Hong Kong taps into the kindness of strangers
Residents of Jiangxi province have been providing the city with clean water for more than half a century. Dara Wang reports.
Xie Yujie stood looking over the land that was home to his ancestors for 350 years. The 65-year-old has often returned to this spot in the decade or so since he and his neighbors were relocated to safeguard the purity of the Dongjiang River, which supplies up to 80 percent of Hong Kong’s fresh water.
Xie’s ancestral home lay near Yajibo Mountain, the source of the Dongjiang, which spans three counties in Jiangxi province — Huichang, Anyuan and Xunwu.
Xie lived in Qingfeng, a village in Huichang blessed with fertile land. He recalled the villagers planting rice and raising poultry on the lowlands and growing mushrooms high on the mountain’s slopes.
The decision to clear the village was taken because local farming practices threatened the purity of the water.
Xie Yuncai, Party secretary of the village, said excrement from chickens and other poultry leached into the soil and contaminated the river water.
Moreover, when the farmers planted mushrooms, they cut chunks of wood from living trees then bored holes in the harvested wood and planted mycelium spores.
As a result, the trees began to die, and the savaging of the local forests gradually reduced their capacity to conserve water.
According to Xie Yuncai, the removal order, issued in 2006, was intended to ensure clean drinking water for Hong Kong, which meant the villagers had to move.
Liu Chaohua, Party secretary of Qingxi township, said each villager was given 3,500 yuan ($517) to build a new house in the center of the township.
Some residents, such as Xie Jiawan, were unhappy with the development because they felt the settlement was unfair.
The Songwuchang group, an administrative subdivision of the village that was home to Xie Yujie and Xie Yuncai, was the only one of five groups in Qingfeng that was ordered to vacate the land because their presence had a direct influence on the source of the river.
“Our whole family had lived on the farmland for generations. How can we farmers earn a livelihood without land?” Xie Jiawan said.
As a venerable elder, Xie Yujie, who served as the village Party secretary for 16 years from 1983, was one of the first residents to leave. He wanted to set a good example to other residents, so in 2007 he demolished his ancestral home and moved to the center of Qingxi.
“To be honest, I was reluctant to leave the mountain,” he said. “But I had to leave to preserve the purity of the water for the people in Hong Kong.”
Xie Yujie and local officials spent several months persuading Xie Jiawan to move, and eventually he agreed.
By 2013, about 100 people from the Songwuchang group had relocated. Many other villagers have since followed, and the process is ongoing.
Long friendship
It wasn’t the first time that people on the mainland had made sacrifices to ensure that Hong Kong could have a supply of clean water. The story began more than 50 years ago.
Chow Kee-lin, 69, was born and raised in Hong Kong. She was 16 in 1965, and still clearly remembers the moment she saw fresh water from the Dongjiang River pour from her tap, ending a shortage that had persisted for two years.
Hong Kong suffered a drought in 1963. In May of that year, the temperature hit 33 C on eight consecutive days. At the height of the drought, the city’s reservoirs had just 43 days of water in reserve.
Eight members of Chow’s family shared a 7.4-square-meter room on the third floor of a tenement in Sheung Wan, near the Tung Wah Hospital.
They shared a toilet and kitchen with their neighbors, and had to put their chopping boards on the toilet lid and remove them whenever they used the toilet.
“We received water (from the tap) every four days, for four hours each time,” Chow recalled, adding that her family used every available container to store the liquid.
The water was pumped from the first floor to the upper floors, and the neighbors on the lower floors would take more than their fair share, leading to quarrels.
“Mosquitoes bred in the water but we still had to drink it. We had no option,” Chow said. “We did not have spare water to flush the toilet, so we had to go to a nearby mountain to relieve ourselves. There wasn’t enough water to take a shower, so we used wet towels to wipe our bodies.”
The situation was so bad that several associations, including the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce and the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, sought assistance from the central government.
