Former teacher finds catalyst for change
Zhang Qinghua was the only female member of the 14-strong team dispatched to Xi’an and Yulin in Shaanxi province to check that waterways reported to contain smelly and discolored water had been cleaned up.
The other members agreed that Zhang’s status as the only trained scientist on the team meant the 40-year-old had the most taxing job.
Zhang took test samples from the upper, middle and lower reaches of every river the team inspected. Like her colleagues she could not avoid the scorching sun, but unlike the others she often stayed in the lab testing samples until after midnight.
She finished a 10-day deployment immediately before the trip, and was fortunate enough to spend a day at home with her 4-year-old daughter before traveling to Xi’an.
“At the beginning I was not used to the high intensity of the work,” she said.
The team started work in Xi’an on June 20. While the other members returned to the hotel in the early evening, Zhang didn’t finish conducting tests until about 3 am.
Seven hours later, she was back in the field collecting new samples until about 6 pm. This time, her lab work only took until about 1 am.
Her regular employer is the environmental monitoring station in Changji Hui autonomous prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. She frequently undertakes monitoring work, which means she travels almost every week.
Her workload in Xinjiang is heavy, but it pales in comparison with the inspection tour in Shaanxi.
“My daughter is used to life without me and she doesn’t cry if she doesn’t see me for a while. I often make video calls to her when I am absent,” she said.
Zhang could only find time to contact her daughter when the team arrived in Yulin on June 24. The workload was so heavy that one day she stayed in the lab until 5 am.
“The first call I made to my daughter after joining the inspection team continued until very late. She didn’t mind the fact that I said almost nothing, but she wouldn’t allow me to hang up even though it was long past her bedtime. She said ‘Mom, I just want to look at you’,” Zhang said.
She became an environmental monitor in 2012 after spending 10 years teaching chemistry at a senior high school. She made the move because she believed the workload would be lighter.
“I taught senior students who were going to take the college entrance examination. We had to work around the clock and had almost no rest days,” she recalled.
Since then, the work of environmental monitors has become more demanding as the government has attached ever-greater importance to environmental protection.
“Now it’s easier to be a teacher than an environmental monitor,” Zhang said, with a smile.