NARRATOR: Much has changed in the valley, and
much remains the same.
The farmer tills his fields today as his
ancestors did in ages past.
A heritage endures.
The people of the valley come and go.
Life, in village and city goes on as generations have come
and gone, the mountain streams have flowed on.
The friendly earth still yields its produce.
And cradling the valley, now as always, silent, lofty
mountains keep their eternal vigil.
DAVID FEINBERG: Every piece of coal in China is intended to
go through one of the national coal factories.
This is a private coal mine that was shut down by the
authorities.
Private mining is illegal, but since there's such a crazy
demand for coal, a lot of people try to start their own
mine in order to profit from the lucrative black market.
Most of them are not successful and get fined or
put in jail.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
DAVID FEINBERG: The enormous government
factories are easy to spot.
We drove by a lot of them but never hung out for very long
because we didn't want the security guards to see us.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
DAVID FEINBERG: To get a better sense of the illegal
coal industry, we went into the hills about two hours
outside of Linfen.
The area was still dense with pollution, and we started to
see smaller factories and then what appeared to be some
illegal mines.
Since they're not regulated by the government and are
operated using old methods, the illegal mines are a big
part of the pollution problem.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
DAVID FEINBERG: Most of the people we approached for
interviews were very friendly with us.
But pretty soon they realized that the questions we were
asking could get them in trouble.
A lot of the residents of Linfen have been excluded from
the economic prosperity that has come to the region.
It's basically what happens when a bunch of farmers are
forced to try to make a living from harvesting coal instead
of harvesting crops.
Everywhere we went, people seemed to be scavenging for
bricks, metal, wire or anything else
to make some money.
After spending a week in Linfen, my
eyes burned a little.
My throat itched, and when I picked my nose, my burgers had
turned black.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
DAVID FEINBERG: After almost a week in Linfen, the police
came to our hotel.
They didn't come to our rooms, but they had the hotel staff
bring us what our translator said were registration forms.
We were afraid that our tapes might get confiscated because,
after all, we were filming illegally.
We were basically there as tourists who happened to have
professional video cameras.
We got a last glimpse of the factories and empty rivers.
It was as good a time as any to leave.
-We are faced with a very short tiny window to make the
right choices about our future.
So it's not a question about whether or not
China should develop.
China has to develop in order to lift more
people out of poverty.
However, it's more about how China should develop.
The local-level officials are still very much obsessed with
just economic growth.
Really, the evaluation of officials' performance have to
change in a big way in order to give more incentive for
those people on the local level to do more for the
environment.
DAVID FEINBERG: When the World Bank first named Linfen the
most polluted city on earth, the Chinese government set
about to improve the situation--
closing down factories, rerouting truck traffic, and
there were even some signs around the city calling
attention to the problem.
As for the coal trucks, we were surrounded by them for
another 20 hours as we drove back to Beijing.
And we sat in our van at one tollbooth for about six hours
in the middle of the night.
All of the fumes helped me sleep through most of it, as
coal trucks idled around us, and the car in front of us ran
out of gas.
Growing up, my impression of China was of a huge boulevard
entirely full of bicycles.
They've obviously been replaced by cars and trucks.
And if you add the burning of coal to that, as well as all
of the manufacturing that goes on, China is now the world's
leading polluter.
-I think that China is trying its best, tried to host a good
Olympic game, and try to give a good impression for the
whole rest of the word.
Measures tried to clean up air for the Beijing Olympics--
if you look at them, a lot of them are very short term.
It's about shutting down factories, and it's about
having strict transport restrictions.
You would actually be much more smart if we tried to
think of long-term structural solutions.
As a Beijing citizen, if I would have clean air for those
two weeks in Beijing, and then afterwards, I would think, why
can't I have that have every day?
These are all things that can lead to much long-term
thinking after the Olympics.
DAVID FEINBERG: A lot of people say China is going
through its own industrial revolution, but I think that
China's problem is kind of a global problem.
One of the biggest winners from China's economic rise are
the Americans and other multinational companies who
use cheap labor and materials to produce goods that are sent
all over the world.
As big a mess as China has to clean up, the United States is
still the largest per-capita polluter in the world.
China's claims that the blue skies have opened over Linfen
is obviously false, especially when you watch the sunset end
about 20 minutes early, when the sun sets behind an
artificial curtain of smog.
However, once the sun goes down, the stars do come out to
shine in Linfen.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]