Street Sweeping

There are street sweepers everywhere. Our campus alone has at least a dozen or more. They are an additional cause of air pollution in China. Every day every road and sidewalk everywhere gets swept multiple times.

These are not machines. Never seen one. They are people with brooms. I can hardly imagine the number of hundreds of thousands of sweepers throughout China. They were everywhere during our first trip to China. There are even more now.

They keep things swept. Notice I said "swept" and not "clean."

It seems there is always dirt and dust on the sidewalks and roads. I think the street sweepers have a very interesting strategy to deal with it. What do you mean? Me? Cynical?

Here is the formula:
1. Stir every piece of dust and dirt into the air, swooshing it all around everywhere.
2. Hope that 1/3 of it clings to buildings, cars, plants, and people. It will never return to the ground and never need to be swept again!
3. Hope that 1/3 of it gets breathed in by the pedestrians and stays forever clogging their lungs. I testify they succeed really well with this.
4. Sadly let 1/3 of it return to the sidewalk or street.
5. After you have gone a few hundred yards, return to your starting point and begin again! It is an endless all day cycle.