Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We had twenty workers, Liu said. Everything was done manually. But it was shut down
by the government. We didn't really make any money at it.
We didn't press him. I don't know what cover story Cecily had offered—lost mental
patient, maybe?—but it was likely that the Liu family mine had been illegal, and Cecily
thought he would spook easily.
I liked Liu. He was considerate—and funny, although Cecily would never translate his
jokes—and if he was a little cagey about his failed career as a coal boss, he was still game
for adventure. Today he was taking us into the mountains to gate-crash a coal mine.
We headed west out of Linfen. It was what seemed like a sunny day, with occasional pat-
terns on the ground that looked faintly like shadows. We could see farther down the streets
than before, and the sky directly overhead was almost blue.
“Look,” I said to Cecily. “Blue sky.”
She looked.
“It's not blue,” she said. “It's gray.”
I looked again. I was pretty sure it was blue. Compared with the dingy taupe of the ho-
rizon, it was distinctly bluish.
Cecily shook her head. “I know you. You just like polluted city.”
We had crossed the river and were now passing through small squares of farmland on the
outskirts of town. A curtain of smog opened, and a smokestack painted with blue and white
stripes loomed over us. It was Linfen Thermo Electron, a huge coal-fired power plant.
Its sudden appearance out of the haze was appropriate to the rate at which coal-fired
power plants are being built in China. Depending on whom you ask, China has added them
to its grid at the rate of one a week, or one every four days, or one every ten days. As we
passed the plant's gate, such numbers took on a mind-boggling significance. Thermo Elec-
tron was sleek and massive, a raised fortress with soaring walls of blue metal that would
have shone in the sun, had the sun chosen to shine. Yet it was only one of the countless
plants that were being plopped down one after the next across the country. Enough to power
China. Enough to make up for any fossil fuel you and I haven't burned.
With so many new coal-fired plants, the Chinese government was having trouble
keeping the industry in balance. Record-breaking demand created spikes in the price of
coal—but the Chinese government was reluctant to let power companies pass the cost in-
creases along to their customers. So the producers simply chose to produce less power,
even as coal extraction rose to record levels. That spring would see some of the worst elec-
tricity shortages in years.
