The days have been quite hazy of late in the Yangtze River Delta, even when the sunshine is working overtime to shine brightly. It’s the annual burning off of the fields in China, when farmers set torch to the chaff and detritus left behind after harvest. For the last month an inversion layer has pressed the smoke and ash from the burnings even closer to ground, reducing visibility to just a few meters, especially next to the lakes and rivers. It’s been near impossible to see more than a few yards round the Golden Rooster Lake (Jinji Lake) in Suzhou, across from which I live. One China veteran told me it used to be much worse ten years before, especially along the stretch of roadway joining Nanjing and Shanghai (the Huning). Fires used to burn wildly across the cropland. Now, there is less cropland, and more highway.

Still, a friend told the story of how he’d driven to Shanghai along the very same route just a few days ago. A stretch of road became thick with black, acrid, toxic smoke that poured through the vents in the car. It was impossible to see, he said, and more difficult to breathe. Now, farmers are burning their garbage along with the chaff in the fields. This means plastics and rubbers and all manner of noxious materials are going up in smoke and toxic ash, despite regulations to the contrary.

Modernization with countryside characteristics is not a healthy prospect.

image credit: all-china-agriculture.com