bamboo & OCC delignifying or bleaching...?

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

An excerpt, the opening of the prologue of journalist Mark Hertsgaard's new
book,  'Earth Odyssey--around the world in search of our environmental
future' (Broadway Books (Random House) New York 1998).
---

"The light is mute in Chongqing nearly all the time in winter.  The city
sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers and is encircled
by mountains that block any cleansing winds, so it is naturally a foggy
place.  As the industrial center of southwestern China, Chongqing also
happens to suffer some of the worst air pollution in all China, which makes
it a strong candiadate for the most polluted city in all the world.  When
the fog and pollution are boith at their thickest, say the locals, "if you
stretchout your hand in front of your face, you cannot see your fingers."

Visibility ws somewhat better than that during my visit to Chonqing in
December 1996.  Perched high above the Jialing one morning, peering into
the dank greyness before me, I could dimly make out a black-and-white
tugboat hugging the far shore of the river and, beyond that, the outlines
of what looked like office buildings.  This was the view from the back of
the Chongqing Paper Factory, a massive, state-owned facility that
environmental officials had singled out as evidence of how well they were
cleaning up Chongqing.  Built in the 1940's, the factory had long been a
terrible polluter, discharging enough chlorine and other toxic chemicals
into the Jialing "to cover the entire river with white foam," according to
an official of the Chongqing Environmental Bureau who must remain nameless.
Now however, the factory had been "basically shut down," the official had
bragged in an interview.

At the factory itself, though, it didn't look that way. The official had
discouraged me from trying to visit: "I myself would have to seek
permission to enter," he scolded, But when my interpreter, Zhenbing, and I
arrived at the factory the next morning, we found the front gate open.
Since no one stopped us, we simply walked in, kept moving, and tried to
look like we belonged, passing ourselves off as just another Western
investor and his trusty interpreter, checking out the business opportunites
in modern China.

The factory's entrance road descended to the right, past nealty stacked
bamboo poles and cardboard boxes waiting to be pulped.  A five-minute walk
brought us to the back of the factory, adjacent to the cliff high above the
river.  Though clearly startled by my white face, a young worker feeding
the coal furnaces cheerfully informed me that the factory was indeed still
operating, though only about one-quarter of its eight thousand empployees
was warking these days.  He wasn;t sure what had caused the layoffs--maybe
the market economy?

A long set of concrete steps led out the back of the plant down to the
river some eighty yards below.  Halfway down the steps, Zhenbing and I cut
left across the exposed riverbank, our shoes leaving clear prints on the
dark sandy soil.  Within seconds we saw ahead of us a broad stream of
bubbling water cascading down the hillside.  The astringent odor of
chlorine soon attacked our nostrils and once we reached the stream's edge
the smell was so powerful we immediately had to back away.  Downstream,
where the factory's discharge was emptying into the Jialing, a frothy white
plume was spreading across the slow-moving river.

After walking another fifty yards, we encountered a second stream, this one
a mere foot-wide but clogged with bizarre clusters of dried, orange foam
the size of pineapples.  Up ahead was a third small creek.  Its stench
identified it as household sewage (workers in China's state-owned factories
generally live on-site or nearby), but its most extraordinary feature was
its color--as black as used motor oil.  Not ten yards from the creek, a
grizzled peasant in a dark-blue Mao jacket and trousers (an outfit still
worn in China by the poor) was bending over a tiny vegetable patch to pick
some green for his midday meal.

Yet all this was dwarfed by what lay ahead.  It was the vapor we saw
first--whispy white, it hung low in the air, like tear gas.  Stepping
closer, we heard the sound of gushing water.  Not until we were mere
footsteps away, however, could we see the source of the commotion:  a vast
roaring torrent of white, easilly thirty yards wide, splashing down the
hillside from the rear of the factory like a waterfall of boiling milk.
Again the scent of chlorine was unmistakable, but the waterfall was much
whiter than the first.  Decades of unhindered discharge had left the rocks
coated with a creamlike residue, creating a perversely beautiful
white-on-white effect.  Above us, the waterfall had bent trees sideways,
below, it split into five channels before pouring into the unfortunate
Jialing.  All this and the plant was only operating at 25% capacity.

