In the daytime the temperature in northern China often stays below freezing, but for many rural villagers the prohibitive cost of heating means that they have little choice but to endure the cold.
“We dare not turn on the heating during the day,” one woman from Guan county in Hebei named Wang said.
The 75-year-old’s home is around 70km (43 miles) from the centre of Beijing, but running the heating all day would cost between 60 and 90 yuan (US$8-13), an expense that could soar over the course of a winter to more than 6,000 yuan (US$860).
The sum amounts to nearly one-third of the province’s official 2024 disposable income for rural residents. Meanwhile, Wang receives a monthly pension of a little over 200 yuan (US$29) and is living on her savings.
Meanwhile, to the north of Wang’s village in nearby Beijing, officials said last week that the metropolis of more than 21 million residents recorded just one heavy pollution day last year – its best performance since data was first collected over a decade ago.
The capital’s improvement in air quality is inextricably linked to the changes that Wang and nearly 27 million farmers in Hebei have made to their energy use since they were required to abandon traditional coal-fired heating and cooking methods in 2017.
