There Are No Stars In Beijing

THERE ARE NO STARS IN BEIJING

THERE ARE NO STARS in Beijing. None of the eleven million citizens of that great city have ever seen the stars that live in the sky above Beijing. Occasionally, some of the people will see a glow from above--the moon. And some of those who see the glow in the sky may stop to wonder what it is; and some will even speak of the thing in the sky to others, but . . . there are no stars in Beijing.
One day, just as the sun was setting through the yellow and brown haze, something happened that was to change the way the people in the city of Beijing were to think. Suddenly, as if on cue, all of the factories came to a halt, all of the computers shut down, all of the government offices went dark, and just as all of the lights of the city were about to come on, none of them did. At first the people wondered what was happening. They came out of their homes, out of their places of work, and they began to talk. The mayor, the city council, the chief of police, the fire department all got together and began to talk. Soon they learned that the problem was a power outage. The electric company came together with the city officials and explained that there was a problem at the plant: something had overloaded, or broken, or--well, they didn't know exactly what had happened. Except that the electric company was no longer producing electricity; there was no electricity in Beijing.
They said that it would take many days--a week perhaps--to repair the damage--five days, at the very least, if they worked hard and around the clock and if they had any luck. The mayor, the governor (who was called on the telephone for advice), the chief of police, and the city council all agreed with the electric company, and said to fix the problem at once; don't worry about the cost; just fix the problem. Give us back our electricity.
They began work immediately.
In the city, the people continued to gather outside. For the first time in their lives, they saw darkness. The lights were out, and the sky was unlit.
But they could still see no stars; nor did they know that they could see no stars, for they had never seen stars before. Never.
But the second night the skies began to clear; because the factories were unable to do their work, the skies began to clear of the smoke and the haze and the smog, and some of the brighter and bigger stars began to peak out and down on the city of Beijing. The people stared up into the sky and wondered what it was they were seeing. They continued to talk. And the next night, because the factories were again unable to go about their business, there were more stars in the sky, and the people remained out of their houses all night long and marveled at what they saw. The children pointed upward and played, and traced patterns in the sky: from star to star to star, and they made up stories about the figures they drew in the sky, and gave the figures names, and added stories to the stories.
The next night the stars in the sky were so bright and so many that in places the light shining down looked more like clouds almost than stars.
And all the while, the workers in the electric plant worked on and on. They were almost done with their work; they were nearing completion of the repairs on the turbines and the generators that supplied the city with the electrical power they needed to get back to work. The police chief ordered the police officers to go throughout the city and inform the citizens that the repairs were almost completed and that they would be able to return to work not the next day, but perhaps the day after. . . That's what it looked like.
And the people were happy. Even though they enjoyed having the time off from work and for once having the time to sit and think or even to just do nothing but look at the sky (which some people began to realize was really something), most of the people of Beijing were glad to know that they would be going back to work.
And two days later that's exactly what they did. They went back to work, and life returned to normal.

Or. . . almost normal.
That evening, after the citizens of Beijing had returned home from work, and after they had eaten their good meals, they went outside, as they had been doing for the past week, to visit and to talk with one another and to look up into the sky to admire and to be grateful for the stars they had gotten to know.
But the sky was no longer bright with stars or the Milky Way. Now, once again, the sky was bright with the lights of the city. The citizens of Beijing could not see the stars. Again, there were no stars in Beijing.
The people wondered what to do; they had come to love the stars, and they wondered what they could do to see the stars again. Some of the people turned off their house lights, and that helped a little, but only a little. Not enough. There were still no stars in Beijing. In some of the neighborhoods, some of the restless ones gathered in the streets to look up at the sky and the stars, and when they could not see the stars, some of these restless ones began to talk. And after talking, some of them began to walk through the neighborhoods collecting stones, and when they had collected enough, they threw the stones at the streetlights. And when enough of the streetlights were put out and darkened, those who had gathered could see some--not many, but some--of the stars again. And so more of the streetlights had to be broken.
It would take the city officials a number of days to learn about the destruction of the streetlights.
But before they did--on the second night after the people were able to return to work--at the end of the day and after the sun had gone down and the people had eaten their meals and gone outside to visit and talk and to look up into the sky in hope, once again they could not see the stars they had gotten so used to--even though many of the streetlights were gone. Now the sky was hazy and dirty again because the factories had been able to do their work for two solid days.
The next day, everyone went to work again, and at the end of the day, after they had come home and the sun had gone down, they noticed that they hadn't exactly been able to see the sun go down, for the sky was now more smokey and hazy than the day before. The day just gradually got darker. And as the sky got darker and the lights of the city came up, the citizens, gathering outside to talk among themselves and to look up into the night sky, once again could not see the stars. But it was not because of the streetlights; the streetlights were not the problem now; this time the problem was what had happened to their sky.
The faint, fading glow of the moon reminded them of how things had once been.
One day, after many nights of not seeing the stars in Beijing and talking about the things they loved and needed but did not have, some of the people went to the owners of the factories and asked why the factories were putting so much smoke into the sky, and could they please please stop it. The smoke kept the people from seeing the stars, they said, and enjoying the evening, they said, as they had been doing for so many of the previous evenings. The owners of the factories said, No, they could not stop putting the smoke into the sky, for they were providing good jobs for the good citizens of Beijing.
The electric company, when asked the same question, said, No, we must provide electricity for the citizens of Beijing.
The city officials--the mayor and even the governor, who was in the city that day to make a speech--said similar things: We need to build the city and the country and make it big and good and strong.
Even the captain of the fire department said there was nothing he could do to help. No, he said, there is no fire to put out; it is only smoke.
And the police chief, when asked what he could do for the citizens of Beijing, said only, You should probably go home now.
And so the people went back to their homes.
And the officials, since they were through talking, went not back to their homes, but back to their offices, even though it was night.
Later that evening, after they had eaten their meals, the people gathered once again outside their homes and began to talk. And the talking led to thinking; and the thinking led to talking; And the talking led to more thinking; and more talking; and more thinking. . . .
And on the next day some of the people returned again to talk to the mayor and the owners and the captain and the chief and all the others. But this time they did not ask questions; this time they told the authorities that they liked the stars in the sky--in fact, they said that they liked the stars in the sky more than they liked the smoke in the sky.
"We want our sky back," they said; "we want our stars back."
But this time the officials did not seem to be listening. And so the people stopped talking. But they did not stop thinking.
And so one evening, not too many days later, after work and after eating their meals, some of the good citizens of Beijing, under a sky they could not see but under stars they knew were there, organized an evening walk over to the electric company, and there, even though it was night, they went to work.