Having said that, anyone with a genuine interest in the problem will sooner or later want to click over to Clearing the Air, launched by the Asia Society this week.

Full disclosure here: I am the recipient of Asia Society funds and consider some of the people who worked on this project my friends. And I am proud of those friends, because they have done what my brother the delightfully pithy ski coach/art teacher would describe as a “kick-ass job.”

Why such high praise? The site opens with a highly produced mini-documentary from the multi-media rock stars over at MediaStorm featuring photos from Natalie Behring (definitely one of the most kick-ass photographers working in China at the moment) and an interview with Orville Schell (whose kick-ass fund-raising skills have helped financed this and many other a valuable projects). Beyond that, it provides a nice little summary of the issue with definitions of mysterious terms like “blue sky day” and “API,” some links to resources, and——the feature that truly puts the boot to the government’s hindquarters——a monthly calendar of air pollution levels made with photographs taken from the window of a single Beijing apartment building [see screen shot above].

Minus a few days here and there, the calendar (called “Room With A View”) visually documents the air in Beijing every day from April of last year to the present. Click on a day in the calendar and a full-size image of that day’s pollution pops up in the main screen, making it convenient for anyone outside Beijing to check on government claims of blue skies. The calendar also has pop-down menus with links to the best and worst days, plus a list of the days on which pollution climbed or fell the most. (Interestingly, the greatest changes all appear to happen in May and December…)

For those people smart enough to live elsewhere, this is as close as you’ll get to experiencing the pollution that blankets Beijing without actually having to breathe it. For the rest of us, the combination of the photos with statistics on average pollution levels and official blue sky day counts confirms all too vividly the sacrifice our lungs make so that we make partake in the madness.

For a summary, I couldn’t do better than Andrew Leonard, author of Salon’s How the World Works: “A lifetime of blog posts decrying the environmental toll of high-tech industrial production does not begin to approach the impact of Michael Zhao’s 20-minute documentary on the processing of e-waste in Guiyu, China.”

Michael’s a quiet killer of a journalist, soft-spoken and unassuming and ludicrously dedicated. Which is precisely why he was able to get this footage. On more than one occasion, he walked into these secretive industrial hells, digital camera dangling innocently around his neck as if he were a lost tourist, filming as he feigned ignorance—a feat he was bullied into recounting innumerable times on his return.

It didn’t end there. After he came back, I watched him labor into the wee hours on a multimedia version of the story for the better part of a year, the ironic glow of a computer screen lighting his lone face long after saner and less dedicated students had succumbed to the temptations of bed.

In other words, a rare work of pure journalistic intent, well worth the time to watch.
The entire film is available here.

Michael’s introduction to the film appears on China Digital Times. See also a video interview with Michael, “EWaste: Dumping on the Poor,” produced by the Asia Society.