Tiger, tiger, burning bright
- Source: Global Times
- [20:30 July 08 2009]
- Comments
By Jiang Xueqing
With enthusiasm and marvel, 80-year-old Shi Shenghuo knelt on his heated brick bed at home in Erlou village the whole night watching Zhang Shihe writing stories and uploading pictures onto his blog.
“Will everyone in the world learn my story?” Shi said.
“Not everyone, but some people in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong will,” said Zhang, a 54-year-old freelance blogger on a trip by bicycle to the rural areas of five provinces in western China in 2007.
Earlier in the day, Shi had taken him to see a pool of sewage water in the Maowusu Desert on the northern edge of Dingbian County, Shaanxi Province.
The water, running 4.7 miles (7.5 km) across the desert into the village, was discharged by the county authorities without sewage processing. White foam and garbage floated in the water. The chromium level was later found to exceed all stipulated standards, according to Zhang.
The sewage had also polluted well water. Villagers had grown accustomed to putting well water in a huge jar and waiting two days or more before drinking.
Shi’s wife in 2005 had drunk directly from the well. Her stomach had swelled up like a balloon. She died an hour later.
During their visit to the headstream of the pollution, Shi suddenly broke down and burst into a pitiful, primeval wail.
“I was astonished,” Zhang said. “His wailing reminded me of the grieving of an old comfort woman in the Japanese film Sandakan No.8. I just could not blind myself to such simple, raw emotion.”
Later that night, he posted the first of a series of stories about pollution in Erlou village on his blog. The blog, Tiger Temple, has become a well-known news source for both national and international media. It rose to fame as the first to cover a murder near Wangfujing in Beijing in 2004. China Newsweek, a popular weekly magazine based in Beijing, called Zhang “the first citizen reporter in China.”
He doesn’t really like the title. “I’m not a reporter,” he said. “I’m a citizen recorder. Anybody could do what I do.”