The wheat farmers of Donglu village can't sell their harvest. The wheat kernels are dark, sooty, hollow and twisted.
"Nobody wants to buy it, so we have to eat it at home," says Zhang Xiaojiao, a farmer in the village.
"Look at it," she says, brandishing a handful of the stuff. "It doesn't taste good. It tastes bitter. It's because of the coal pollution. But nobody cares about us, and nobody comes to investigate."
All around this valley, thousands of peasants are trying to carve out an existence against the thick dust that chokes the air and settles heavily over every living thing. The soil is covered with a layer of grey soot. Tree leaves are laden with dust. The cabbages are blackened.
The farmers say their wheat harvests are becoming smaller and poorer every year. Some say they have to buy grain to feed their families. Others say they had to abandon crops such as cotton because they were too fragile to survive.
"In the past, the wheat plants were very green," says Yi Maosheng, a 62-year-old farmer. "But now, as you can see, they are covered in grey dust. The bees don't come to the flowers of the apple trees any more."
This is the toxic centre of China's coal-producing heartland. It's an apocalyptic vision of clanking factories, spewing smokestacks, burning flames, suffocating fumes, slag heaps, constant haze and relentless dust.
Donglu village has been swallowed up by Linfen, a city of about 4.3 million, possibly the most polluted place on the planet. It is certainly one of the dirtiest cities in China, a status confirmed by annual government surveys for the past five years. A World Bank study a few years ago concluded that it was the most polluted city in the world.
On a winter morning, the smog is so thick that a visitor can barely see 100 metres ahead. Buildings disappear into the haze. The Buddhas in the ancient temples are black with coal dust. Even the sun is barely visible in the darkened sky. Linfen is a ghost city, inhabited by people who loom out of the smog like spectral presences.
Dust is choking the farmers and destroying crops, yet these might be the least dangerous of the coal industry's side-effects. From a global viewpoint, the most disturbing is one that China has largely ignored: the carbon dioxide that contributes massively to global warming.
Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 80 per cent of the world's human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases. Most of this comes from coal, and China is responsible for 90 per cent of the rise in world coal consumption in recent years. This country is hooked on coal. With 21,000 coal mines across the country, it is cheaper and more easily available than any other form of energy in China. It is the lifeblood of its booming economy, producing 70 per cent of the energy that fuels its dramatic growth.
Coal is the biggest reason for China's rapid climb to the top ranks of the world's worst contributors to global warming. The latest projections show that China will overtake the United States to become the world's top producer of carbon dioxide by 2009, nearly a decade quicker than projected in previous studies. China will soon produce 20 per cent of all the carbon dioxide on the planet.
Yet China's impact on the global environment is rarely debated here.
"In China, global warming is not under discussion at all," says James Brock, an energy analyst and consultant in Beijing. "China is 10 to 15 years behind the United States on this issue."
