City Scene: A Bei Without Rain

If Strawberry or MIDI drew you out to Beijing's nether regions over this May holiday weekend you were most likely greeted by rain at some point; in between waiting for the toilet, being shoved by a mass of people or running for the nearest bush. But those of us who have lived in Beijing for a while will know that rain is usually the exception to the rule. Let's take a look at what this means for Beijing.

Perched on the edge of the Gobi desert, water shortage is an increasingly problematic issue for Beijing city-planners but how bad is the problem?

• Light snow on February 7 ended Beijing’s second-longest drought since records began. The capital had seen no precipitation for 107 days. Beijing's annual precipitation currently stands at an average of 570mm.
• The scarcity of Beijing’s water resources means it is only able to supply 40 percent of the city’s population.
• Beijing emerged from a 13-year long emergency water shortage following the deadly storm in 2012, which saw the heaviest rainfall in 60 years, killing 79 and displacing 57,000.
• The city currently diverts water from the nearby provinces of Hebei and Shanxi to deal with shortage.
• The water level of one of two aquifers underneath Beijing drops by three meters every year as it is drained so often.
• Available per capita water usage in Beijing has dropped to around one-tenth of the internationally-recognized warning level.
• A planned desalination plant east of Beijing will supply the capital with a third of its water by 2019.
• Beijing's Weather Modification Office is thought to be the world's largest, employing 37,000 employees tasked with controlling China's weather. One method is seeding clouds, which was believed to have increased Beijing's rainfall by one eighth in 2004 alone.

Sources: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, American Meteorological Society, China Rain, Xinhua, stanford.edu, Wikipedia