Beijing residents learn to cope with the choking smog
Some Beijing residents just put up with worsening smog, while others buy expensive masks, use air purifiers or flee to Hainan Island
Yang Shaojie feels growing pains in his chest. Every so often he pounds his breastbone with a fist, trying to break up the stuffy tightness that makes it hard to breathe.
Yang is a street cleaner in Beijing. For 10 hours a day, six days a week, he scrubs a block about 2.3 kilometres long in the Guomao area of Chaoyang district .
On top of his meagre wages, the municipal government pays him 15 yuan (HK$19) a day to compensate for breathing bad air. "They call it dust sucker's allowance," he says with a faint smile, before he's overcome by a hacking cough.
The native Chaoyang resident has been sweeping streets for nearly a decade and he notices that Beijing's smoggy days happen more often than in the past. But Yang, who is just over 50, says he's never had his health checked because he can't afford a doctor's visit. Nor has he been told that the high level of fine particles in the air can significantly increase the risk of heart disease, a warning given by the World Health Organisation.
