Linfen: The Most Polluted City in the World?

Today I am spending the night in a city called Linfen, just south of Pingyao. Why would I spend a night here? Well, it is in between Pingyao and Henan, my next destination, but that is not the primary reason I’m here. No, I’m here because of an article I read a few years ago in the Guardian that described Linfen as the ‘most polluted city in the world’ and that it ‘rained ash’ and it was ‘hell on earth’. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by these apocalyptic descriptions?

The sky was quite overcast and slightly rainy as the train approached Linfen. There were many heaps of coal next to the railway. When I arrived in Linfen, I found a city that looked like most other Chinese cities: unattractive, but mostly functional. A lot of construction was going on, and traffic was bad. Apart from it being quite smoggy, I could see no evidence of Linfen being any more polluted than other Chinese cities. I told my cab driver that I had heard about Linfen in the western press because of the pollution, and he laughed and said that was right. But, at least today it was not ‘raining ash’.