 "Mark Zuckerberg")
A morning run can be the perfect way to overcome jet lag, but usually not when it's through the choking haze of auto exhaust and industrial discharge.
In a Friday morning post, Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his arrival in Beijing with a blithe message about what must have been a dizzying jog through the centre of China's capital, which has been suffering from a weeklong bout of hazardous air pollution.
"It's great to be back in Beijing! I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven," . Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, likely using a virtual private network to get around the Chinese government Internet filters, which block his site.
In a photo accompanying the post, made about 10:30 am, Zuckerberg smiles alongside several running companions in front of the famous portrait of Mao Zedong that overlooks Tiananmen Square. At 9 am an air-quality monitor at the United States Embassy in Beijing calculated the level of PM2.5, ultrafine particles that damage respiration, at 305 micrograms per cubic meter. That level is deemed "hazardous" under American air-quality standards.
The colour of the sky was the sort of grey hue that indicates a bad pollution day. The faint smell of something burning hung in the air. Many children on buses, or scooting to school with their parents or nannies, wore face masks. In homes and offices, air purifiers were cranked up to the highest setting.
The background for the photo of Zuckerberg's run, directly in front of the Forbidden City at the centre of Beijing, is normally public-relations friendly. But by ignoring the air quality, Zuckerberg inadvertently stirred an online debate about China's major air pollution problems.
During the past two years, Zuckerberg has made several high-profile trips to China and has done little to stifle conjecture about his ambitions to bring Facebook to the country. During a visit by China's Internet czar, Lu Wei, to Facebook's campus in the United States in 2014, Zuckerberg showed off a copy of a collection of speeches and propaganda directives by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Zuckerberg has also been public with his personal project of learning Mandarin. In two recent trips to Beijing, Zuckerberg has spoken Chinese, the first time in an informal chat at China's Tsinghua University and the second time in a more formal speech about his plans for Facebook.
On Facebook, responses to Zuckerberg's run ran the gamut from mocking to genuinely concerned about his health.
One user, Christina Tan, sought to warn Zuckerberg: "Mark, don't u see the air pollution? Stop running outside! Beijing is my home, but I'm not recommending you run outside."
Although some noted he should have worn a face mask, others joked about his ability to access Facebook despite the Chinese government's cracking down on ways to get around the so-called Great Firewall, which keeps Chinese users cordoned off from the wider internet.
Others simply took umbrage with where the photo was staged, at the heart of Tiananmen Square.
"The floor you stepped has been covered by blood from students who fought for democracy. But, enjoy your running in China, Mark. :)," wrote a user named Cao Yuzhou.
Within China, news of Zuckerberg's run was quickly picked up by the tech media. On China's Weibo, the microblogging service, Chinese users were as sarcastic as those on Facebook.
One named Bpxue wrote, "He climbed over the Great Fire Wall to breathe in smog. He's trying too hard!"
Another wrote, "Shoot, he is running without a face mask, no wonder it's called fei si bu ke," a reference to a sarcastic nickname for Facebook in China that roughly translates to "must die" or "doomed."
©2016 The New York Times News Service
