The Good News (And Not So Good News) About China's Smoggy Air
"See this street! Look!" says Bai Xiao Cheng as gestures toward his village's main concrete road.
It's barely half a mile long, and apart from one small grocery store, a few home entrances and a handful of parked cars, it has no notable features. That for Bai, is precisely the point. "It's very clean, very good!" he smiles.
This time last year the streets of Tangzitou village were strewn with coal. Black dust covered the ground and coal was piled high by doorways and courtyard entrances. It had been the village's main source of energy for cooking and heating in the village, an hour north of downtown Beijing. Winter temperatures plunge as low as one degree Fahrenheit.
"You had to refill the coal several times a day and it was extremely dirty and very tiring. We stored it in our homes and each winter we needed tons of it," says the 61-year-old.
That changed in September of this year, when a Communist Party secretary informed the village's 300 residents they would
