Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Was Linfen really all that bad? True, its smog was the smoggiest smog I had ever seen.
Smog to irritate your throat. Smog to keep you coughing through the night.
Still. I pointed my camera down Drum Tower Street. If I zoomed in all the way and took
a photo where the buildings dissolved into the murk, Linfen appeared oppressive, unbear-
able. But if I zoomed all the way out, Linfen looked like…just another place.
Later, I showed the zoomed-out photo to my friend James, to show him how, at a viscer-
al level, Linfen wasn't so horrifying. He looked at me archly and said that, to him, it still
looked pretty terrible. His amateur meteorologist side kicked in: he estimated the visibility
in the photo at a quarter mile. The same as in a heavy snowstorm.
So don't let me tell you it's not bad. It's bad.
It's really bad.
Chronic respiratory disease
and even lung cancer must stalk the city's boulevards and alleyways. Schoolchildren surely
contend with lungs seized by asthma. And doubtless, Linfen is symbolic ground zero for
what the human race is about, these days. But when I looked down on the city from the
drum tower, I saw not only smog but also cars and buses, and the KFC, and people going
about their lives.
I put it out of my mind. We went down the stairs and crossed the street to check out
the large civic plaza that faced the tower. Drum Tower Square, as I choose to call it, was
festooned with decorations for Spring Festival.
Festooned
is the only word. Large mutant
rabbits made of wire and fabric loomed over us. It was the Year of the Rabbit, and although
Spring Festival—that's what they call Chinese New Year in China—had already ended,
that didn't save us from being leered at by cartoon bunny rabbits everywhere we went.
The main problem with the plaza was its heartwarming display of healthy civic life.
People gathered here and there in small crowds, singing old Communist anthems with ob-
vious nostalgia. Passersby came together in circles around street musicians. In the back of
the plaza, an ad hoc dance hall had been set up, complete with amplified music. Couples
twirled through an unorthodox rumba. One pair glided across the stones of the plaza with
eerie smoothness, the woman's long black hair swinging over the purple velvet of her over-
coat.
The dance music, too, was an old propaganda song, Cecily told me.
The Communist
Party saved the people,
went the lyrics.
The dearest people of all are the communist sol-
diers.
“People don't really take this music seriously anymore,” she said.
At its southern edge, the improvised ballroom came up against another dance area,
where a rank of about a hundred people, mostly elderly, were proposing a variation on
the electric slide. They beamed with carefree amusement as they danced. Who were these
happy citizens?
