BEIJING WATER ORAL HISTORY SERIES MY HOME AND WATER: A people’S ACCOUNT Yongding River in Mentougou District By Shi He Translation by Madeleine Ross and Fang Li Below is the sixth in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to Shi He by 60-year-old Wang Yongsen. Wang Yongsen is a farmer and longtime resident of a mountain village in Mentougou District about 70 kilometres due west of downtown Beijing. WANG YONGSEN (60 Y EARS OLD ) with the current, then it has to be hauled. But there’s no proper river transport network. Mentougou District, Yanchi Zhen (Goose Wing Town), Henantai Cun (Henantai Village). As for fish, there were plenty in the river when we were young. There was never any variety in the he people in our village originally came way they were prepared; they were just stewed, from Yanchi Zhen (Goose Wing Town). I’ve and then sprinkled with a bit of salt. Carp were heard the older folks say that many years the most plentiful, and there were also Crucian Tago, a man from Yanchi looked southward from carp and catfish. In those days no one went after the north bank of the river, saw that this area of loach. It’s only in the last few years that they have land was pretty good and thinking that it could started fishing for loach in the bottom of rivers be opened up, he crossed the Yongding River to and creeks. The biggest carp I’ve ever seen was 15 the southern bank to set up home on this plateau, kilos and I’ve managed to catch three shrimp that founding Henantai Village. He had five sons who were over half a foot long. We used to use cloth then had five families that have extended down to made out of very thin paper threads, but later the present day. We are the descendants of those people began fishing by throwing chemicals in, first five families. and almost as soon as the chemicals hit the water, the fish would all come floating to the surface. I There’s no water transportation on this river. I haven’t been fishing for shrimp since they began don’t know what the situation is like further down using chemicals. Now there are no shrimp to be on the plain, but up here in this mountainous seen, even when chemicals are thrown in. People area we can’t manage river transport – not even still go fishing in the river, but they can only catch rafts. Actually I should say that there is a little: if tiny little carp like this, not even the length of the anyone needs to build a house, they go into the palm of my hand. forest upstream of here, and float the tree trunks down one by one. The way it’s done is to hammer There’s no comparison between the volume of a ring into the log, fasten a rope onto it and then water in the river when I was young and the walk ahead and lead it down. If it won’t flow down volume today. You could even say that there’s Yongding River in Mentougou District | Beijing Water Oral History No. 6 | July 2008 no water anymore, it’s just about all dried up. Before 1980, corn, sorghum and soybeans were Upstream, the electric power station at Xiamaling planted on about 200 mu (1 mu = 1/15 hectares) was built in the 1950s, and before power was of village land on the mountain slopes. By then, generated we used to go and visit the caves the rains were already not as good as in earlier there. They hadn’t built the Zhuwo Reservoir years, and it never rained much in one go. But at above the power station at that stage so the water least it rained a little, and we could still harvest came directly from the Guanting Reservoir in a some crops. The flood plains near the river, where continuous flow. Guanting was the only reservoir wheat was planted, needed to be irrigated. But we at the time. After the Zhuwo Reservoir and the stopped irrigating after July or August, when the Xiamaling power station were built there wasn’t wheat was harvested. It wasn’t like now, when much water left downstream in the river. Adding irrigation is needed all year long. On the dry areas that extra reservoir blocked the water. Now it’s of the mountain, we can’t grow anything anymore, only before the rainy season each year when there just isn’t enough rain. We could plant crops there’s concern about the dam walls being able but we wouldn’t have anything to harvest, so we’ve to hold up, that a few hundred or thousand cubic simply stopped planting anything. metres of water are released, and there’s a little more water downstream. Normally we rely on Originally, wheat was grown on the flood plain, the power plant releasing a bit more water when but when large areas of land began to be used for they’re generating electricity. For the first three or forestry2, fruit trees were planted instead: apples four years they released water every two or three were grown on the higher plain while jujubes and days. But in the last two years, they’ve released apricots were lower down, closer to the river. We less, sometimes you don’t see water even once a still had two water pumps in the village, and had month, and when it comes, it’s much less than to spend money on electricity each year to pump before. water to irrigate the flood plains, but then we were only allowed to water the fruit trees on the flood The main reason there is so little water is because plain and we weren’t allowed to grow vegetables it doesn’t rain. It hasn’t poured with a saturating any more. For example, cabbage required water rain around here for twenty years. What do I in autumn but all the fruit had been harvested mean by that? In these parts we say that, whether by then and didn’t need water, so the pumps had it’s heavy or light rain, the mountain slopes get stopped operating. With such a little scrap of deeply saturated until the water seeps out of land, it wasn’t worth turning the pumps on even the mountains and flows for ten days or half a once, so the cabbages died for lack of water. The month – that’s what we call properly wet. Standing soybeans I planted last year never got harvested. under the big Chinese scholar tree (Huaishu) at Now, all the vegetables we eat are store bought, the entrance to our village, if you look toward even though the vegetables we grew ourselves the channel, that’s the only place where you’ll see were the tastiest and the sweetest, because they water coming out now, and when it does, that’s were grown with farmyard manure and no when we consider the land to be soaking wet. I chemical fertilizers were put on them. haven’t seen water coming out like that for over 30 years. Water comes out in this channel of the All the apricot trees on the hills died. And if river after a cloudburst, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t die, any apricots on them are just anything. The year of the 2003 SARS epidemic like dried-up little soybeans. Once upon a time it happened once. If you ask me why it never they were as big as a ten cent coin (1 inch), and rains, I’d say it’s just like the story of the Fengxian 1 Prefecture in “Journey to the West.” he was punished by the Jade Emperor with a drought lasting many years. The rains did not return until the 1 In the story of “Journey to the West,” the head of the prefecture apologized to the Jade Emperor. head of Fengxian prefecture behaved improperly so 2 In 1998. 2 Yongding River in Mentougou District | Beijing Water Oral History No. 6 | July 2008 as for the walnut trees, a few really flourished in them. It’s because they have no water in Yinma’an, all of the creeks. Now all the walnut trees have and because the water they had in Yanchi didn’t disappeared, and if there are any still alive, it’s meet standards when tests were done. In his only the trunks that are left and all the branches earlier term of office, our previous village head have died. Before 1980, we never took water with reported that the water in the Henantai was also us when we went up into the mountains because below standard, and that a well was needed. When all the little creeks had spring water bubbling out the new village head3 came into the position, of them. Now, wherever you go, you have to take he didn’t bother to do anything about the issue. water as the creeks have all dried up. Meanwhile, the Party secretary’s word is law. But the Party secretary bought a house in Mentougou Have a look at the houses in our village; all the town and, after retiring from office, he got on his ones built above the row of Chinese scholar trees horse and raced off there. So the ordinary people (Huaishu) are old, and all the ones below the trees simply had nowhere to turn.