Flight from Cleveland to Washington and on to Johannesburg - A Short Safari Adventure Among Africa's Thorny Bushveld Wildlife - page 159

Japanese High Speed Train
It is interesting to see how some rapidly changing eastern cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, Beijing,
Shanghai, and New Delhi compare. Last year I visited all of them and the comparison between
for example Kyoto (clean, beautiful gardens and temples, vistas) and Beijing (very modern but
still terrible air pollution, centrally very clean, beautiful gardens, zoo, and the Forbidden city
and summer palace were well maintained) and New Delhi (bustling, vibrant but not clean and I
could barely make out a large temple from a quarter of a mile away, not that the air quality was
much better in Beijing) is quite striking. In both, during the day one could not see the sun
completely and at night I never saw the moon. Obviously the $28 billion spent on the Olympics
in Beijing resulted in an overhaul of the city but one wonders how politics and culture also
influence these cities. The need for sanitation is obvious and one needs only think back to the
problems of sanitation in European cities in the past that killed millions due to the plague,
small pox, typhoid, and now days in third world countries related to cholera.
Dragon Boats at Summer Palace in Smog