Having just returned from the countryside, I already miss its bitingly cold, naturally clean water, its lush vegetation, its air free from the brown dust that characterizes Beijing. To be fair, Beijing hasn’t been so terrible lately—the past several days have been a striking blue—although every time a car passes by me on the street I still have to close my eyes for fear of dust or dirt blowing into them. However, Beijing’s neighboring villages still feel a world removed, and not just because horses roam the uneven dirt paths and roosters signal the advent of morning. The air even smells different: when it doesn’t reek of manure, rural air smells like mountain water and moist vegetation. For these reasons, I am especially glad that Beijing’s countryside has gone solar, and that its inhabitants have electricity and hot water without the polluting side effects of fossil fuel usage.

In the village where we lodged, as well as the neighboring gorge (both places quite popular tourist sites) and the surrounding villages, all of the street lights are powered by small solar panels. There are no traffic lights, but the lights signaling the arrival of trains are solar-powered. Solar hot water heaters cover at least half of the village rooftops. We stayed in a farmer-run inn—a number of the families in the village run their own inns out of their homes, and serve traditional home-cooked meals with the organic fruits and vegetables from their own gardens (this weekend, I had some of the best cucumbers and plums I’ve ever had in my life). At the first place we stayed, the owners proudly informed us that the hot water was solar-powered, so we would have hot water whenever we liked (the sun is quite merciless out in rural China). We eventually moved to a different inn, since one of our rooms didn’t have running water. But the fact that solar is such an ordinary way of life in this village, as commonplace as a television set or an air conditioner, feels simultaneously anachronistic and heartening. Not everyone may have gone solar, but it’s accessible to most.