An old joke was never check the stock market or government statistics to know the state of China’s economy, just look to the sky. When those gray skies are blue, the economists would say, start to worry. Well, the sky has been blue a lot this year, but in a bizarre coincidence, as economic growth here started to head toward 8 percent, we seem to be getting more polluted days. I’ll let you know what happens of the GDP numbers hit double digits.

BEIJING, China — There’s something strange these days over Beijing, something many of us here have not seen for a very long time. As I look up, there’s this strange blue-looking color — at first I thought the officials may have been dying the pollution blue, or maybe I had lived here so long that I had forgotten what a sky should looked like.

I’ve lived in Beijing for a little less than three years, but one of our local office workers made the remark that she had never seen such beautiful, white fluffy clouds, so I knew something had changed. Don’t get me wrong, this place is still polluted, but since the Beijing Olympics it seems the number of adversely polluted days is about the same as the number of really good days we had last year, in other words, not a lot.

And it might just be making the people who live here a little happier, as well. In the parks, on the streets, many Beijingers seem to be smiling a little more, perhaps a bit more relaxed.

So how did this happen? The government has been trying to clean up this city for years — building subway lines, converting buses and taxis to natural gas, and stopping cars from driving one day a week (a watered-down continuation of the tough traffic controls in place during the Olympics). Some major polluters, too, have been closed down and relocated — notably Beijing Capital Iron and Steel, the biggest single contributor to the city’s air pollution problem. Now that the Olympics are over there’s been a massive drop in construction, and so dust particles have been reduced. But also playing its part is the global economic slump; many of the factories which were meant to close temporarily for the Olympics have never re-opened.

这些天在北京一些事变得很奇怪，一些东西，我们在北京已经很久没有见过了。 当我抬头看的时候，我们看到非常奇怪的蓝色的天空。刚开始我甚至认为这是官方有意制造的蓝色污染，或者我在北京住的时间太长了，以至于我忘记蓝色天空是什么样的。

我在北京住了快三年了，我们部门的一个雇员提醒了我，她从来没有见过如此美丽的天空，如此蓬松雪白的云彩，我知道，一些东西改变了。不要让我犯错误，这里依然存在污染，但是自从北京奥运会开始，我们遇到的极端糟糕的天数，和去年非常好的天数是一样的。换句话说，有污染的日子还是很多。

这起码让生活在那里的人们感觉高兴多了。在公园里，街道上，北京人的笑脸似乎更多了，也许他们感觉放松了。

那么，究竟怎么会成这样的?政府试图洗干净这个城市已经有很多年了，他们建造了许多地铁，把公交车和出租车的燃料置换成天然气，让汽车每周有一天不 准出行(在奥运期间的汽车单双号出行)。几个主要的污染者，或者被关闭了或者搬离北京，特别是这个城市最大污染者—首钢来开了北京。现在，奥运会已经结束 了，建设规模已经大幅度下降，所以空气中的粉尘下降了不少。但是作为全球经济危机中的玩家，北京的许多的工厂在暂时关闭后就再也没有开过。

一个古老的笑话是没，不要去看股票市场或者政府的统计数据，要了解中国的经济情况，只要看看中国的天空。当那些灰色的天空变成蓝色，经济学家应该会说经济出问题了。 好吧，天空在今年是变蓝了一些，但是奇怪的是，中国的经济正向保8迈进，污染的天气却变少了。我会让你们知道当GDP增长两位数的时候会发生什么。