Let’s start by saying that Beijing’s record-setting pollution is so dense that an artist was able to vacuum it out of the air and form an actual brick. In response to the situation, the city has just issued an unprecedented red alert—schools have been advised to close along with factories and construction sites and millions of vehicles will be off the road, according to The Guardian.
The situation is tough for everyone, and if you’re a tourist who booked a once-in-a-lifetime trip to see the Forbidden City, the smog could definitely put a damper on your vacation photo ops. There are a few helpful residents out there traced the outlines of some of the city’s major attractions on smog-filled photos. The pictures show what sights like Tiananmen Square and the Bird's Nest stadium would look like, if you could actually see them through the cloud of pollution.
According to Shanghaist, it all started when “helpful netizens on Weibo” (China’s Twitter like social media site) drew a “handy diagram” of the CCTV Headquarters that usually dominates the Beijing skyline. The result was so useful and also telling of the dire nature of the smog situation that others jumped onboard the project. Now there are traced images of the Forbidden City, the National Theater, the Monument to the People's Heroes, and counting.
