In Beijing, the pollution was visible, but not so much in the rest of the country. See the pictures in the blog. In winter, the pollution should be much worse, as much coal is used in heating. Spring and fall are the times to go. Summer can be brutally hot as Hong Kong is the same latitude as Havana, Shanghai is the same latitude as Jacksonville, and Beijing is the same Latitude as Philadelphia.

If you go to the "Other Cruise Lines" section of Cruise Critic, there are dozens and dozens of postings about trips to China (espec. with Viking)...you'll learn a lot.

I just returned two weeks ago from a 19-day trip to China and Tibet that also included a 4-day cruise on the Yangtse. The air quality was very, very bad, especially in Beijing, Xi'an and Chongqing, where the sun was not visible due to the pollution. (In Shanghai, it had just rained for several days before we arrived, so on our first day there, the sky was mostly blue, but soon after, the "fog" returned.) Air (and water) pollution is a serious problem almost everywhere because of the coal-burning plants used to generate electricity, the number of cars, and the concrete factories. Visibility was very limited in the Three Gorges area as well because of pollution from Wuhan factories. While we still enjoyed the trip, air pollution was a significant issue for me. I have asthma that is usually in control with minimal meds, but in China, I developed full-blown bronchitis. I was prepared with meds from my doctor, but still had problems. So, if you have asthma, you will want to take that into consideration in planning your trip.