back to article Bacon-smoking locals provoke noxious Chinese smog

The city of Dazhou in China's southwestern Sichuan Province is taking a hard line on what it believes is a significant contributor to the metropolis's "lingering" smog – the traditional practice of smoking bacon. According to Xinhua, Dazhou has been suffering a nasty bout of persistent airborne PM2.5 particulates since the …

  1. Joseph Eoff

    Ouch

    That hurt my head.

    I read the headline, and the first image through my mind was of a guy rolling a bacon doobie and lighting up.

    I expect that'd give you the munchies just as well as the weed supposedly does, but it might be tough to keep a cherry on it ...

    1. Vinyl-Junkie
      Coat

      Re: Ouch

      Indeed - my first thought was "why can't they smoke tobacco like everyone else..."

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Ouch

      I had almost the same feeling, but I pictured the old chinese guy with the long stemmed Gandalf pipe and a rasher of bacon at his side.

      Sherlock as he has the pipe!

    3. Little Mouse
      Boffin

      Giving up smoking bacon?

      My patented Bacon Patches could help.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: Giving up smoking bacon?

        The picture even shows someone half-way through trying to make a bacon roll-up.

        I guess you could grind up crispy bacon and mix it with tobacco. I'm hereby registering "Pigar"

      2. Chris G

        Re: Giving up smoking bacon?

        It's easy... do you know how hard that stuff is to light?

        1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

          Re: Ouch

          "I quit smoking cold turkey."

          "er... That's great. What do you smoke now, bacon?

          1. Mark 85
            Unhappy

            Re: Ouch

            I looked for the "Rasta Gourmet" sketch where he smokes the turkey. Seems it was pulled for copyright violation.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    The need to follow the west...

    ...and switch to water logged, smoked "flavour" bacon.

    Still my local butcher does fantastic, award winning smoked bacon....Mmmmm bacon.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yeah... and I will believe that

    There is a simpler explanation - which one of the local Communist Party committee members owns a bacon smoking factory which has failed to make its sales numbers this year?

    1. Youngone Silver badge

      Re: Yeah... and I will believe that

      Either that, or The CCP official responsible for reducing smog doesn't have the authority to close down the factories producing said smog, so he's doing "something".

      1. Richard Altmann

        Re: Yeah... and I will believe that

        He doesn´t get a share of the profit, so he´s p****d off.

  4. Dan Paul

    Diesel and Coal are...

    the REAL reasons why smog is an issue in China.

    Pork smoking would be a poor reason. They could fix much of the left over smoke with nothing more than an "afterburner" that simply re-burns the output of the smoker. Some chimney draft control would help a lot as well. Friction smokers don't need any chimney draft to the outdoors and are being used in many applications in the states for smoking foodstuffs

    But even that minimal control will never happen in China as they don't use emission controls properly on anything. The diesel fuel is high sulphur and so is the coal so cars, homes and Industry just continue to put out the worst smog possible. Any "controls" that can be defeated, already have been. If you have seen the pictures, it looks like the "killer" smogs of the late 1800 in England.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Diesel and Coal are...

      @Dan Paul - "But even that minimal control will never happen in China"...

      You'd be surprised. People are fed up, and the people are gaining more power on a daily basis.

      1. razorfishsl

        Re: Diesel and Coal are...

        Whereas in the West we are opting for Adobe365, Microsoft365 & IOT.

    2. razorfishsl

      Re: Diesel and Coal are...

      A trip to China would fill you in..... A 'professional' operation is usually some guys with an old Oil drum with the top & 1 side shaved off.

      There is even a TV advert showing this method as being more traditional.

      The fun starts when they start burning old pallets or shipping containers to produce the smoke.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Diesel and Coal are...

      "But even that minimal control will never happen in China as they don't use emission controls properly on anything. The diesel fuel is high sulphur and so is the coal...."

      There's a lot of myths about Chinese coal power plants. It's worth remembering that virtually all Chinese coal power plants are far more modern than Western coal plants, and are (in relative terms) cleaner and more efficient. Between 2012 and 2014 all grid scale plants were subject to international-class emissions limits. The continuing local pollution problems are probably linked to coal heating fuels and industrial processes, as is reported in this case (although I'm also behind the commentard suggesting that the trigger was inadequate profits at a smoking plant owned by a party official).

      Of course, the current China slowdown (from which I'd hazard a guess we won't see a rebound) has resulted in dramatic reductions in demand for steel and concrete, so the invariably dirty manufacture of cement and iron will reduce, and with it the less efficient producers will go to the wall, and that will help reduce the less well controlled emissions.

  5. Alistair
    Coat

    Yet more proof.

    Those who can, do.

    Those who can't, teach.

    Those who can't teach, go into management.

    Those who can't teach or manage, go into politics.

    The sum total of intelligence on the planet is a constant.

    1. Roger Kynaston

      Re: Yet more proof.

      But those who can can't necessarily teach. An often overlooked point.

  6. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Facepalm

    That correlation with the New Year...

    ...wouldn't be more to do with the typical weather conditions in the first two weeks of January, would it?

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Triple-J

    Bacon for New Year's?

    They really put the fat in "Gung Hay Fat Choy", don't they.

  9. stupormundi

    25 micrograms of bacon per cubic metre is def insufficient.

  10. DiViDeD

    About that Picture

    That's never bacon. Looks like sliced belly pork to me.

    1. wikkity

      Re: About that Picture

      Looks like standard streaky bacon to me, but unsmoked :-(

  11. Mark 85

    Tough decision...

    Stay where I am and have water-logged fatty, artificially cured pork belly and little smog or go to China and have real, slow-smoke-cured bacon but a lot of smog? If it is a big problem, I believe the whole city must smell lovely. The smell of smoking bacon is a 1000 times better than the smell of diesel trucks and buses.

  12. Frank N. Stein

    Where is the technology angle in this article? Unless we're discussing computer controlled bacon smoking technology...

    1. Mark 85

      You can't have technology without bacon... ask any commentard or Lester.

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        "You can't have technology without bacon..."

        Tell that to all the R&D engineers in Israel working for the likes of Intel.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      It's bacon

      What technology? It's bacon so quoting the muppet show: "There is no Question in my mind. There is no Answer either".

  13. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Food preparation causes smog - solution: stop people preparing food. There, that's done. What's next?

  14. Crazy Operations Guy

    Recycle the smoke?

    Couldn't they build some sort of system that just pumps the smoke right back in and circulates it until its nearly air? From what I understand about the smoking process is that the additional flavor comes form the particulate matter in the smoke itself, so why not use all that you can?

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