This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Confucius Institute.
Mao Zedong famously said, “Women hold up half the sky.” Until recently, that sky has been so polluted with coal particulates that sometime brought the air index reading up to as high as 500 on a scale where 50 is considered okay. There’s an astonishing photo of a plane over Beijing in a sky so dark that it and the city below it can barely be seen. But a government crackdown on the burning of coal and a widespread shift to natural gas has had a dramatic effect on what some refer to as China’s “Airpocalypse.” According to the US Embassy here in the capital, five of the seven lowest monthly pollution measurements have been recorded since the start of last summer which was when the Chinese government began restricting the burning of coal. So that half of the sky that women are holding up? Well, it just got a whole lot bluer.
From the KU Confucius Institute, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.