As a response, in December 1963, the authorities in Beijing committed 38 million yuan to the construction of the Dongjiang-Shenzhen Water Supply System.
On March 1, 1965, about 68 million cubic meters of water from the Dongjiang River began flowing into Hong Kong every year.
In the past five decades, and after a major reconstruction project and three large-scale expansion programs, the annual water supply to Hong Kong has risen to 820 million cubic meters.
According to the Jiangxi Environmental Protection Agency, the water quality in the source area of the Dongjiang River has remained above Class II of the national standard for 50 years.
Asked whether she knew the fresh water came from the Dongjiang River, Chow raised her voice a little, and said, “Of course, I know.”
She was touched by the efforts of the people of Jiangxi. “The lives of mainland people were very difficult at that time. Many experienced famine, but they still gave us generous help supplying fresh water when Hong Kong was in dire need,” she said.
“I appreciated their help. But many young people nowadays do not know about the close relationship between Hong Kong and Jiangxi province in the 1960s.”
River and forest ranger
Water shortages have mostly been eradicated in Hong Kong because people at the source of the Dongjiang have sustained and stabilized the supply of clean water.
Gong Longshou was born and raised in Hugang village, about 4 kilometers from Sanbai Mountain in Anyuan county. The 60-year-old former soldier has been a forest ranger since 1980, protecting the woodland from poachers.
In the 1980s, he earned less than 100 yuan a month. In addition to patrolling the woodland, he conducted doorto-door checks to ensure villagers were not felling trees.
He promoted awareness of forest protection, and whenever he found people felling trees illegally, he reported them to the police because fewer trees would reduce the forest’s ability to conserve water.
In the 1970s, village elders told Gong that the river supplied water to Hong Kong.
“Chinese people should care for and help each other,” he said. “People in Hong Kong are my compatriots. As a son of the mountain, protecting the hill and the river is my responsibility and also my honor.”
For their part, the people of Hong Kong have made donations to the mainland’s education system as a way of thanking the local people for protecting the water supply.
Since 2007, the Federation of Hong Kong Shenzhen Associations has donated funds to Tianxin Wulong elementary school, Tianxin Xinhuai elementary school and Anyuan No 1 Middle School in Anyuan county.
It has also established scholarships for students who gained places at universities.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Yanai Foundation also donated 10 million yuan to build Siyuan primary school in the county.
Gong hopes more Hong Kong people will visit the mountain source of their mother river, and he wants to visit them, too.
“Hong Kong must be a prosperous city and people there must be very warm,” he said.
Nowadays he faces fewer challenges in protecting the forest because the local people are more aware of the importance of conservation, while higher living standards mean they do not need to cut down trees to build houses.
On the other side of the river source, in neighboring Huichang county, the people who moved out of Qingfeng village have been adapting to their new location.
Xie Jiawan said it’s easier for children to access education, and the school is only a 10-minute walk from their homes.
The government has laid a sealed road to their homes and installed street lamps and sewer pipes.
The improvements have marked a great change in the life of the community because previously the residents struggled along a mud road.
Guiding principle
There is an old saying “Live off what the land and sea can give”, which villagers at the source of the Dongjiang River take as their guiding principle, along with the maxim “Do not destroy the environment.”
To guard the mother river for the people of Hong Kong, some villagers left their 300year-old ancestral homes, while others guard the forest meter by meter.
For older Hong Kong residents who experienced the drought, the river carries the kindness of the people of Jiangxi, but the younger generation, who have never known water shortages, find the name remote and strange.
Now, a growing number of people on both sides of the border are keen to see more exchanges and visits to strengthen bonds and celebrate more than 50 years of sacrifice and gratitude.
As a son of the mountain, protecting the hill and the river is my responsibility and also my honor.” Gong Longshou, resident of Hugang villiage, Jiangxi
I had to leave to preserve the purity of the water for the people in Hong Kong.”