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[TOXIC
LINFEN]
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[DAVID FEINBERG
VBS.TV]
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Nice face, Feinberg.
Nice face.
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Yeah, that's it.
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Can you duck a little bit? I want to get his face in the window.
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Sure.
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There we go.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's the guy who we rely on to do our camera work.
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That ape.
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I'm David Feinberg, and VBS sent me to China
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with a camera to film the dirtiest place on the planet.
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It is the city of Linfen,
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and spending about a day here breathing in the air is about the same
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as smoking three packs of cigarettes.
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The scary part is that there's a lot of cities in China like this.
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Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China.
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And my bosses convinced me to come here and spend a week filming,
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and breathing in all this crap, so they didn't have to.
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[LINFEN, CHINA]
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[THE MOST POLLUTED CITY ON EARTH]
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[TOXIC LINFEN]
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Linfen produces what any nation of over a billion people need:
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a ton of energy.
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It's an endless landscape of factories,
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all spewing a bunch of toxic chemicals into the air
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and poisoning the land and the water.
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There's no clouds, just a permanent, toxic smog hovering over the city.
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Linfen is located in the heart of Shanxi Province.
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Everyday, thousands of coal trucks go between Linfen
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and the rest of China's cities.
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Then they come back empty, for more.
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Coal is the main energy source in China.
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Shanxi Province has the largest coal industry in China.
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Utilizing coal without producing pollution is a worldwide dilemma.
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[WANG HONGYING
COAL INDUSTRY OFFICIAL]
In the last few years,
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Linfen has been known as one of the
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most polluted cities in the world.
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The province not only produces a large amount of coal,
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but it also consumes an incredible amount as well.
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In the process of exploitation and utilization,
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there's a misunderstanding about the concept of development,
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which is to pursue purely rapid economic growth.
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Therefore, we now encounter serious environmental issues.
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China suffers from both local problems
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[AILUN YANG
GREENPEACE - CHINA]
and global environmental challenges.
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So, the combined impacts of climate change and local pollutions
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are causing enormous consequences.
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A lot of the environmental problems in China are very closely linked
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to our energy consumption,
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because there's something fundamentally wrong with
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the economic model.
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That's why the more the economy grows,
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the more the environment starts to get worse.
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Linfen really shows the other side of Chinese economic development,
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which is actually the ugly side of it.
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And this is about how unbalanced the Chinese development has been.
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The sky in Linfen was taken from a sci-fi movie.
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But life there seems relatively normal.
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There's 4 million people, and like any other town in China,
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its roads are clogged with cars and trucks,
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and there's a lot of construction.
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Linfen has had a bit of a PR problem,
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ever since the World Bank called it the most polluted place on Earth.
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Even the Chinese media has reported on the disaster,
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admitting that people have been moving away because of the pollution.
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I didn't see anyone leaving town, except all the coal trucks.
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They're actually a big source of pollution themselves,
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and are everywhere.
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Linfen has no tourism,
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and I think we were the only foreigners in the entire city.
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Everywhere we went, we really stuck out.
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Hello.
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- Say "hello" to him.
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Come in! Come in!
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When we pulled up to this elementary school,
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some kids were leaving for the day.
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And it looked like there was a huge fire burning down the neighborhood.
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The kids weren't too worried,
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and I realized that this is probably what they see every time they leave school
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or go outside to play.
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Just take the example of air pollution.
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Seventy percent of Chinese cities cannot meet the air quality standards.
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The burning of coal is the main cause of air pollution in China.
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But, of course, the increase of transport
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and also the constructions going on everywhere in China
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are also reasons for air pollution.
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This is a private clinic.
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I was born and raised here.
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I've provided care for the people of this area for many years.
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[QIU LIN
VILLAGE DOCTOR]
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We treat many illnesses that are common to this area.
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Pesticide exposure, high blood pressure, heart disease, lung problems....
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There are also many cases of stomach and lung cancer.
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We don't have any protection against the dust.
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We have no protection.
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The people here don't like wearing masks,
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but we all need to breathe!
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The acute smell comes from the waste of these factories.
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You can easily smell the sulfur dioxide.
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Linfen is in a basin,
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therefore, the air cannot flow well.
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The polluted air doesn't disperse,
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thereby worsening the pollution problem.
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Because of the air pollution,
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if you get sick, it's very painful.
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Elderly people here have really bad lungs and,
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over time, they develop heart failure.
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Imagine someone about the same age as me,
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who can't endure physical labor because of their ailments.
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I've lived here for 50 years.
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I just stay home...
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here at this house.
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I don't even go out to the road!
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- The air here is poisonous...
