Smoggy bacon ban spoils festival preps in China
BEIJING — Smoked bacon and chicken roasted over firewood are the latest victims in China's war on smog after a southwestern metropolis banned the making of the two delicacies ahead of a major festival.
The municipal environment protection bureau in Chongqing says such cooking is partially to blame for a recent spike in PM2.5 readings, a measurement of tiny air pollutants known to produce respiratory and cardiovascular illness. Chongqing is China's largest city by total population with over 30 million residents, but most live in vast semi-rural districts.
Preserved pork and sausages are especially popular in Chongqing and adjacent Sichuan province, and many residents like to smoke bacon ahead of the lunar New Year festival, which this year falls on Feb. 19.
Those who try to stick with that tradition will face a fine up to $800 and could risk a raid by China's despised chengguan, or urban management police, widely resented for rough and sometimes lethal attacks on illegal street vendors. Officers were already cracking down last week in the southwestern city of Dazhou, which began its bacon-smoking ban earlier this month, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
To cut the smog that shrouds countless Chinese cities, officials have at times forced cars off roads, banned fireworks, shuttered barbecues and stopped people from burning the clothes of dead relatives, a funeral tradition here.
Beijing officials have shown their ability to snuff out the capital city's infamous smog whenever politically expedient. In November, an economic summit drawing many world leaders prompted tough, temporary measures against car drivers, industrial plants, restaurants and funeral houses. The blue-sky results coined a new term — "APEC blue" — to describe an all-too-fleeting phenomenon.
Most analysts blame China's terrible air quality on the widespread use of coal in industry and power generation, combined with the soaring number of automobiles.
The government must focus on switching industry from coal to cleaner energy, and not "avoid the important and take up the trivial" like bacon bans, said Pan Xiaochuan, an environmental health expert at Peking University, according to the Beijing News.
The anti-bacon moves have sparked ridicule online. Volunteers at Bayu Public Welfare Development Center, a non-government environmental protection organization, conducted a recent survey that found bacon smoking had only a minimal impact on air pollution.
"I don't think the smoke will cause much air pollution," said Wang Hua, 35, a Dazhou restaurant owner. "The real pollution comes from the chemical plants. The government should do more to find the real sources of pollution."
Like many others, Wang's family no longer smoke bacon themselves but instead buy it from street vendors.
"Just like people in northern China must eat dumplings at Spring Festival, bacon and smoked sausages are a must on the table for Spring Festival here," Wang said, using the Chinese term for the lunar new year.
In Chongqing, where "firewood chicken" outlets have boomed over the past year, one restaurant owner welcomed the ban and the order to switch fuels to gas or electricity.
"Whether you use real wood or natural gas doesn't influence the taste of the chicken, it's just a gimmick by the restaurant, but also the eating habit of customers for years," said Michael Yang, 45, who opened the Bright Baby Firewood Chicken restaurant in November.
"The government is right. We must try our best to get rid of pollution from every source — from the smoke of bacon and chicken, from cars and chemical plants."
Contributing: Sunny Yang