A 'black and smelly' job: the search for China's most polluted rivers

A Chinese government campaign asks the public to hunt down polluted waterways that can then be mapped and cleaned up

Shi Dianshuo holds his nose on the banks of Beijing’s putrid River of Happiness in northern Beijing. — Shi Dianshuo holds his nose on the banks of Beijing’s putrid River of Happiness. He is taking part in the government’s ‘black and smelly river’ campaign. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

One sunny morning, Shi Dianshuo sets off for China’s River of Happiness.

“It’s not very happy right now,” the 24-year-old environmentalist admits as he drives north from Beijing to inspect the poetically named waterway.

Driving 26 miles (42km) out of town, Shi’s car pulls up beside a putrid, rubbish-strewn creek. A black sofa pokes up from its murky waters; a landfill decorates its western bank; and beside another heap of refuse, a stray bra hangs lazily from the branch of a tree, lending a comic touch to the bleak scene.

“I’ve seen this kind of river so many times,” complains Shi, pacing along the sewage-scented canal to evaluate the grime. “It makes me feel bad. I’m not happy about it.”

Shi is one of hundreds of Chinese citizens fanning out across the country in search of what the government has labelled “black and smelly rivers”.

The severely polluted River of Happiness in northern Beijing, China. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

As part of the “hei chou he” (“black and smelly river”) initiative, China’s environment ministry is asking members of the public to help it hunt down severely polluted waterways that can then be catalogued and, hopefully, cleaned up.

Volunteers can post the locations and images of such waterways on a public WeChat account operated by the ministry.

Since the project started in February, citizens have used smartphones to identify and log more than 1,300 locations. They have been added to a pre-existing blacklist of more than 1,850 polluted waterways, says Shi, who works at the Beijing NGO Environmentalists in Action.

Shi, who has so far denounced five such rivers, says he hopes his work puts pressure on authorities and draws attention to toxic waterways they do not know about.

“We think many black and smelly rivers have yet to be discovered,” the activist says during a 6km trek along the River of Happiness or Xing Fu river. “We want to get those ones on the list so they can deal with those rivers too.”

Decades of unbridled industrialisation and urbanisation mean China has no shortage of black and smelly rivers.

In 2012, a senior official from the ministry of water resources admitted 40% of waterways were seriously polluted while 20% were absolutely toxic.

Even so, activists have expressed hope that the current environment minister, Chen Jining, is at least trying to clean up the mess.

Chen, an academic who studied at Imperial College London during the 1990s, took office early last year vowing to confront an environmental crisis that was “unprecedented in human history”.

Within months Beijing had unveiled a major anti-water pollution initiative – the so-called “10-point water plan” – that it called the strictest in Chinese history.

The “black and smelly” project is one part of that push to detoxify Chinese waters.

Shi Dianshuo and Luo Mengxiang visit the severely polluted River of Happiness. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Environmentalists have praised the scheme as the first time the government has enlisted ordinary citizens to help fight its war on pollution.

“I’m really happy to see the government calling on the people to take part in this activity,” says Deng Fei, a journalist and environmental activist who has compiled an online map of China’s pollution-stricken “cancer villages”.

Deng says he started a similar project himself in 2013 – calling on internet users to help identify China’s 10 foulest waterways – but gave up after two fellow activists were detained by police.

Deng cautions that the complex and systemic problems responsible for water pollution will not be solved overnight. “Just because we have the information, it doesn’t mean we can solve the problem straight away,” he says. “But this is the first step and I believe that as long as the government is determined to solve the problem then we will see the second and third steps.”

A morning spent along the banks of the excrement-filled River of Happiness highlights the scale of the task.

“We’ve reported the situation to the environmental protection department but nobody comes,” complains Xing Wenhua, a 56-year-old villager, as he picks spring onions from an allotment near one riverside fly-tip.

Xing Wenhua, a 56-year-old farmer who lives along the River of Happiness in northern Beijing, China. He says environmental officials have ignored the contamination of its waters. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Xing jokes that the stench of effluent is so foul it had caused all his hair to fall out.

“I smell it every day and it stops my hair from growing! It’s so smelly!” laughs the bald farmer, who says the river’s downhill slide began after China’s economic opening started in the late 1970s.

“How nice it would be if the river and the air were clean,” adds Xing, as he tends to his vegetables. “We could drink the water when I was young. We’d go down there with a bucket to collect it from the river,” he reminisces.

Asked what would happen if you drink the water these days, Xing lets out a loud guffaw.

“What sort of a silly question is that?” the farmer bellows. “This water stinks. And you ask me if you could drink it? Do you think Chinese people are foolish? Are we all fools?”

Additional reporting by Christy Yao

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