National Geographic : 2008 May
After three decades blindly pursuing growth, China's government is when his family felt lucky to live in this well watered corner of the river basin, in eastern Shandong Province. Over the past two decades, however, a parade of tanneries, paper mills, and factories arrived upstream, dumping waste directly into the river. Xiao used to swim and fish in the eddy next to the village well. Now, he says, "I never go close to the water because it smells awful and has foam on top." Another place he avoids is the grove of poplar trees outside the village, with its burial mounds stretching to the river's edge. In the past five years more than 70 people in this hamlet of 1,300 have died of stomach or esophageal can cer. More than a thousand others in 16 neigh boring villages have also succumbed. Yu Baofa, a leading Shandong oncologist who has studied the villages of Dongping County, calls it "the cancer capital of the world." He says the inci dence of esophageal cancer in the area is 25 times higher than the national average. The more than four billion tons of waste water dumped annually into the Yellow River, accounting for a full 10 percent of the river's volume, has pushed into extinction a third of the river's native fish species and made long stretches unfit even for irrigation. Now comes the human toll. In a 2007 report China's Min istry of Health blamed air and water pollution for an alarming rise in cancer rates across China since 2005-19 percent in urban areas and 23 percent in the countryside. Nearly two-thirds of China's rural population, more than 500 million people, use water contaminated by human or industrial waste. It's little wonder that gastroin testinal cancer is now the number one killer in the countryside. The ubiquity of pollution-related disease is cold comfort to the villagers in Xiaojiadian, who live in fear and shame. The fear is understand able: 16 more cases of cancer were diagnosed in the village last year. The shame, however, has deeper roots. Even though officials told villag ers the epidemic likely stems from the drinking well by the poisoned river, many locals believe cancer comes from an imbalance of chi, or life force, which is said to occur more frequently 168 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC * MAY 2008 in those with quick tempers or bad characters. Like most victims, Xiao suffered in silence in his house for nearly a year, hiding his symptoms even from the local doctor. Medical bills have since wiped out his savings, and the tumor has reduced his voice to a whisper. Even so, Xiao is one of the few willing to speak out. "Ifwe don't talk, nothing gets done," he rasps, spitting up phlegm into a plastic cup. The government re cently built a new well 11 miles away and sent in teams of doctors. But Xiao says officials might not have paid attention to Xiaojiadian had a vil lager not tipped offa reporter at a Chinese tele vision station two years before. Now Xiao only has one regret: that he didn't speak out earlier. "It might have saved me," he says. A few months pass, and a fresh earthen mound appears in the grove of poplar trees by the river. The grave has no tombstone, just some bamboo sticks and a few aluminum cookie wrappers rustling in the breeze. Xiao has come to the place he long avoided, joining friends and neighbors who were stalked by the same wa terborne assassin. Is it a cruel irony or just the natural order that their final resting place over looks the very river that likely killed them? It is too late to save Xiao Sizhu, but there re mains a flicker of hope that the Yellow River can be rescued. China's leaders, aware of the peril their country faces, now vow "to build an ecological civilization," setting aside almost 200 billion dollars a year for the environment. But the future depends equally on ordinary citizens such as activists Zhao Zhong and his mother, the intrepid Jiang Lin. Remember that Lanzhou paper mill Jiang locked in with her GPS? Not long after the information went up on the Inter net, the government shut down the mill, along with 30 other factories dumping poison into tributaries of the Yellow River. "Maybe the impact of one single person is small," says Zhao. "But when it is combined with others, the power can be huge." 0 t Dirty Work An interactive map with more of Greg Girard's photos shows the toll of explosive growth along the Yellow River's banks at ngm.com.