Beijing Fog.

Smog at the Olympic Village. Beijing.

Now would also be a good time to mention the smog of Beijing. You’ll notice that my pictures are quite hazy, and that’s thanks to the giant steel mills and coal burning power plants outside of town, and the huge numbers of cars, construction projects, and motorbikes. According to the World Health Organization, Beijing has pollution levels almost 7 times that of New York or LA, and the US Embassy issues periodic warnings to remain indoors…The air was so thick you couldn’t see more than ¼ mile sometimes, and I definitely walked through acetone-smelling clouds. Yum! When we left town to see the Great Wall, it was like a curtain was lifted, and we could see the sky again. We only had one sunny day in Beijing; otherwise, the smog and clouds blocked the sun. 

The trip out of town on the Trans-Mongolian was the same way for the first 4-5 hours – coal plant after coal plant, factory after factory. The air was yellow-brown. The water was filthy, and filled with trash. People lived in houses and apartments right next to these places, children were playing in streets that were completely black with coal dust. We had to shut our window, as a layer of black soot soon coated everything in our compartment. The countryside was stripped, there was bare dirt everywhere. Everyone should see this: people who oppose environmental regulation, people who have their head in the sand about environmental change, people who think an unregulated economy will benefit anyone other than those at the top, people whose hearts break [or don't break] at the thought of what our lifestyle costs others.

I think it's safe to say that next time I am faced with buying something cheap that was made in China, I will now better understand some of the long-term costs of doing so. Someone has to pay, and right now, it seems like it’s the 9 year old kids working in factories producing cheap goods, and playing in coal dust after their shift. [Check out Peter Hessler’s books for more info/commentary on this…]

I don’t believe one travels just to see beautiful things, or prepackaged cultural experiences. I am just as interested in seeing a back-alley construction project as I am in being herded through the Forbidden City. One woman told me last night to get out of Ulaanbaatar as fast as possible – “It’s not a nice city, you know.” And, she may be right. But I’m not traveling around just to see “nice” things, but how people live. Many millions more people live in Soviet-era block housing than in gers [although about half of Mongolians live in gers], so I should probably find out more about it. And anyway, I’ll be out and about in the countryside all next week, and yes, I’ll probably like it better.