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NY Times Op-Ed, Apr. 6 2014
China’s Poisonous Waterways
By SHENG KEYI
BEIJING — Over the past few years, trips back to my home village,
Huaihua Di, on the Lanxi River in Hunan Province, have been clouded by
news of deaths — deaths of people I knew well. Some were still young,
only in their 30s or 40s. When I returned to the village early last
year, two people had just died, and a few others were dying.
My father conducted an informal survey last year of deaths in our
village, which has about 1,000 people, to learn why they died and the
ages of the deceased. After visiting every household over the course of
two weeks, he and two village elders came up with these numbers: Over 10
years, there were 86 cases of cancer. Of these, 65 resulted in death;
the rest are terminally ill. Most of their cancers are of the digestive
system. In addition, there were 261 cases of snail fever, a parasitic
disease, that led to two deaths.
The Lanxi is lined with factories, from mineral processing plants to
cement and chemical manufacturers. For years, industrial and
agricultural waste has been dumped into the water untreated. I have
learned that the grim situation along our river is far from uncommon in
China.
The nation has more than 200 “cancer villages,” small towns like mine
blanketed with factories where cancer rates have risen far above the
national average. (Some researchers say there are more than 400 such
villages.) Last year the Ministry of Environmental Protection
acknowledged the problem of “cancer villages” for the first time, but
this is of little comfort to my parents’ neighbors and millions like
them around the country.
More than 50 percent of China’s rivers have disappeared altogether, and
few of the surviving waterways are not completely polluted. Some 280
million Chinese people drink unsafe water, according to the Ministry of
Environmental Protection. Nearly half of the country’s rivers and lakes
carry water that is unfit even for human contact.
And China’s cancer mortality rate has soared, climbing 80 percent in the
last 30 years. About 3.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer each
year, 2.5 million of whom die. Rural residents are more likely than
urban residents to die of stomach and intestinal cancers, presumably
because of polluted water. State media reported on one government
inquiry that found 110 million people across the country reside less
than a mile from a hazardous industrial site.
I have lived away from my hometown for years and only return for brief
visits, usually during the Chinese New Year. I am becoming more and more
a stranger there. And yet my journey as a fiction writer started from
this humble place. It has been a literary gold mine for me, giving me
endless inspiration. The once sweet and sparkling water of the Lanxi
frequently appears in my work.
People used to bathe in the river, wash their clothes beside it, and
cook with water from it. People would celebrate the dragon-boat festival
and the lantern festival on its banks. The generations who’ve lived by
the Lanxi have all experienced their own heartaches and moments of
happiness, yet in the past, no matter how poor our village was, people
were healthy and the river was pristine.
In my childhood, when summer arrived, lotus leaves dotted the village’s
many ponds, and the delicate fragrance of lotus flowers saturated the
air. The songs of cicadas rose and fell on the summer breeze. Life was
tranquil. Water in the ponds and river was so clear that we could see
fish darting about and shrimp scampering on the bottom. We children
scooped water from the ponds to quench our thirst. Lotus leaf hats
protected us from the sun. On our way home from school, we picked lotus
plants and water chestnuts and stuffed them into our schoolbags: These
were our afternoon snacks.
Now there is not a single lotus leaf left in our village. Most of the
ponds have been filled in to build houses or given over to farmland.
Buildings sprout up next to malodorous ditches; trash is scattered
everywhere. The remaining ponds have shrunk to puddles of black water
that attract swarms of flies. Swine fever broke out in the village in
2010, killing several thousand pigs. For a time, the Lanxi was covered
with sun-bleached pig carcasses.
The Lanxi was dammed up years ago. All along this section, factories
discharge tons of untreated industrial waste into the water every day.
Animal waste from hundreds of livestock and fish farms is also discarded
in the river.
It is too much for the Lanxi to bear. After years of constant
degradation, the river has lost its spirit. It has become a lifeless
toxic expanse that most people try to avoid.
Its water is no longer suitable for fishing, irrigation or swimming. One
villager who took a dip in it emerged with itchy red pimples all over
his body.
As the river became unfit to drink, people began to dig wells. Most
distressing to me is that test results show the ground water is also
contaminated: Levels of ammonia, iron, manganese and zinc significantly
exceed levels safe for drinking. Even so, people have been consuming the
water for years: They have had no choice. A few well-off families began
buying bottled water, which is produced mainly for city dwellers. This
sounds like a sick joke.
Most of the village’s young people have left for the city to make a
living. For them, the fate of the Lanxi is no longer a pressing concern.
The elderly residents who remain are too weak to make their voices
heard. The future of the handful of younger people who have yet to leave
is under threat.
I posted a message about the cancer problem in Huaihua Di on Weibo,
China’s popular microblogging platform, hoping to alert the authorities.
The message went viral. Journalists went to my village to investigate
and confirmed my findings. The government also sent medical
professionals to investigate. Some villagers opposed the publicity,
fearing their children would not be able to find spouses. At the same
time, villagers who had lost loved ones pleaded with the journalists,
hoping the government would do something. The villagers are still
waiting for the situation to change — or improve at all.
My hometown’s terminal illness and the death of Lanxi River have been
heartbreaking for me.
I know the illness does not just affect my village and my river. The
entire country is sick, and cancer has spread to every organ of this
nation. In our society, profit and G.D.P. count more than anything else.
A glittering facade is the new face of China. Behind it, well-off people
emigrate, people in power send their families to countries with clean
water, while they themselves consume quality food and clean water
through the networks that serve the privileged. Yet many ordinary people
still refuse to wake up, as if they were busy digging at the soil
beneath their own feet while standing on a precipice.
After my visit home last year, I started to paint. I try to capture from
memory the pristine river and my beautiful village. Now that the river
has died, I hope it finds its paradise in my paintings. But what about
the people who lost their clean water? Where is their paradise?
Sheng Keyi’s novel “Northern Girls” was published in English in 2012.
Her other works include “Death Fugue” and “House on Fire,” as well as a
novella and short story collections. This article was translated by Jane
Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz from the Chinese.
Sheng Keyi is the author of the novel “Northern Girls,” published in
English in 2012, and of “Death Fugue” and “House on Fire.” This article
was translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz from the Chinese.
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