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so we're afraid to go near the road.
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I have emphysema.
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In the winter, it gets cold and I get worse.
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In summer, the air is better.
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I can hardly breathe indoors.
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I pant when I'm in the house.
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When I found out I was going to Linfen,
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I had found some painters' masks under the sink in our office.
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My mom also told me I should wear a mask at all times,
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and I saw a lot of photos of people on the streets of Chinese cities
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wearing masks.
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When we got to Linfen,
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we were surprised to find out that nobody wore masks.
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I didn't want to stick out any more, so we left the masks behind.
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However, I still took a photo wearing a mask,
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just to show my mom when I got home.
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Back from the waters of the Yellow Sea,
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far inland from the eastern plains,
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for unnumbered generations, farmers have plowed the fertile soil.
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After the harvest, the plow, and after the plow, the planting.
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This has been the cycle, endlessly repeated.
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Through the ages,
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water from the mountains have been fed to fields of the valley,
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for crops that have never failed.
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One day, the farmer looked up from his work in age-old fields
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and saw a strange new carriage.
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The engineers of a far-off land devised new uses for flowing streams,
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producing a strange new power.
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To the valley came electricity
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to bring the valley home the signs of a changing world.
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It was only 20 years ago that Linfen was nicknamed
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"the fruit and flower town of Shanxi Province."
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Since then, it's basically been turned into China's coal mine.
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It's even more remarkable to think that
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this has all happened in the span of my lifetime.
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Linfen was just a small city...
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Its economy was based on agriculture.
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The environmental impact of coal exploitation
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is essentially the destruction of the ecological environment.
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It damages the soil, the water and the plant cover.
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Dealing with the tainted water
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is also a big dilemma.
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- Is there usually more water than this?
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There used to be.
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There's only water when it rains upstream.
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- Isn't the water dirty?
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Yeah, pretty much.
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We grew up playing here.
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It was cleaner back then.
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In China, over half of all the rivers are polluted.
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One third of the lakes are polluted,
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and over eighty percent, or ninety percent, of the urban groundwater
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are polluted,
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so this is about how serious the water pollution is in China.
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Those pollutions mainly come from industry processes.
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It's about factories who do not clean up their pollutants
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before they release those things into the river.
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And also, another main contributor is the pollutants from the pesticides
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used in the agriculture process.
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Most of those cancer villagers
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actually caused by water pollution,
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because the people in those villages
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depend on this river for their water sources.
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That's why you see a very high percentage of cancer patients
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in those villages.
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All of the food I had in Linfen was actually quite good.
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It may have been full of cancerous toxins,
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but at least I can tell it was grown in the ground,
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as opposed to in some laboratory.
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I have a feeling a lot of the stuff I eat back home
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may be just as bad for me.
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When I was a child,
this village was very beautiful.
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Why?
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Because it had spring water.
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There were three springs in this village.
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You could find fish and shrimp in them.
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They were used for watering the land.
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Now all the springs are dried out.
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Why is that?
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Because of all the factories.
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All the groundwater was used up.
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Then, a few years back, cars started using the road,
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and the crops nearby got a lot of dust on them.
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This destroyed the young crops
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and decreased production by about one third.
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There's no profit.
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The farmers stay here because there's nowhere for them to go.
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Much has changed in the valley.
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And much remains the same.
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The farmer tills his fields today as his ancestors did in ages past.
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A heritage endures.
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The people of the valley come and go.
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Life in village and city goes on.
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As generations have come and gone,
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the mountain streams have flowed on.
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The friendly earth still yields its produce.
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And cradling the valley, now as always,
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silent, lofty mountains keep their eternal vigil.
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Every piece of coal in China
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is intended to go through one of the national coal factories.
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This is a private coal mine that was shut down by the authorities.
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Private mining is illegal, but since there's such a crazy demand for coal,
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a lot of people try to start their own mine
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in order to profit from the lucrative black market.
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Most of them are not successful and get fined or put in jail.
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The large-scale exploitation of coal in Shanxi started in 1978.
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This is more or less
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[00:15:18:06]
when China began its new Open Door Policy.
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After receiving the order from the central government,
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many large national coal companies were founded,
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and Shanxi developed into a major energy center.
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The enormous government factories are easy to spot.
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We drove by a lot of them, but never hung out for very long
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because we didn't want the security guards to see us.
[00:15:48:14]
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If Shanxi could not mine and export this much coal,
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then eastern China would not have enjoyed such economic success.
[00:16:00:08]
[00:16:00:12]
And if the eastern region did not reach its economic goals,
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[00:16:03:08]
then China could not have quadrupled the size of its economy.
