Beijing smog fails to obscure 'apocalypse' humour

BEIJING: Several days of brown haze in Beijing so thick it has closed highways suspended construction and brought official warnings to stay indoors have also prompted jokes about the end of the world.
Some of the Chinese capital’s 22.5 million residents have turned to gallows humour to cope with persistent toxic air that again soared above hazardous levels on Tuesday, even as Paris climate talks continued half a world away. A joke circulating among Chinese journalists told of a reporter approaching an old woman on the street to ask about the impact of the smog. "The impact is huge," the interviewee replies.
"First of all, I’m your uncle." Some users of China’s popular Weibo microblog traced the shapes of famous Beijing landmarks on to photographs in which the buildings were nearly completely obscured by the smog and posted them online.
One said living in Beijing was like working as crew on a zombie apocalypse movie. "As a friend finished eating lunch he slapped on his face mask and said he had to return to the set. They were filming Resident Evil in the afternoon," one microblogger joked, invoking the horror film series.