Village once a center for drugs trade now ‘clean’
Print Edition
At lunch break, pupils in Boshe, a small coastal village in south China’s Guangdong Province, rush out of the school, laughing and chasing each other, just like in any other small town.
Once dubbed “No. 1 Meth Village,” the fragrance of burning incense has replaced the rank odor of cooking meth and children’s laughter fills every corner of a village whose creepy atmosphere used to intimidate even the police. For the great majority of villagers, memories of the bad old days are vivid.
Boshe is in Lufeng County, a hotbed for the production and trade of drugs. More than a third of the crystal meth consumed in China once came from Boshe and other villages in the area, according to Deng Jianwei, head of Guangdong Narcotics Control Bureau.
More than one in five households in Boshe were once directly involved in drug production.
On December 29, 2013, in the pitch dark, more than 3,000 armed police, with helicopters and speedboats, stormed Boshe, arresting 182 people, closing 77 labs and seizing nearly 3 tons of crystal meth. Drug production in Boshe ceased.
Before the operation, Boshe had been a fortress, off limits to police, with villagers besieging officers who dared to venture into its cramped streets with dozens of motorcycles, recalled Wu Muqiang, police chief of nearby Jiaxi Township with jurisdiction over Boshe.
“Now, 120 officers are stationed in Jiaxi, patroling villages like Boshe that used to be no-go areas,” Wu said.
Two years have past. Many things have changed, while some remain the same.
Boshe has been gradually transformed from a “narco-town” to an ordinary village.
“Before 2014, to confuse the police no one used doorplates, but now, villagers leave their doors open during the day, ready for inspections at any time,” said Cai Longqiu, the village Party chief.
The lavish houses built by the drug barons remain scattered around the village, the strongest reminder to villagers living there now, warning them never to forget what their village has been through.
Earlier this month, Lin Yan and her family returned to Boshe from nearby city of Foshan for the New Year and Spring Festival holidays.
“The village is completely different now,” she said, but refused to talk much about the village before the clean-up, as if the topic has been declared off limits.
- 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.