[00:16:06:06]
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To get a better sense of the illegal coal industry,
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we went into the hills about two hours outside of Linfen.
[00:16:12:24]
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The area was still dense with pollution.
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And we started to see smaller factories
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and then what appeared to be some illegal mines.
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Since they're not regulated by the government,
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[00:16:24:00]
and are operated using old methods,
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[00:16:26:09]
the illegal mines are a big part of the pollution problem.
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[00:16:32:19]
Could we interview you and see your coal mine?
[00:16:37:10]
[00:16:37:17]
Is that alright?
[00:16:38:21]
[00:16:39:09]
Yes, of course.
[00:16:41:00]
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Please come in, sit down and rest.
[00:16:44:03]
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The coal mine I opened last year has already been closed.
[00:16:52:06]
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Where is it?
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It's up in the mountain.
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It was buried.
[00:16:57:13]
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Say this tea cup is the mine...
[00:17:00:09]
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They just covered it with bamboo and filled it with dirt, like this.
[00:17:05:04]
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They want you to wear a microphone to record what you say on the way.
[00:17:15:20]
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I told you where the mine was.
[00:17:19:05]
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Just go and take a look yourself.
[00:17:21:22]
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I don't want to get myself into trouble.
[00:17:26:24]
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If I'm seen talking to journalists,
[00:17:30:12]
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I'll be in trouble.
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Do you understand my point?
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Private mining is already enough trouble for me.
[00:17:39:17]
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After you leave, the villagers will be talking about this,
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and the village council will come for me.
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Do you understand me now?
[00:17:48:01]
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It didn't take long for the government to find my mine and destroy it.
[00:17:55:21]
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Very few people in our village can mine anymore.
[00:18:02:07]
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Their mines were all buried by the government.
[00:18:09:11]
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Ordinary villagers like me usually don't have steady work.
[00:18:14:02]
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There is only one state-owned coal mine around here.
[00:18:18:11]
[00:18:19:23]
Most of the people we approached for interviews were very friendly with us.
[00:18:23:10]
[00:18:23:15]
- Thank you.
[00:18:24:21]
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You're welcome.
[00:18:26:04]
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But pretty soon, they realized
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[00:18:27:13]
that the questions we were asking
- Goodbye.
[00:18:28:19]
[00:18:28:23]
could get them in trouble.
[00:18:30:02]
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A lot of the residents of Linfen
[00:18:33:18]
[00:18:33:22]
have been excluded from the economic prosperity that has come to the region.
[00:18:37:22]
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It's basically what happens when a bunch of farmers
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[00:18:41:09]
are forced to try to make a living
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from harvesting coal instead of harvesting crops.
[00:18:45:19]
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Everywhere we went, people seemed to be scavenging for bricks,
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metal, wire or anything else to make some money.
[00:18:53:24]
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After spending a week in Linfen,
[00:19:32:04]
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my eyes burned a little, my throat itched.
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And when I picked my nose, my boogers had turned black.
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For the next 30 years,
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coal will remain the primary energy resource in China.
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This is inevitable.
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With regard to pollution,
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developed countries have had these problems before.
[00:20:02:03]
[00:20:02:16]
So, now that China is at this stage,
[00:20:05:00]
[00:20:05:06]
we can say that the current situation was inevitable.
[00:20:07:20]
[00:20:10:01]
Because of environmental and climate changes,
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[00:20:14:18]
we are looking for environmentally-friendly energy resources.
[00:20:19:18]
[00:20:23:06]
I believe that, under the direction of scientific development,
[00:20:26:19]
[00:20:27:02]
and sustainable development theories,
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China will be able to pursue
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an industrial model in harmony with nature.
[00:20:40:12]
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After almost a week in Linfen, the police came to our hotel.
[00:20:50:05]
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They didn't come to our rooms,
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but they had the hotel staff bring us what our translator said were 'registration forms.'
[00:20:56:20]
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We were afraid that our tapes might get confiscated
[00:21:00:07]
[00:21:00:11]
because after all, we were filming illegally.
[00:21:03:03]
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We were basically there as tourists
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who happened to have professional video cameras.
[00:21:07:14]
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We got a last glimpse of the factories and empty rivers.
[00:21:12:17]
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It was as good a time as any to leave.
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We are faced with a very short time window
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to make the right choices about our future.
[00:21:23:15]
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So, it's not a question about whether or not China should develop.
[00:21:27:23]
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China has to develop in order to lift more people out of poverty.
[00:21:32:04]
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However, it's more about how China should develop.
[00:21:35:14]
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The local level officials are still very much obsessed with just economic growth.
