Lives diverted by water project
Print Edition
LIKE many displaced by the south-to-north water diversion project, Zhao Jiufu will never forget the day he moved out of his ancestral home four years ago.
“My mother was over 80 but despite my protests, she walked 5 kilometers on mountain roads to see me off,” said Zhao, 59.
He was one of some 3,700 villagers who moved at least 500 km from Anyang township in Yunxian county of Shiyan City to a new town in Tuanfeng County of Huanggang, in central China’s Hubei Province.
They were resettled in 2010 because their former homes were in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area supplying water to Beijing, Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei and Henan in the country’s ambitious project to divert Yangtze River water from the south to the arid north.
“Almost everyone cried when we got on buses and left that familiar land,” said Zhao.
He struggled to keep back tears and said to himself, “Just go and do not look back.”
A former village official in Yunxian County, Zhao and his family could have moved into his parents’ home, which was beyond the relocation area.
“But if I chose to stay, how could I persuade fellow villagers to move away?” said Zhao.
He kept telling villagers that the new town would promise a better future: city jobs, bigger homes and better schools for their children.
Their new life has been largely appealing and some of them have indeed found jobs more lucrative than farming. But Zhao felt guilty when his father died last year as he was too far away to take care of him.
When he visited his mother last month, she insisted he take a pack of earth and a bottle of water. “These are symbols of my bond with my hometown.”
In the coming days, water from the Hanjiang River, the Yangtze’s largest tributary, will be flowing out of Beijingers’ taps through 1,400km of pipelines and canals.
The 210 billion yuan (US$34 billion) project is a decades-old dream that dates back to Mao Zedong’s days as leader.
To expand the Danjiangkou Reservoir on Hanjiang River, more than 340,000 people moved from their homes between 2009 and 2012, including 180,000 in Hubei’s Shiyan city and 160,000 from Nanyang City, central Henan Province.
Many people were also forced to give up jobs that had been passed down generations.
Ye Mingcheng, 58, had to stop fishing this year, after the government banned it in the reservoir to ensure water quality. He was among at least 10,000 villagers in Danjiangkou City deprived of their livelihood and has yet to find a new job.
The government has built 100,000 homes for settlers in Hubei and Henan provinces. Their per capita living space has been increased by an average of 50 percent, said Li Hongzhong, secretary of the Hubei provincial committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
But some residents were in debt and the compensation they received was not enough to cover the new home prices.
And many new settlers have moved to big cities in search of better-paid jobs, leaving behind only children and elderly.
Li Hongzhong said local government in Hubei has worked out measures to help settlers work near their home.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
