Jiucailuo Chemical and Industrial Products Company changed its name to Haihua Chemical Products Corporation relocating to Wuhe Mohekou Industrial Park in June 2009. Photo: Courtesy of Ruby Yang

By Liang Ruoqiao

His life sounds a bit like a Hollywood trailer: one man vs the evil chemical plant. 

In and around Zhang Gongli's village near the Huaihe River in eastern China, cancer victims had started dying by the dozens soon after 2004 when the neighboring chemical plant chimneys started coughing up white clouds.

Zhang, whose farmland was less than 40 meters from the factory, filed two lawsuits against Jiucailuo Chemical and Industrial Products Company in 2006.

A settlement was reached that he should receive 500 yuan ($76) for the company's contamination of his 0.4 mu (0.06 acres).

That seemed to be about as much as any peasant could hope for in the traditional struggle against the GDP-worshiping values of Chinese mainland officialdom.

Zhang had never dreamed that within three years, his 107-mu (18 acre) nemesis would be ordered out of his village, nor that he would be hailed overseas as something akin to the "Chinese Erin Brockovich," lauded as hero of the 2011 Oscar-nominated documentary The Warriors of Qiugang.

The watershed came in 2007.

Ahead of the Olympics, China's then-State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) - now the Ministry of Environmental Protection - ordered a halt to all "non-environmentally friendly" activities in five designated river towns.

One of the five was Bengbu, a northern Anhui Province prefecture-level city, situated west of the village of Qiugang.

"Almost all industrial activities stopped in Bengbu," said Zhou Xiang, founder and executive director of Green Anhui, an environmental group, "so when that ban was then lifted in fewer than 90 days, we all felt it was a bit of an anticlimax."

It was about then that filmmaker Ruby Yang and her crew came looking for environmental stories along the Huaihe River. It was to be the last of Yang's China trilogy following documentaries about AIDS and gay awareness.

Zhang's story captured Yang.

"I'm sorry to have been born here," Zhang told the Oscar-winning documentary-maker, "but there was no choice."

Zhang Gongli stands inside the vacant Jiucailuo plant. He finished junior high school and worked as a village-run factory operations manager for 14 years before returning to farming after taking sick leave at the age of 34. Photo: Fan Xiao

Hero's awakening

Through the assistance of Green Anhui and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Yang kept filming for the next three years and documented the evolution of the struggle in Qiugang.

The first obvious change came after Zhang Gongli attended a Beijing conference in 2007.

Most of China's environmental activists were there, Yang noted.

Zhang said, "I realized for the first time that there were such things as environmental NGOs and ours wasn't the only case in China."

When Zhang came back from Beijing, villagers immediately felt the change in him.

"They saw me as somehow related to the central government," Zhang said. "They couldn't really grasp the concept of an NGO."

Peasant Zhang resolved to fix his lowly status before entering his third faceoff with the factory bosses and so entered his name for election to village chief. That was the second big change: the moment when the politics got really interesting.

Qiugang has two main families: the Zhangs and the Wangs. Village chief Wang Zhongpeng had math on his side: 390 Wangs to 300 Zhangs.

Zhang didn't mind. He had just got back from Beijing and gave villagers a presentation about all he had learned in the big city meeting.

He still believed his arguments could trump Wang's connections to the polluting factories, connections all too familiar to the Zhangs and the Wangs plus a few Yus, Yangs, Huangs and Suns (See Qiugang village voting population).

Six months earlier he had gathered 1,801 signatures out of the 1,876 villagers for a petition and then led more than 100 villagers to petition outside the Longzihu district government building in Bengbu. He was recognized as the de facto leader against the factory, not a safe identity for a powerless farmer.

'Fishy' ballot

Zhang received 576 votes in the village election, four short of an outright majority but was informed by the district government that after two indecisive rounds of voting that there would be no village head.

Instead Wang became Qiugang Communist Party Secretary and Zhang would serve as a member of the committee under Wang.

"There was something fishy about those election results," said documentary cameraman Guan Xin.

"Wang gave banquets on the occasion of the 100-day-celebration of his newborn baby and invited every family in Qiugang."

Meanwhile Guan's nosey film crew continued documenting decisions.

"We can't afford to move," Zheng Xiuhua, in her 40s, told the camera.

Xinhua News Agency reporters came and photographed Qiugang Primary School children covering their noses at class and villagers farming land beside the thick, black, photogenic Baojia waterway sludge.

"I don't think this grain should be eaten," Zhang told reporters. "We mill it. It looks fine on the outside but we don't know who would eat it.

"We don't want to harm people, but we have no choice."

Evidence abounded, but few dared speak. "A bird can't fly without a head," Zhang said, "so are men without a leader."

