ing the square were like spectral figures, half ghost, half flesh, as they
disappeared into the gritty mist.
It had now been a week since Siberian winds had cleansed Beijing,
and I craved a respite from the increasingly filthy air. On Sunday I took
a public bus to the Great Wall, 46 miles north of the capital. The fresh
air felt wonderful descending into my lungs, and northern winds even
brought a cheering patch of blue sky by mid-afternoon. But not to
Beijing. Back in the city, I stepped off the bus into a grimy dusk.
Beneath my feet, whorls of coal dust spiraled across the sidewalk like
black snow flurries.
I spent 6 weeks traveling throughout China in the winter of 1996
and 1997, and I found that the pollution in the other big cities, at least
in the north of the country, was just as bad as in Beijing or worse. In
X’ian, the ancient imperial capital known the world over for the collec-
tion of terra-cotta warriors buried outside of town, I conducted an
experiment. Arriving by train at midday, I stepped out into the massive
square outside the central station. It was a sunny day, but the pollution
was so strong that the only sign of the orb itself was that one patch of
sky was slightly brighter than the rest. I took out my watch and timed
how long I could stare at that artificially veiled sun. Don’t try this at
home: The strength of the sun’s rays can blind you. But in X’ian, it was
no problem to stare directly at the sun for a full minute, so dense was
the pollution.
BADAIR, BADCLIMATE
A confession: Before coming to China, I had thought about its massive
coal consumption mainly in terms of the implications for global cli-
mate change. But once I got there, I almost forgot to raise the point
during some interviews I did with Chinese officials. When one is
inhaling appallingly polluted air for weeks on end, one tends to focus
the questions on that.
It is an important duality for outsiders to bear in mind, I think,
when we consider the issue of poor countries and climate change.
Outsiders tend to be most concerned with how coal consumption in
China (or India, or any number of other countries) drives climate
14 Mark Hertsgaard