Beijing Won Its War for Blue Skies, but Villagers Are Paying the Price

The temperature was 28 degrees, but Dong Tongzhou had turned off his heat at home and was standing in the village square wrapped in a tattered black coat, trying to soak up the midday sun. He wasn’t alone — other villagers sat on folding chairs and at a card table, as chickens strutted around and clucked.

Mr. Dong, 68, used to warm his one-room home by burning coal, he explained on a recent afternoon. Then the government banned that for environmental reasons, and offered natural gas as a replacement. But that could cost three times as much. To save money, Mr. Dong often sunbathed for warmth.

Even so, Mr. Dong said he spent about 1,000 yuan, or about $143, each winter to heat his home in Quyang county, in northern China’s Hebei Province. On a monthly basis, that works out to over a third of his pension of 800 yuan as a retired farmer and former soldier.

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