China's breathtaking appetite for all things Australian - iron ore, real estate and baby formula - has gone sky high.
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Now Chinese people could soon be getting a taste for Australian air, if two Sydney entrepreneurs have their way.
John Dickinson and Theo Ruygrok have devised a way to bottle the air we breathe freely and are selling cans of pure Yarra Valley atmosphere for $18.80 each.
"We want to give people internationally a chance to taste what our beautiful air is like," Mr Dickinson said.
They already sell bottled air from the Blue Mountains, Bondi Beach, the Yarra Valley, New Zealand and Tasmania, and are looking to harvest the atmospheric blend from additional locations around the country.
Mr Dickinson said the cans had been intended as a novelty souvenir item to give tourists the chance to "take a bit of Australia home with them", but Chinese buyers had seized on the health aspects.
He said China's emerging middle class was becoming more worried about the country's poor air quality. "There is real interest in having some clean air from places they trust," he said.
They are right to be nervous about what they breathe in. Research has found that China's poor air quality contributes to the deaths of more than 1.6 million people there each year - that's more than the population of Adelaide. Inner-city pollution is so bad that a Beijing traffic cop is lucky to make to the age of 43, because of constant exposure to car exhaust and dirty air.
Each can of air contains the equivalent of 130 deep breaths, with the cap doubling as a mouthpiece.
The pair have started exporting cans to China, while personal shoppers for wealthy Chinese people are also shipping Australian air overseas.
"We all love the pure air from Australia," Chinese personal shopper Vivian Zhou told Seven News."I buy the air from Australia for my clients and I post it back to them."
But considering the average person takes about 23,000 breaths each day, it's not really feasible for someone in China to import a lifetime supply at this stage.
Mr Dickinson said the pair had engaged a mechanical engineer to design their air harvesting system, and use a variety of filters and nozzles to compress a piece of the local atmosphere into a can.
He said the air collected was different from each location, with lab tests showing the Blue Mountains blend contained traces of eucalyptus while Bondi Beach provided that salty seaside tang.
"Some people will sense that," he said. "Each can is quite individual."
- this article first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
