demonstration

Shenzhen Residents Protest “Smelliest Landfill in History” By Giving it an Award

Posted: 06/2/2014 8:00 am

The glorious days of China’s top landfill project is over. Over the years, Qingshui River Xiaping landfill in Shenzhen has nabbed some of the most revered accolades possible including a “national model landfill project” award in 2006 and named “a first-rate non-harmful landfill” by China’s then Ministry of Construction.

Eight years later however, the landfill has been given the honor of “the smelliest landfill in history”, a title which local odor-ridden residents have put into words on a jinqi, an honorary banner, and presented to a representative from the garbage dump. The jinqi is usually presented to persons or organisations for their exceptional achievements.

The award was conferred during a mass protest on May 31 when local residents in South Bantian District used their cars to block more than 100 garbage trucks from entering the landfill, “causing serious traffic congestion in several areas in Qingshui River District,” Phoenix News reported. Residents were seen holding signs calling for the landfill’s closure that read:

The bad odor of the Xiaping garbage dump is disturbing the people!

and

Firmly request the closure of Xiaping garbage dump!

The protest took place just two days after China Environmental News published a report saying the landfill lacks the proper infrastructure to treat waste overflow leaked from the waste piled in the landfill. During the rainy season in Shenzhen, the amount of leachate discharged from the landfill can reach up to 2,000 tons a day, far surpassing the landfill’s designed processing amount of 1,600 tons.

According to photos taken by the newspaper, grey and red-colored waste waters were seen being discharged directly into the city’s sewage system without being treated. The protest underscores the growing tension between China’s fast urbanization and a deteriorating environment as residents have grown more concerned about environment-related issues.

The environment has replaced land disputes in the country as the top cause for social unrest, Bloomberg reported. Every year, the country creates more than 360 million tons of domestic waste, and the quantity is growing by 8% each year, reported China Dialogue.

Most of the country’s waste is dealt with in one of three ways: about 50% is dumped in landfills, 12% is burned and less than 10% is recycled into fertilizer. The rest is left untreated.

If the proper waste management steps are not taken, the tension over the nation’s garbage practices will continue to simmer, if not explode soon. And it’s such a shame: that’s some beautiful embroidery.

shenzhen smelliest garbage dump protest demonstration

The red-colored jingqi reads:

The smelliest dump in all of history
When will there be a reprieve from this vile odor that disturbs the people?

Photos: Takefoto, Phoenix News

Charles Liu contributed to this report

Tagged: back-handed complimentsdemonstrationGarbagegarbage disposalGarbage ManPollutionProtests

Hong Kong May Restrict Mainland Visitors by 20%

Posted: 05/30/2014 11:53 am

Mainland tourists: your days of peeing on the streets and eating in the subways of Hong Kong may be numbered. A proposal has been made to the Commission on Strategic Development to reduce the number of Mainland visitors allowed into Hong Kong by 20%, reports the SCMP.

Tensions with Mainland visitors has finally drawn the attention of Hong Kong’s lawmakers. Years of “locust” references, pee controversies, subway fights, and retail favoritism have recently culminated in Hong Kong street demonstrations that have called on the government to close the border to the north.

Protestors want the government to restrict entry to mainland visitors to Hong Kong under the independent traveler plan. There were 40 million mainland visitors to Hong Kong last year, which now accounts for a full two-thirds of all inbound tourists.

And what do you know: it seems like demonstrations do work. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said the government is interested in listening to “the views of the public, businesses and the tourism sector”, an overall sentiment that has coalesced into this proposal to deny entry to eight million mainland visitors.

And to ensure that the process of governing is working properly, lawmakers disagreed. One unidentified member of the council said, “Everyone [is] opposed [to] such a drastic cut,” while Ben Chan Han-pan voiced his doubt that individual mainland visitors under the plan in question are the source of the problem.

Local tourism may suffer if the proposal goes through. First to be affected will be luxury stores that employ guys with white gloves who follow you around the store until you leave.

Since Hong Kong lawmakers are debating the will of the people, we can’t wait until this contentious issue is boiled down to this: Are crude manners tolerable in order to accept mainlander money, or will an adherence to introverted regionalism in fact stagnate Hong Kong’s progress?

Photo: Welcome to China

Tagged: demonstrationDiscriminationHong KonglocustMainland TouristsTourismtourist visatourists behaving badly

Shenzhen Protest: “Get the Hell Out of Asia, American Bastards!”

Posted: 05/20/2014 5:22 pm

A Shenzhen demonstration consisting of retired Chinese soldiers protested against US intervention in Asia with shouts of “Get out of Asia, American bastards!”, reported 163 News.

The demonstration that took place on the morning of May 18 in Lianhuashan Garden made its position upon US foreign policy very clear:

The USA’s strategy of returning to Asia is to use a spear directed at China. By making the situation worse, they hope to profit from a disorderly situation and perpetuate their hegemony across the world.

The soldiers were uniformly dressed in military fatigues, and, if need be, were “dressed to kill”:

At the first sound of the order given to us, we will dress in our military fatigues, run to the front lines, and guard our home and country!

shenzhen retired soldier demonstration anti usa american imperialism

The text written on the signs read:

Chairman Xi, these veterans of war stand at attention;
We pledge our lives to the defend the sovereignty of the South China Sea

Veterans of war stand at attention for Chairman Xi,
We again dress in military clothes to protect our borders

Veterans of war stand at attention for Chairman Xi,
A storm is brewing in the South China Sea,
Citizens have a responsibility to defend their country
And return to the front lines to protect our borders

[h/t @ChuBailiang]

Photos: 163.com

Tagged: anti-Americancolonialismdemonstrationforeign policyProtest

Female Students Strip Naked in Protest at Guangzhou University

Posted: 04/21/2014 6:35 pm

[This article may contain material offensive to some readers]

This morning, Weibo user @Morning Sunbeams of Southern China made a post that contained all of the pictures seen in this blog.

For context that may explain these photographs, text was added to these photographs. These words said:

Guangzhou female university students suddenly take their clothes off in public. Under the gaze of everyone’s eyes, these women were not shy in the slightest. Male students at Guangzhou University City (Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center) have gone crazy.

Upon further analysis of the photographs, signs could be seen that read “Stop looking at us through lusty lenses”, “Cherish the worth of the female sex” and “We need equal opportunities for employment”.

Online debate of this protest was fast and but not spurious. A user named Chaozhoufangua(潮州翻瓜) wrote: There are many ways of protests. Why baring yourself? For the attention? Most of the people only talked about the nudity anyway.

On the contrary, Weibo user Maskmagician opined: Our Chinese national characteristics are not fit these “open” protests. It’s disgusting and is purely for the attention. I am not even bothered to repost this story.

Opinions differing as they will, job discrimination is still a factor for today’s women. The job market in China is expected to be much tougher than last year as 8 million graduates will soon be flooding into the country’s various job markets, Sina reported on April 21. Last year, the number was recorded around 7 million and it was already called as the “toughest employment season ever” by some media reports.

It was certainly fortuitous that a crowd of photographers was on hand to record this extremely rare occurrence of women “suddenly” taking their clothes off in a planned media stunt that is sure to gather attention for many things if not for the alarming fact that China’s body painting technology is decades behind that of the West.

The Nanfang will continue to follow this story as more details are uncovered.