Air pollution in Shaolin ?

[hkkevin]

Hi, i plan to stay in Chengzhou for a few months, but have heard the sky is filled with haze. I expect my friends and i will do many heavy exercise in Shaolin, it's pretty worrying to me. I don't mean that i'll be dead for breathing polluted air, it's just not ideal.

Anybody has been there before? Please share your thoughts.

[heifeng]

Well I was in 2 smaller nearby cities near Zhengzhou, Henan and thought I was going to pass out and die for the entire 3 or so weeks I was there! But mostly that was just due to car exhaust I was exposed to daily. Maybe life/air quality near Shaolin will be much better....less traffic...

[hkkevin]

the pollution in countryiside can also be very bad because of coal burning. Do you know if there's any pollution index in China?

[imron]

Yep, there is. See here

Edit: Actually, just tried following the link in that thread, and it's broken. It seems the site has been moved here http://www.sepa.gov.cn/quality/airforecast/air_forecast.php, but the info is only in Chinese. They have an English version of the website here http://english.sepa.gov.cn/, unfortunately I can't seem to find the nice static table anywhere. All you get is a rapidly switching table of the different cities.

[Willy Tang]

How is your guys experience in getting training in Shaolin? I am planning on going. But am a bit concerned by this article i stumbled upon...

http://www.squatmagazine.com/article.php?articleId=11

[imron]

Sounds about right to me. You can find good martial arts in China, but you need to know where to look, and you need to be careful because there are plenty of "masters" who will charge you lots of money and teach you very little.

This forum deals a lot with traditional chinese martial arts (the focus is on the internal arts, but many others are also discussed), you might have some luck there if you search/enquire about good teachers in China.