I go there a lot and never felt it was that bad and also to Beijing which feels far worse; the worst I have been recently was Hong Kong. I immediately had burning lungs coming out of the plane. My Google Now kept telling to stay inside and it felt like that was a good plan. But Shanghai/Suzhou were I spend a lot of time are ok.

Looking here [0] India seems scary. Have not been there for 10 years, I remember it as dirty but not necessarily the air.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_polluted_cities...

HK is at 91 ATM, which isn't really bad. Most of the time, HK and SZ have relatively mild pollution by Chinese standards.

I know but I was just there last week. Its shocking to see, especially when you fly through it.