Clear skies above Beijing again – but some
fear the problem is just being pushed elsewhere
By Tom
Phillips
An
image of a man wearing a gas mask by Wu Di, a Beijing-based visual artist
whose work
focuses on pollution in China. Photograph: Wu Di
|
The photographs on display at Wu Di’s Beijing
studio imagine China and Beijing at their dystopian worst.
Naked, expectant mothers stare out from the
walls, their bellies exposed but their faces hidden behind green gas masks.
Worshippers prostrate themselves around the
Ming dynasty Temple of Heaven, desperately petitioning the smog-choked skies
for a breath of fresh air.
But while the interior of Wu’s atelier offers
a desolate panorama of China’s pollution crisis, outside, a different, brighter
side to the country is, for once, on show.
Beijing’s skies, so often noxious and smoggy,
are a perfect and perplexing cerulean blue.
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“It’s 26 today,” said Wu, a visual artist and
documentary photographer, checking his smartphone’s pollution app to confirm
the uncommonly low levels of PM2.5, an airborne particulate linked to lung
cancer, asthma and heart disease.
“In the past, we made money first and could
only talk about the environment later. But it’s clear the government has
changed its mind,” he said. “We can see everything is starting to move in the
right direction.”
During the creation of the nightmarish
airpocalypses portrayed in Wu’s artwork, pollution levels might have been 20 or
even 30 times higher. “Beijing was like a giant airport smoking room that day.
It was an epic haze,” he recalled, pointing to an image staged in October 2013
in which a girl appears to inhale oxygen through a tube connected to two
heart-shaped balloons.
Times, though, appear to be changing.
Traditionally, winter is Beijing’s smoggiest
season, as coal burning ramps up to keep millions of residents warm. But the
skies over China’s capital have been almost inconceivably clear of late, thanks
partly to a government crackdown on the use of the fossil fuel.
Beijing enjoyed a record 226 days of “good”
air quality last year and endured 23 heavily polluted days, compared with 58 in
2013, last month. The South China
Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, greeted the recovery with the : “How did
Beijing become one of China’s top cities for air quality?”
Hu Xijin, the editor of the party-controlled
Global Times, tweeted of Beijing’s
azure-framed CCTV headquarters: “Isn’t it good to have a ruling party that can
honour its promise?”
Lauri Myllyvirta, a Greenpeace campaigner,
said China’s leaders could rightly claim credit for making Beijing blue again,
temporarily at least, even if favourable weather conditions had played a major
role in the exceptionally good spell.
Since last year, thousands of environmental
inspectors have fanned out across the industrial belt around the capital as
part of an aggressive clampdown on coal use. Heavily polluting vehicles,
factories and construction sites have also been targeted. “There is clear evidence
the measures worked,” said Myllyvirta, who said overall PM2.5 levels in Beijing
had fallen by 40% from their peak in 2012-2013.
But he sounded a note of caution. Average
PM2.5 levels in Beijing remained 65% above the national standard and more than
five times World Health Organization guidelines last year. A recent bout of
severe smog highlighted the fight ahead.
There are also fears that the crackdown
around Beijing is forcing polluting industries to to regions such as the Yangtze river delta
around Shanghai, where smog levels are rising. “The ‘war on pollution’ is far
from over … few people harbour illusions,” Myllyvirta said. “But there is also
no reason for cynicism as there’s clear evidence the measures worked.”
Wu, 41, abandoned his job as an executive to
become an environmentally engaged artist a decade ago, shocked into a career
change by images of foreign athletes at
the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Ten years on, and with the skies over his
adoptive home starting to clear, he said he is glad his artwork and
photographs, some of which have featured in Greenpeace , have played a role in
increasing public awareness.
“I want to produce work that can push society
and the government to make positive changes .... [and] the most effective way
to push the government to make changes is through public opinion,” he said. “It
shows my work isn’t a waste of time ... It shows the power of art.”
Wu worries, however, that change may have
come too fast. He was among those left shivering when environmental inspectors
began destroying coal-fired heaters late last year as part of a push to switch
to natural gas or electric heating systems. “It’s only four degrees in here … I
can hardly work,” he complained, touring his studio in a thick brown coat.
“I agree with the government that we need
lucid waters and lush mountains but … the measures should be more gentle and
more human. I can cope with the low temperature, but what about the elderly?
What about children?”
In one nearby area, primary school students
reportedly suffered frostbite and were forced to study outdoors in the sunshine
after their radiators stopped working.
Wu is also concerned about the environmental
damage still being inflicted on less visible regions, where pollution crises
have not received the same level of media attention as Beijing’s toxic skies.
For one installation, he asked 12 volunteer “disciples” to recreate one of
Leonardo da Vinci’s frescos, , in a derelict factory. “The message is that
because of pollution, mankind’s last supper could come at any time because of
pollution.”
Overall, however, Wu believes China is on the
right track. “We should admit the government is trying to do the right thing
and we need to recognise that it takes time … to deal with environmental
issues,” he said.
If China’s war on smog robbed him of his
principal inspiration, he is unperturbed. “There’s no lack of problems to
inspire artists in China,” he joked. “Some western artists are jealous of
that.”
Additional reporting by Wang Xueying