I am in my house in Beijing and I am surrounded by four home-made, very effective air filters. My newly-acquired air monitor says the air quality, measured on the United States’s Air Quality Index (AQI), is 93, which counts as a “moderate” reading. Outside, my phone app tells me, the AQI is 560. The word “hazardous” is next to the number.
I woke up late this morning, and when I looked out of the window I wondered why it was still dawn. When I looked at my watch and peered outside I realised that the dim light was due to the smog, which had turned the view an acidic yellow.
In early December, Beijing experienced its smoggiest day of 2015. As I went for a stroll, the landscape was a wash of white. A nearby lake was heavily veiled—it was like something out of Bleak House.
One neighbour recommended staying indoors; another mentioned that the US media was once more running critical reports on Beijing’s pollution. Neither woman wore a mask. A day before, I had bumped into a different neighbour out for a walk in the smog. “We’re just so used to it here we don’t really bother with masks,” she said.
In February, an online documentary by the former China Central Television journalist Chai Jing, Under the Dome, exposed the damage caused by China’s air pollution (watch the documentary below). The documentary was hugely controversial and had over 150m views in its first few days. Then, state censors blocked access to it.
"In this age of social media, short-term thinking is to be expected. But in China, I wonder whether forgetfulness is more ingrained"Months later, who remembers Under the Dome? What has become of the outrage that people experienced when they saw it?
I searched for Chai Jing online—there’s almost no recent reference to her. I too had forgotten about the documentary. It has disappeared into the smog like Beijing itself.
The status quo regarding pollution has returned. The cycle of annoyance, tolerance and forgetfulness that accompanies the shift from smog to clear skies is back. In this age of social media, short-term thinking is to be expected. But in China, I wonder whether forgetfulness is more ingrained.
In his famous satire The Real Story of Ah Q (1921), China’s most renowned and celebrated modern writer, Lu Xun, criticised the Chinese people for their “ability to forget.” In the novel, the protagonist, Ah Q, uses the method of “spiritual victory” to deal with repeated attacks and setbacks in life. After every bad situation, Ah Q reconstructs the scenario in his mind so that he emerges victorious in spirit. He convinces himself that he is in fact a winner.
To Lu Xun, Ah Q’s effort to forget is a way to endure rather than change, a trait he saw as inherent in the national psyche. It’s also one that he saw as failing to drive introspection and change.
On the phone to my grandfather, I urged him to invest in an air-monitoring device that costs less than £40, which is affordable for my grandparents. They live in one of the most polluted places in China, where the AQI reading recently soared to 700. My grandfather was appalled when I told him about this reading. He is in his eighties and knows very well that it is bad for his health.
We had been speaking for a while when he asked: “But do we really need to know how bad the air is at home? After tomorrow the smog will dissipate when the wind blows, and we won’t need it then.”
I was dumbfounded, as well as frustrated. “It will come back again Grandpa, the problem itself isn’t going away anytime soon—you know that’s the case.”
While my grandfather eventually agreed, I once again struggled to remind him of conversations that we have had in the past. Time and again, I try to convince my family that a permanent solution to protect their health is much better than waiting for the worst to pass. (See Daniel Wolf, “China Nearly Killed Me,” Prospect November 2014.)
Today, social media is awash with posts about the pollution—everyone in Beijing is talking about the capital’s smog. Yet, you can rest assured, the griping will disappear as quickly as the air clears, when the west wind blows.
Now watch Under the Dome