[00:21:41:06]
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Really, the evaluation of officials' performance have to change in a big way
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in order to give more incentive for those people on the local level
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to do more for the environment.
[00:21:52:22]
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When the World Bank first named Linfen the most polluted city on earth,
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the Chinese government set about to improve the situation.
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Closing down factories, rerouting truck traffic,
[00:22:03:18]
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and there were even some signs around the city calling attention to the problem.
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[PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT IS VERY URGENT...]
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[WE SHOULD NOT HESITATE TO SAVE THE EARTH]
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[MAKE THE BLUE SKY BLUER AND MAKE PEOPLE HEALTHY]
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[00:22:26:10]
[ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IS AS IMPORTANT AS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT]
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[GOVERNMENT HOTLINE
0357-2598026]
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[IF YOU DUMP TRASH HERE YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY WILL DIE]
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As for the coal trucks,
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we were surrounded by them for another 20 hours
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as we drove back to Beijing.
[00:22:47:21]
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And we sat in our van at one toll booth for about six hours
[00:22:54:07]
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in the middle of the night.
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All of the fumes helped me sleep through most of it,
[00:22:59:09]
[00:22:59:13]
as coal trucks idled around us
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and the car in front of us ran out of gas.
[00:23:03:22]
[00:23:06:04]
[THE NEXT MORNING]
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[00:23:25:12]
[BEIJING, CHINA]
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Growing up, my impression of China
[00:23:27:24]
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was of a huge boulevard entirely full of bicycles.
[00:23:31:11]
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They've obviously been replaced by cars and trucks.
[00:23:34:15]
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And if you add the burning of coal to that,
[00:23:37:07]
[00:23:37:11]
as well as all of the manufacturing that goes on,
[00:23:39:20]
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China is now the world's leading polluter.
[00:23:42:13]
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I think that China is trying its best, try to host a good Olympic game.
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And try to give a good impression for the whole rest of the world.
[00:23:56:14]
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Measures try to clean up air for the Beijing Olympics.
[00:24:01:03]
[00:24:01:08]
If you look at them, a lot of them are very short-term.
[00:24:04:15]
[00:24:04:20]
It's about shutting down factories
[00:24:07:06]
[00:24:07:10]
and it's about having strict transport restrictions.
[00:24:13:12]
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You will actually be much more smart
[00:24:17:01]
[00:24:17:05]
if we try to think of long-term structured solutions.
[00:24:22:04]
[00:24:22:12]
As a Beijing citizen,
[00:24:24:09]
[00:24:24:13]
if I would have clean air for those two weeks in Beijing,
[00:24:29:07]
[00:24:29:11]
and then afterwards I would think,
[00:24:31:02]
[00:24:31:06]
"Why can't I have that every day?"
[00:24:33:10]
[00:24:33:18]
These are all things that can lead to much long-term thinking after the Olympics.
[00:24:39:09]
[00:24:40:14]
A lot of people say China is going through its own Industrial Revolution.
[00:24:44:09]
[00:24:44:18]
But I think that China's problem is kind of a global problem.
[00:24:48:10]
[00:24:48:20]
One of the biggest winners from China's economic rise
[00:24:51:18]
[00:24:51:22]
are the American and other multinational companies
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[00:24:54:20]
who use cheap labor and materials
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[00:24:56:12]
to produce goods that are sent all over the world.
[00:24:58:21]
[00:25:00:01]
As big a mess as China has to clean up,
[00:25:02:08]
[00:25:02:15]
the United States is still the largest per capita polluter in the world.
[00:25:06:03]
[00:25:07:09]
China's claims that the blue skies have opened over Linfen is obviously false,
[00:25:12:11]
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especially when you watch the sunset end about 20 minutes early
[00:25:16:16]
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when the sun sets behind an artificial curtain of smog.
[00:25:20:06]
[00:25:25:20]
However, once the sun goes down,
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[00:25:27:24]
the stars do come out to shine in Linfen.
[00:25:30:21]
[00:25:35:00]
Dear guests, ladies, and gentlemen,
[00:25:38:17]
[00:25:38:22]
foreign friends from Taiwan and abroad...
[00:25:42:15]
[00:25:42:19]
Good evening, everybody!
[00:25:45:07]
[00:25:45:12]
Big bosses and hotshot officials...
[00:25:47:15]
[00:25:48:17]
China's Linfen CIty Hua Rui Relaxation Performance Center
[00:25:53:15]
[00:25:53:20]
proudly presents its splendid show...
[00:25:57:01]
[00:25:57:08]
beginning now!
[00:25:58:22]
[00:26:38:06]
Awesome!
[00:26:39:17]