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Keywords
Boats
Chemical industry
Cooking
Day
Elderly
Fishers
KWCI (GPI)
One person
People
Poverty
River pollution
Toxics (campaign title)
Villages
Water pollution
Women
Woman in Jiangsu Province
Hu Zhenlai has lived on the water all her life. At the end of the ‘80s, she moved with her family from the Hongze Lake in Jiangsu province to catch fish on the Yangtze river. Now her son has followed his father’s footsteps and became a fisherman. But the number of fish in the Yangtze is declining. This spring, only two out of Yanglingang’s six large boats have made a profit catching saury. Those who rely primarily on fishing are all living in impoverished conditions, with only their boats and no houses on land. Hu Zhenlai spends her days on the boat taking care of her grandson, who attends school.
Unique identifier:
GP0208F
Type:
Image
Shoot date:
16/03/2010
Locations:
Asia
,
China
,
Jiangsu
,
Taicang
,
Yanglingang
,
Yangtze River
Credit line:
© Lu Guang / Greenpeace
Ranking:
★★★★ (E)
Containers
Shoot:
Taicang Cancer Village on Yangtze River
Fifty families of fishermen live in Yanglingang village, in the Jiangsu province. They fish for their livelihood and have drunk water from the Yangtze for decades. In the last few years, however, the river has been significantly polluted, and the
fishermen noticed that the water has a strange flavor. Since 2003, factory construction has erupted all around Yanglingang. Today the little fishing village is surrounded by power plants, paper-making factories, and chemical plants. Greenpeace together with photographer Lu Guang documented the life and death of this community living "under the pipe". The water that flows beneath the fishing boats is the same wastewater discharged from the factories, and the air that fishermen breathe is the same acrid, metallic air polluted by the factories.
The problem worsens in winter, when the water level of the river falls, but wastewater discharge does not decline. The fishermen often suffer stomachaches, diarrhea, and other diseases. This January, the village head Xu Jiabao suffered from the same kind of gastro-intestinal disorders.
The fishermen have gone to the local government and nearby industrial parks several times to report the pollution and request the installation of tap water for the village, yet years have passed with no action being taken.
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