This is Roundtable.
Spring arrives and so does the sneezing.
Everybody knows it, right?
Pollen season hits harder, it seems, every single year.
But it's not just nature doing its thing.
The trees lining our streets could indeed be the problem.
We'll look at how urban planning turned fresh air into a seasonal hazard
and whether cities can ever really go green without making all of us miserable.
We're live from our studios in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Feifei and Yushan.
First up, every spring.
Every, every spring, just as the world starts to bloom, pollen also quietly,
not so quietly, takes over the air, turning simple joys like taking a walk outside into a full-on survival challenge.
Suddenly, everyone seems to be sneezing or rubbing their eyes and wondering why fresh air feels anything but fresh.
But is all this pollen just a natural side effect of spring, unintentionally engineered into our cities.
From the trees we plant to the way our urban spaces are planned,
there's a bigger story hiding behind all those tissues and allergy meds.