The Fires of Changzhou

I was taking a walk today when I came to a big field filled with rocks and some very new looking farming. I've noticed in China that even in cities if there is a little space people will set up some small scale farming. This field looked like it had held a number of houses in the recent past due to the bricks and large stones mixed into the top soil. Besides farming there were some big piles of trash in a few places. But what really got my attention was that all these piles of trash were on fire. I'm not talking about a little fire either the flames seemed to be going five or six feet high at some points. I could smell it even around 200 yards away. The biggest fires were for the trash but there were other smaller fires that seemed to be used to clear away small patches of brush. The air recently has been much more hazy than normal and while I know part of that is due to the really incredible humidity DC has very high humidity in the summer without covering the whole city in a cloud. The pollution in China comes from a number of sources but all I'm asking is if people would just stop burning garbage in the middle of a city.