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Q: Do any Chinese you know refer to China's air pollution as "fog"?
In these times when air pollution warnings are issued, no one is wearing a mask; there are even some people jogging!
I hear the Chinese term is still loosey-goosey with calling it "pollution" and instead call it "haze" or "dust". What have you heard from Chinese about this?
10 years 25 weeks ago in General - Other cities
The Chinese media is calling it fog. Maybe it is a language/culture thing, but likely it is deliberate state-dictated propaganda to downplay the severity of it. Despite the coverage of airpocalypse no one is telling anyone that, it's not just a Beijing thing. I never saw anything about Harbin being shut down for days on Chinese TV (I am not glued to the screen 24/7, could have missed it)
Zhuhai was recently listed as the 10th least polluted city in China. This may be the case, but particle matter contents of the air is often on par with the bigger cities, of course pollution is not just air quality.
Also, the AQI index used in China has put some unicorn dust on the terminology around the meassurements
Chinese Categories: Excellent, Good, Lightly Polluted, Moderately Polluted, Heavily Polluted, Severely Polluted US Categories: Good, Moderate, Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups´, Unhealthy, Very Unhealthy, Hazardous The Chinese numeric scale is from 0-300, the US from 0-500, so if you do a 1-1 comparison against a city in the US, it may look just as polluted. (also, they are composite indices so comparing would generally be wrong, but if the average Wang thinks, I wonder if the grass is greener, he may see it isn't when in fact it is)
Heck even my non-Chinese weather app calls it haze on days where the air is thick with smoke that can be smelled and tasted.
I've asked Chinese people who call it "wu mai" (雾霾) which means haze or fog, instead of "wu ran" (污染) which directly means pollution, why exactly they don't just say "wu ran" and what's the difference. Apparently, at least according to their understanding, is that there's no difference really on the effect to your health, however the "haze" has more to do with the weather (be it clouds, moisture, etc) trapping the dust and pollution already in the air and having it stagnate for you to breathe in. So instead of pure smoke/exhaust smog it's like a hybrid between weather and man made smog/dust to give you a little variety of hazardous air. 
