Last week, Fanfan started having sneezing fits. I mean really strange one's where she sneezed for about thirty minutes every minute. She also had a fairly bad cough. I thought it was just spring allergies, but then I realized a couple of days later that it might have been that the deserts of China were making a surprise visit to Taiwan:

Dust particles blown across the Taiwan Strait from a sandstorm that arose in China's Inner Mongolia region on Saturday will begin to undermine Taiwan's air quality today, environmental officials said yesterday.

It will be the third sandstorm to hit Taiwan so far this year, and the effect will be more evident than before, officials with the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said.

When the floating dust hits northern Taiwan today, EPA officials said, the micro particle pollution density may range between 150 and 250 microgram/cu m, surpassing the normal level by 100 to 200 microgram/cu m.

The floating dust is not expected to dissipate until Tuesday afternoon, the officials said, adding that the air quality in central and southern Taiwan will also be affected as dust particles move southward along with a rainy front that hit Taiwan late Saturday.

Worse still, the officials said, North Pacific high pressure systems have been gaining strength in recent days, and may bring more dust particles. As most parts of the island will become sunny again on Monday due mainly to the rainy front going away, there should be no rain to "purify" the sandstorm.

The Foreign Policy blog has a video of the storms in China.

I always find things like this interesting because it reminds us of the fact that the lines we draw on a map don't really exist. The dust from the storms is causing problems in Korea and Taiwan. I do worry a little that this will cause health risks in Taiwan (and China) like the dust of the Sahara is doing to islanders (and coral) in the Caribbean