Taking my air

Just a mere decade ago, I wouldn’t have imagined spending multiple weeks in Guangzhou, China. The air pollution back then was off the charts. Us San Franciscans damn sure take our clean air for granted. I can remember getting off the train at Guangzhou East Station in 2015 and immediately regretted coming back home. It was the dead of winter, too, so you can’t exactly pin it on the high humidity of summer. It’s as if the city was enclosed in constant second-hand smoke.

Fast forward a few years, and the air quality has completely changed for the better. Primarily this is due to switching from gas-powered transportation to fully electric. Seemingly overnight, the city’s buses were fully electric. Most passenger cars were electric, and so were the motorbikes and scooters. Word on the street is they’ve also built a new nuclear power plant at the outskirts of Guangzhou, too.

If a tourist like me can feel the difference, imagine what it’s doing for the local populace. Cleaning up the air can only have positive effect on the health span of citizens. Such radical transformation in such little time can only be done under benevolent dictatorial direction. The infrastructure spending to support a complete flip-over from petrol to electricity is no small feat for a city the size of Guangzhou. If this were any city in America, such grand designs would still be mired under constant committee review. Or outright rejected because of “my freedoms”.

Imagine how much cleaner our air can get if all of our motive transportation is electrically powered. It will happen someday, but definitely not as quickly as Chinese megacities have done.

I think sometimes westerners get stuck on viewing other forms of government with our own specific lens. The application of democracy is unfortunately not democratic. How many coups have there been in countries with democratically elected Presidents?

It’s easy to criticize the one-party system of China when viewed with a western lens. Our rugged individualism cannot stand to see agency stripped away from the singular common man. However, the reality on the ground in China reveals the government in power is doing the best it can for as much people as possible. Its methods can be argued for or against, but the results are evidently beneficial. Clean streets, great air quality, public amenities aplenty, and zero crime. Who wouldn’t want to live under such conditions?

Super density.

China is working hard to be green

I’ve now gone home to Guangzhou for the past five Januaries, and every single time, the city amazes me with how much it has advanced in quality-of-life aspects. I can remember back in 2016 I could barely breathe the air it was so choked full of smog; had similar conditions occur in San Francisco, we’d be advised to stay indoors, and classes would be cancelled. Fast forward to now, air quality in Guangzhou have improved so much that I have no problem spending two weeks there.

Mind you it’s still not the cleanest of air. I’d compare the current Guangzhou to a particularly bad air day in Los Angeles: not ideal, but very livable. The city government - and I’m sure the same is true for every major city in China as well - understands that smog and pollution is big issue, and it’s doing everything it can to address it.

On last year’s trip, I was utterly surprised to find the entire public bus fleet in Guangzhou have switched over to pure electric, a hefty undertaking that eliminates a huge source of emissions from the surface streets. The smug of you may say what good are electric buses if the power supplying those batteries comes from dirty coal that China is stereotypically known for. Well, bad news for those of you: Guangzhou is powered by nuclear energy.

I can’t even imagine San Francisco doing something similar, switching the SF MUNI fleet to electric. I’d be shocked if such a thing happens within the next twenty years.

On this most recent trip to Guangzhou, I found the city have begun a massive garbage sorting campaign. Propaganda was absolutely everywhere, and residents are now required to divide up their garbage properly before throwing out into the corresponding bins. Perhaps it’s bad on my part, but I honestly never thought I’d see the day that people living in China would have to sort their garbage like we do. With so much land and landfill, it’s far easier to simply lump it all together and haul it out - as it has been done for as long as I can remember.

Everyone sort of expects China to be this gross polluter, with its cities filled with smoggy skies. If Guangzhou is any indication for the rest of the vast country, then China knows it’s got a problem too, and it’s doing something about it at a pace and scale that’s impossible in the West.

I look forward to many days of clear blue skies in future trips back home.

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There’s a fire in the sky.