Beijing city issued a yellow alert for sandstorm as a severe sandstorm smothered the capital and other northern Chinese regions Monday morning. The meteorological agency called it the "the strongest sandstorm in the past decade" which has reached the level of a strong storm. Photo:Li Hao/GT

Residents in Beijing woke up Monday morning to find the entire city enveloped in yellow dust. Many said they wondered whether their eyes were blind.

"When I woke up, I felt like I landed on Mars," a resident in Beijing told the Global Times.

Skyscrapers were barely visible and the streets appeared to be covered by an old-fashioned filter, prompting netizens to joke that they "forgot to ride a camel."

In a before-and-after photo circulating widely online, it featured, in the first picture, people riding horses neat and clean with the caption of "going to work," while then turning into unearthed terracotta warriors in the following picture as they "arrived at work."

Many joked that they had an illusion that the clock was scrolled back to 2009 when Beijing had suffered from severe dust storms. Coincidentally, the movie Avatar was on display in 2009, and the movie is now back with a surprise second screening in China. 

Global Times