I suppose it was inevitable.

After four days of (relatively) blue skies, the summer haze has descended once more upon Beijing. Nature's palette includes many lovely hues of blue: cerulean and cyan, turquoise and teal, azure and aqua; but the blue of a Beijing sky is seemingly indescribable and lies somewhere along the visible spectrum between tar heel pride and acid-washed jeans.

Granted, what we’re looking at today, Thursday, July 24 – a sky you can’t quite call overcast – is better than the polluted pall that usually hangs over our God-forsaken city. But still, it’s a sky the color of bed sheets that have been slept in too many times. Shadows lack defined edges. Visibility barely extends beyond the buildings across the street.

Which makes us wonder, will Beijing’s ambitious plan to reduce pollution in the capital ahead of the Olympics actually work?