Crowds, cigarettes and stories of young people in China

Beijing's population is roughly 15 million people, so out on the streets you never find yourself alone. It’s busy with people virtually everywhere and at all hours of the day. According to Xinhua news, it’s only going to get busier:

During the Games, more than 20,000 athletes and sporting officials, 70,000 working staff, 2,200 registered reporters and 7 million spectators will descend on Beijing and other cities.

Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg are starting an intriguing public health initiative - a campaign to reduce smoking rates in developing countries. The pollution is bad enough in China, but then so many men smoke cigarettes as well. For whatever reason, there is a large discrepancy between men and women. It seems like roughly half of middle-aged men smoke but it is rare to see a woman smoking (it turns out my approximations were right, according to the NY Times, more than 60 percent of men smoke but only 3 percent of women do). Reducing smoking rates would have a huge effect on China, where it is so widespread.

The tobacco industry produces more than 5,400 billion cigarettes a year. The biggest market is China, where more than 300 million smokers consume about 2,200 billion cigarettes a year, 40 per cent of the global total.

Smoking bans are spreading in China, although compliance is pretty low. Cigarettes are deeply entrenched in the culture.

The government is limiting factory production hours, shutting down coal power plants, closing a number of restaurants and bars (ostensibly for security reasons), keeping half the cars of the roads, giving out fewer visas (and of shorter duration), kicking out transient workers who do not hold official residence in the city, and searching cars and trucks that enter the city. They now are trying to prevent embarrassing protests or civil unrest and recently announced that they will allow for limited protests in three special zones.

PBS Frontline produced another fascinating documentary on China. Young and Restless in China follows nine young working Chinese over four years. Their lives are full of unexpected obstacles and hardships, changing jobs, living far away from family, falling in love, divorce and breakups, raising children, and finding a place in a rapidly changing society. The country and the subjects of the documentary are both struggling to find a balance between tradition and modernity; the documentary tells the story of the nation’s recent history at a personal level through these nine people (well, a lot of their struggles would be familiar to most Americans, too).

I was captivated by their stories and surprised at how much I could relate to them. I have visited many of the places featured in the documentary and lived through similar experiences as they have.

I also highly recommend anther PBS documentary on China, Tank Man, which is an in-depth look at Tiananmen. I watched it a while ago but still think about it often – it’s a powerful film.

Finally, there are some more great pictures of Olympics preparations on the Boston Globe’s site.