The only silver lining to the stinking smog that’s been hanging over some 15 percent of China including Beijing is that it’s likely to go away. The prediction is that the skies over Beijing will clear by Thursday. After nearly a week of choking lungs and lives, that’s clearly not too early but, well, at least it will be good breathe some air that has less of that invisible but hated PM 2.5 entity, which has been the talk of the town for a week now.
Of course, the dark days have not been without its quota of humour even if unintended in some cases.
Like the Chinese general who told national broadcaster China Central Television that the smog was a shield against laser weapons apparently trained on the Mainland by the US.
The South China Morning Post quoted Navy Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong,
a military expert at the National Defence University, as telling said on CCTV’s Haixia Liangan (Cross-Straits) current affairs programme last week that the lasers were “most afraid of smog”.
“Under conditions where there is no smog, a laser weapon can fire [at a range of] 10 kilometres. When there’s smog, it’s only one kilometre. What’s the point of making this kind of weapon?” the newspaper quoted him as asking.
Chinese social media was quick to pick up the general’s comments, criticising them.
Zhang was equally quick to come to his own defence saying he was quoted out of context as he was referring to the weakness of laser weapons and not exactly talking about a haze of pollution being a deterrent against lethal lasers.
But then Zhang’s positive outlook towards smog has a history. Not too long ago, during another burst of smog, the state media had detailed five good aspects of it.
The five benevolent aspects of smog went something like this: it unifies people in China, it makes the country more equal – like President Xi Jinping breathed the same air when he went out for a walk yesterday in Beijing –, it raises awareness about pollution, smog makes the Chinese funnier and that it makes them more knowledgeable about meteorology and other allied sciences.
The story went viral before authorities took it down and became quite the joke it did not intend to be.
During the current outbreak, Xinhua too came out with a report about how the haze has unleashed the creativity of citizens..
“The smog covering northern China has not only had an impact on people’s lives, but awakened the creativity of individuals who want cleaner air,” Xinhua said in a report.
It mentioned the case of Jiang Chao, a psychology major at Peking University, who on Sunday photographed a series of campus statues with masks placed over their faces. The report did not say whether he himself put the mask on the helpless statutes but Jiang’s original post on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter like social platforms, was shared more than 20,000 times.
But it’s the story of Li Guixin from Shijiangzhuang City of north China’s Hebei Province, one of the most polluted provinces in the country, which grabbed headlines yesterday.
Li is probably on his way to becoming an environmental crusader after he sued the local government for pollution – probably the first man in China to do so.
“I want to show every citizen through my action that we are the victims of the pollution,” said Li. “We are affected physically and economically, and we shouldn’t be the ones to pay for all this,” he added.
It has the potential to become a landmark case. Only of course, it is accepted by the court. But by filing the petition against pollution, Li has done what many citizens have only thought about doing.