15 - 9. WITH OUR EYES WIDE OPEN

All the time there is something new to see as we drive along a provincial road through Hebei. Then fields of grapes, then a cement-factory, a mountain or a gigantic steel-mill. Tucked in between we see poor village houses and small workshops. Nowhere pristine nature. Everywhere man has dug, built and polluted. Mountains of coal transported from Mongolia are being sorted and sold by black-faced men. The road is terribly worn by the heavy coal trucks. We pass more steel-mills and trees and air are grey. Lots of brightly colored flags adorn the factories, even the coal-heaps, but they cannot clean the air.