Hoping to leave the factory by a different gate than the one we had
entered, Zhenbing and I headed uphill on a muddy trail that soon led us to
a pathetic strudture of brick and corrugated plastic.  Vapor from the
waterfall wafted through the building's doorways, past walls that had been
stained a sickly white over the years.  A legless red couch sat out front;
a clothesline held a pair of blue nylon sweatpants.  Curiousity compelled
me to peek inside, where I saw not a stick of furniture nor electric light,
only a couple of filthy sleeping mats and thin blankets thrown in a corner
beside what looked like cooking utensils.  It seemed impossibel that human
beings lived in such a place, but no sooner had I snapped a photo than a
young man with unkempt hair emerged from the far end of the bulding to
urinate.  "This is the poorer class," explained Zhenbing.

The muddy trail eventually led up to a service road that appeared to offer
us a way out.  But Zhenbing and I had proceed only a few yards on the road
when a man wearing the olive-green, ankle length greatcoat of the Chinese
military suddenly came running towards us.  It seemed our unauthorized
factory tour had ended badly after all.

But military greatcoats turned out to be a bit like Mao jackets--lots of
poor Chinese wore them because they were cheap and functional.  In any
case, the man had worries of his own.  Liquid was spilling from two large,
loosly connected hoses by the side of the road, one that led back up to the
factory and another that streched down to the river below.  The man barked
orders at two workers straddling the hoses, and they stepped back.  Then
without a word of warning to Zhenbing and me--though we stood a mere five
feet away--the man knelt down and tightened the connection between the two
hoses.

Instantly, he was engulfed in an explosion of gas.  But he had expected it,
and in one fluid motion he straightened up and started sprintging back up
the service road, vanishing into the billowing cloud oof chlorineafter two
steps.  Zhenbing and I were not ready for the blast, but forward was the
only way out, so we quickly held our breath and plunged after him.  Six
running strides brought us past the worst of the gas, but when we slowed to
a brisk walk to avoid inhaling more than was necessary , we were still
surrounded by huge puffs of it.  We started coughing fiercely and were
still sputtering thirty yards up the road when we passed three dump trucks
parked against the factory wall.  A dozen workers were lounging in the
backs of the trucks while the man in the greatcoat, who had run all the way
here, bent down to tie his shoe.  Chlorine is deadly (it was used in the
poison gas attcks of Worlkd War I), yet the men in the trucks showed no
concern about the vapors now flaoting past their heads.  They did however,
nudge one another and stare at the foreigner trudging through their
factroy, evidently a far more unusual site.

Zhenbing and I wallked in silence to the plant's side exit and left without
further incident.  We were in the middle of a six-week trip through China,
investigating the environmental crisis in Zhenbing's homeland, and it was
not a cheering task.  In Beijing, Xi'an, and other cities of the north, we
had walked amid air so thick with coal dust and car fumes that even sunny
days looked overcast and foggy.  In the bone-dry province of Shanxi, a
day's journeywest of Beijing, we rode by train all afternoon withot seeing
anything resembling woods--only a few scattered, spindly  trees that looked
ready to expire any minute.  Everywhere, it seemed, the land had been
scalped, the water poisoned, the air made toxic and dark.

Despite having lived with China's pollution for decades, Zhenbing was not
exactly a militant environmentalist.  Born into a very poor rural family
thirty years before, he, like maost Chines I had met, was quite willing to
put up with filthy air and dirty water if it meant better pay, more jobs, a
chance to get ahead.  But our visit to the paper factory had shaken my new
friend.  Later, outside the factory, we were waiting for the bus downtown.
I was scribbling in my notebook when, behind me, I heard Zhenbing
murmering, as if in a dream, "My poor country.  My poor country.""