LEARNING FROM SMOG TOWN

Smog Town shows how a country goes to war against a pollutant 

The smog issue in China has been burdening the country for many years and it will take a lot of time to fix.  There are too many variables that have to be modified or eliminated just to get to the numbers their environmental protection team wants to achieve daily when fighting smog.  There is much data to analyze and calculate over many periods but sometimes computers can only detect a problem not fix a problem.   The fight includes much groundwork where the team has to inspect many small businesses that are unknowingly breaking the law when it comes to smog prevention.  Director Meng Han gives you an up-close and personal look at the environmental protection bureau in the city of Langfang which is 40 kilometres away from the city of Beijing in his film Smog Town streamed during the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto.  Langfang is considered one of the heaviest air polluted cities in all of China and it is all up to the power of both deputy chief Li Chunyuan and his assistant Hu to make the changes to protect the health of the citizens of Langfang.

Throughout the film, the audience gets a candid look at the meetings amongst the members of the environmental protection bureau.  Long meetings with hard decisions are drawn up amongst ironically a cigarette smoky claustrophobic room on an everyday basis sometimes going to the wee hours of the night.   The Chinese government’s strict policy on pollution must be upheld and sanctions are imposed on the mayors who are held responsible by the bureau.  When the smog gets too way out of hand, inspections are enforced in the city of Langfang where all the members of the bureau go out to deconstruct businesses that are contributing to the smog problem.  It is almost like watching an episode of Cops where the bureau is just arresting the practices of these unlawful businesses who have to find alternative ways to do their business.  Director Meng Han does give a couple of minutes to the owners of these businesses to show how they are just surviving.  These scenes remind us of how things are today where business owners are struggling to make ends meet in this pandemic and are not able to do the things or make the money that they once did.

There’s a point in Smog Town where the bureau has to shutdown a steel mill with more than a thousand workers who make their livelihood.  It is a big decision for the bureau to make but this steel mill happened to be one of the biggest polluters in the city so a shutdown was in order.  You can see in this film, that this was a difficult decision to make and the emotions ran high in the boardroom because of the number of families that would suffer because of this layoff.  This would make the unemployment and the homelessness rate of the city of Langfang go up which would cause the morale of the city to go seriously down as well.  While this is all going down, director Meng Han paradoxically shows the lives of the members of the environmental protection bureau and how they all have their own problems to deal with as well to care for their children and the next generation.  You see deputy chief Li getting all choked up when he is asked of how difficult it is to be an environmentalist by a young student because he knows that all the off-the-cuff and time-consuming decisions he is going to make are not going to be right and sometimes will not work at all.  The ironic thing is when they try to shut down a low-income resident who uses a coal-burning stove for heat in the winter and to cook food as well when some of the members of the bureau admit they are doing the same thing to save money.

You can tell that the smog issue in the city of Langfang is just as unprecedented as the COVID-19 pandemic because there is no confidence behind the environmental protection bureau’s actions and there is no right or wrong solution in solving this nightmare of a puzzle.  Director Meng Han stays with this narrative by the end of the film revealing that this is a work in progress that may disappoint the audience because of its reality.   When you try to improve the health of your citizens, sometimes you have to strip their livelihood but what good is that in an already struggling economy?  Will the government step in and help the unemployed in their transition by providing them with all the resources necessary to sustain a decent livelihood?  Above all, there are many cities in China competing against each other to see who is doing the best in fighting smog pollution in the country.  The issue gets political causing mayors and politicians all wanting the confidence of their citizens in order to get revoted for their next term.  Doesn’t this all sound too familiar?  This idea of trying to achieve both health and wealth has become a difficult progression because in today’s world we can’t have a cake and eat it too.