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 Beijing led the country for searches on the travel website Qunar.com
for "avoid smog", "wash your lungs" and other terms related to
traveling to escape pollution, said Michelle Qi, a spokeswoman for
the site's parent company, Ctrip.com.
Northern China has been shrouded in almost record pollution all
week, disrupting flights, traffic and shipping, and closing
factories and schools.
Searches for plane tickets from Beijing to southern China, including
coastal locations like Hainan province, quadrupled this week, Qi
said. Popular foreign destinations include Thailand and Japan, she
said
"Good air quality definitely would be one reason to go," she said.
Pollution alerts have become increasingly common in China's northern
industrial heartland, especially during winter when energy demand -
much of it met by coal - rises sharply.
Some Beijing residents, like Jane Wang, 27, and her family, can't
get out of town fast enough.
"My husband and I really wanted to go but our company didn't let us
take off work so we had no choice but to wear a mask and go to work
coughing," said Wang, who works in an automotive technology research
center.
Her mother flew to Hainan, where the family has a holiday house, on
Monday to avoid the pollution, Wang said.
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For those who can't go too far, travel websites including Ctrip
advertise hotels with air filtration systems in places across north
China, where numerous cities having issued pollution red alerts.
"Enjoy a micro forest, live in a fresh air room: enjoy your own a
complementary air filtration machine," reads a banner advertisement
on Ctrip's page for hotel bookings on Wednesday, with a link to a
curated list of hotels with the feature.
(Reporting by Jake Spring and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Robert
Birsel)
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