Late autumn is my favorite Beijing season, from mid-October to mid-December. The vacation season is over, the cool air refreshes, it does not rain, and the skys are blue.
The municipality has been trying very hard to help. The world saw the Olympic Blue in awe. In fact, Beijing started its clean-up effort way back. The first step was the clear guideline to make Beijing into the capital, cultural center, high-tech, and a good place to live. With much debate, it removed industrial output or any GDP target from its goals; both of them were gladly received by the neighboring TianJin (天津) city: a beautiful city by the sea. With the new charter, the municipality moved most of the heavy industries away, with the famed efficiency of the China government.
Next Beijing systematically renovated thousands of winter heating facility across the city: changing them from coal to natural gas or oil. The city also launched probably the most ambitious public transportation project in the world: tripling subway mileage in just a few years and convert all buses to electric or natural gas.
About the most impressive project was the re-pasturization of the Gobi desert on its west. For thousands of years, gust brought up dust storms to the city and literally darkened the day. For centuries, farmers depends on these annual top soil renewals. These days, they became a health hazard to city dwellers. The government started the desert greening project decades ago. Not only have the project helped the farming industry, it has also reduced the severity and frequency of those dust storms.
The last, and the toughest, air-cleaning project would be car emission. As Beijing’s GDP per capita reaches US$9,000 this year, the city witnessed more than a thousand new cars each day! Car emission has stumped pretty much all municipalities around the world. Beijing, with a China-style innovation, has come up with a strange and daring strategy.
Since the Olympics, a fifth of the cars in the city have been taken out of the circulation. Everyday, based on the license plate number, a fifth of the cars are banned from the streets. Below is the newspaper informing the public which ending digits are banned from the street that day, and the following day. The fine for violation is severe and deterring.
My commute to work took about 40 minutes, probably a 15km drive from downtown to the east gate of TsingHua university. I felt it as “normal” Beijing traffic and couldn’t imagine what would it be had the other 20% of cars were also on the street. During my stay, I saw blue sky everyday and felt the warmth of autumn sun. On my way to the airport, I watched a gorgeous day outside and imagined the view from the Great Wall. Wherever I live, I would gladly take public transportation, one day a week, in exchange for the blue sky. Small price to pay.