The Tiananmen Square under the blue sky after rain on August 17, 2017. (People's Daily Online)

Beijing, after years of fight against air pollution, is now saying goodbye to the smog as people living in the capital city have embraced more blue skies in the 2017 winter.

The average concentration of PM 2.5--hazardous fine particles--in the city dropped to a record low of 34 micrograms per cubic meter in January, statistics from Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau proved the improved air quality. The figure in 2013 was 90 micrograms per cubic meter.

Twenty-five days, or 80.6 percent of all, reported good air quality in January. It was the capital's first month in autumn and winter without a single day of severe air pollution since 2013.

The autumn wetland scenery at Lianshi Lake along Yongding River in Beijing. (People's Daily Online)

Data showed that a total of 226 days reported good air quality in 2017, 50 days more than that in 2013, while the number of severely polluted days reached 23, 35 days less than the 2013 number.

At the same time, the fourth quarter witnessed a five-day heavy pollution, but still showed great improvement than the previous two years.

Cleaner air boosts the public’s sense of achievement, said Cai Qi, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, pledging that more intensified measures will be rolled out this year to fight against air pollution.

In a five-year action plan for clean air Beijing unveiled in 2013, the municipal government vowed to curb air pollution by cutting coal burning, controlling car use to decrease oil consumption, cleansing and bringing down dust, and reducing emission.

The Beijing authorities stepped up such efforts in 2017 by weeding out 300,000 high-emission vehicles and cleaning up over 2,000 small enterprises with heavy pollution. About 300,000 households in 700 villages were upgraded to use clean energy as well.

The public have also benefited from the replacement of coal with clean energy. Using natural gas for heating in winter is more time-saving and cleaner than coal stoves, said a villager in Haidian district after the village phased out coal-fired heating facilities.