Discouraged by the vote, Zhang continued receiving reporters, studying environmental regulations and boning up on the speeches of Chinese leaders like Hu Jintao.

"Hu's on our side," Zhang told his family in front of camera. "Look at his speech here, so why should we be afraid? I'll go to Beijing if I must."

Zhang wasn't stupid. He knew well to expect problems.

"The danger comes from the businessmen with money and the government officials who have the power,' he said. "Either side could get us killed.'

At this time Zhang received help from Green Anhui, Greenpeace, Huai River Guardians and other NGOs supplying information about chemicals and negotiating strategies although he rarely seemed to mention them to reporters anymore.

Savvy official

He invited factory representative to a chat in front of camera, and called on the documentary crew when he wanted to send a "thank you" silk banner to the city environmental protection bureau.

After two years' to-ing and fro-ing, the factory was ordered to stop production and move out of Qiugang for violating a regulation requiring they locate more than one kilometer from any residential area.

On December 20, 2008, with the unlikely presence and support of the city environmental protection bureau, assembled media and electricity and water bureau chiefs, the electricity and water was cut off from both the Jiucailuo and Zuguang chemical plants.

Yang and her crew missed the big day. She was also shut out of filming the village election or the petition in front of the district government.

"Zhang carefully managed all the content we shot," she said. "Of course we respected that as he needs to face his neighbors after we leave."

It wasn't until July 2009 that final relocation of the chemical plants completed: a rare victory for China's embattled environmentalists.

"Usually it's the affected population that has to be relocated, such as the village of Wanggang that faced a similar situation," Zhou said.

The American audience might see Zhang as a hero like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Guan said, but "my own view isn't that positive. It was just a case of best timing and other favorable conditions.

"We couldn't have come up with a more perfect ending if we had scripted it ourselves."

Veteran wildlife videographer Guan is more familiar with the normal pattern of results with pollution disputes in China."The villagers were about to give up when I first met them in 2007," he said. "They didn't know about the SEPA ban and they feared the factory's thugs.

"But Xinhua and China Newsweek exposed them as one of the cancer villages along the Huaihe River and we were mistaken for CCTV, all adding to the hope and aspirations of the villagers.

"In fact it was the Olympics that helped them, not us."

Preparing for the "green Olympics", governments had been told to focus on environmental woes:  Zhang was able to quote extensively from both Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao in his struggles with local officials.

"Zhang single-handedly established a direct conversation with the city environmental bureau," Zhou said.

"It's more convenient for a victim to do that than any environmental group."

Zhang gained not only the trust of villagers, but also those officials.

He was even appointed a "volunteer monitor" by the district government in 2007 and again in 2011, meaning he had the credentials to enter and inspect factories.

His heroic story on film has been tainted somewhat by his controversial late decision not to sue the factory for a cleanup. At the end of the documentary, he and another villager had declared they would sue.

Not anymore.

"It would be cruel for us to ask the factory to clean up," said Zhang, 59. "They suffered losses from moving."

Guan disagrees, but understands.

"He knows if he kept pursuing, the city environmental protection bureau wouldn't be on his side. If he loses the support of government, he's not getting anywhere.

"He talks more and more like an official these days."

Interestingly, changes came to Qiugang right after the Oscars were announced on February 27.

The district government announced it would spend more than 200 million yuan cleaning up the Baojia waterway, Zhang said he had learned from a local newspaper.

Bulldozers hit the factory premises and grass was planted within a week "so that reporters will find a renovated Qiugang when they come," Zhang said.

Some viewers wrongly conclude the film is about man versus nature, said Liu Sheng, another of the film's videographers, .

"I think it's still a story about men and their various interests."

American director Yang remained fascinated by Zhang's evolution.

"Even though his position has changed from a rebel leader to half-official, half-grassroots, we wish he could train more activists like himself in the future," she said.

Ruby Yang

Fast facts: Warriors of Qiugang

The Warriors of Qiugang is a 39-minute documentary that was nominated for a best documentary - short subject Academy Award this year, losing out to Strangers No More.

The film chronicles the story of the village of Qiugang in the suburbs of the prefecture-level city of Bengbu, Anhui Province. It tells how a group of villagers put an end to the poisoning of their land and water by three chemical plants, the worst being Jiucailuo Chemical.

Alongside producer Thomas Lennon, director Ruby Yang's documentary about AIDS, The Blood of Yingzhou District, won the Oscar for best documentary - short subject in 2006. Their second film, Tongzhi in Love, premiered at the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival and the Frameline32 Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in June 2008. The film won the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival.

Their latest documentary can be watched at http://e360.yale.edu/

Source: www.campfilms.org