All I want for Chinese New Year is fresh air—新年，我只想畅快呼吸

On the morning of thefirst school day this year, my son’s form teacher surprised all parents of theclass with her WeChat post of a sleek, new air purifier in the back of theclassroom.

Thank-you messages,tearful faces, thumb-ups, flowers and other happy icons soon flooded the mobileforum. One mother said she was leaping with joy and another claimed it was thebest gift she had received for the Chinese New Year.

Then a father askedthe teacher to turn the air up to full blast, bringing to our attention thefact that it was a compact, family-use filter, which many smoggy days ago, wehad offered to donate by “putting together one day’s or two day’s lunch money”,as one parent suggested.

Yet we cannotcomplain, despite our doubts about its effectiveness and potential side effects.

Until that day, we’dassumed our pleas for air cleaners in classrooms as a quick fix to smog shroudingthe city, had fall on deaf ears. Education authoritieshad worried about electrical safety, ventilation in a sealed space and costs. Socialequality was also a concern if schools accepted donations from well-off parents.

When smog came, haplessparents prayed it would either leave soon or hit harder so schools would beshut down. The recent recurring episodes of air pollution had unnerved thetoughest-minded residents caught in days of a sullen, yellowish sky that foreboded more bouts of airpollution ahead.

In desperation, some felt it irritating when the NationalMuseum of China invited the public to “evade the smog” in its halls equippedwith the state-of-the-art filtration system.

While roadside pollution levels soared to dangerouslevels, the cavernous museum had tamed PM 2.5, the dreaded small, harmfulparticulate matter in the air, through a combination of air purifying, conditioning and ventilation technologies.

Not everybody would agree to compare a museum with aclassroom in terms of air-quality standards. But the different priorities aboutthe past and future touched a raw nerve when people thought museum visitors andexhibits had a breath of fresh air, but school children couldn’t.

It also reinforced the public perceptions that smoggy air could go away,if we wanted it to, like what happened during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Gamesand APEC Blue a couple of years ago.

Sowe heaved a collective sigh of relief at the sight of the modest purifier, whichwould be soon improvised in schools and kindergartens in the city after amilestone decision by education authorities.

Simpleand naive it might sound, but I’ve made a Chinese New Year’s wish that thiswould be just the beginning of a series of efforts of educators and parents tobring fresh air into the classroom.