...is a little girl born with a tumor who asks her mother, "Mom, what's that thing outside? Why do you keep me indoors? Will that thing hurt me?"
Journalist Chai Jing managed to do something, well, astounding, for the care of her young daughter's life - and for the lives of millions of people living in Beijing. She made a documentary about air pollution and within 24 hours of its release it was viewed over 100 million times. Her documentary may very well be the mechanism of change China has needed to alter its relationship with the environment. Not only was her documentary not censored, it was endorsed by the Ministry of Environment.
This is the story of how Chai Jing broke through the grip of censorship to reach over 100 million people including government officials.
"We don't have the right to only consume without proper control, we don't have the right to complain without making efforts." ~Chai Jing
From Upworthy:
For Jing, the story started in Shanxi, where my paternal grandfather is also from. Growing up in Taiwan, I'd heard a few stories about Shanxi from him, but mostly I just knew of it as a place that was famous for its vinegar. These days, Shanxi is famous for something else: It's considered one of the most polluted places in the world, a result of its massive coal mining operations. But people in China aren't as surprised to hear about the effects of pollution there anymore.
This is haze. Under the haze is Beijing.
Also from Upworthy are
3 clips from an interview with a little girl who is asked if she has ever seen real stars, a blue sky, and clouds. The little girl tells Chai she has only ever seen "a little blue in the sky."
I've just shown the clips to my daughter, her reaction is one of shock and sadness. She reminds me of the night sky at the Pinnacles she and her dad laid beneath counting stars waiting impatiently for that shooting star to stream across the heavens. But these nights are not possible in one of the most polluted countries in the world.
From the documentary, Chai says, "I watched a TV show before, it's called "Under the Dome." It tells a story that all of a sudden a dome fell in one small town and sealed everything. Nobody could escape it. But one day I realized that we are living under such a dome."
"When I wake up and see my daughter knocking on the glass window, trying to tell me that she wants to go out, I know sooner or later, she will ask me, "Mom, what's that thing outside? Why do you keep me indoors? Will that thing hurt me?"
During the year that Chai worked on the documentary, 175 days were considered too smoggy to go outside leaving only 190 days for Chai's daughter to play in the park, ride her bike, or blow bubbles outside. To dispel the myth that the Beijing "haze" is part of a bad weather pattern like fog insulted Carl the Fog says, "I DOEN THINK SOOOO!!", Chai carried around an air quality sampling film for 24 hours to measure the air and sent it to Peking University for analysis. The analysis showed 14 times the acceptable level of the carcinogen, Benzoapyrene.
China has burned AS MUCH COAL AS THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
In her documentary, Chai goes back in time to industrialized London, when coal consumption killed 12,000 people and sickened 100,000 others during London's Great Smog. She compares images from London to images of China today, finding them eerily similar. However, once coal consumption decreased, air quality improved markedly. Chai believes that if China can reduce its coal consumption, clean the coal, and enforce existing regulations, pollution can be significantly reduced and the air healthy enough to go outside every day. It bears repeating that just enforcing existing standards can result in a 60% drop in carbon emissions.
Chai also explores the other problems exacerbating China's pollution levels including, oil, automobile emissions, a poor public transportation system and industries like car manufacturers not complying with regulations and the technical loopholes that allow them to get away with it. In her documentary, she calls out the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) to ask why they don't prosecute people and industries who don't follow regulations. His response is symptomatic of the learned helplessness pervasive in the Chinese regulatory systems.
Is this a tipping point for China's government? Because, it's not often a mother and journalist stands up to her government and the coal industry successfully weaving a personal narrative of love and compassion for her daughter and future generations of Chinese, and their environment, and is not only not smacked down, but embraced and the documentary gone viral.
From Upworthy, here is the first 10 minutes of Chai Jing's documentary with English subtitles.
From Upworthy, here is the exclusive English translation of the powerful viral Chinese documentary, "Under the Dome." It is well worth your time.
I'll be here when you get back.
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