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More bid farewell to Three Gorges
By Liang Chao (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-07-15 01:49
Jiang Guolan, a 49-year old woman, is now living with her family in a
two-storey house of 200 square metres in Pingyuan Village, in Fuling, a district
within Chongqing Municipality.
Her family was resettled in the village, which is a new residential
development started in the year 2000 for people being moved out of the reservoir
area of the Three Gorges Project.
Her ancestral home has been inundated by the rising waters of the huge
reservoir.
Jiang Guolan poses
with the pigs her family raises in Pingyuan Village, Fuling District of
Chongqing. [newsphoto] | "Last year, I earned more
than 15,000 yuan (US$1,800) by raising and marketing young pigs and vegetables,"
Jiang said. "It is enough to support my family of four though we are not the
richest people here."
Jiang has two daughters, and they are working in a factory that produces
woolen goods in Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province.
Jiang says, "They also earn enough to support themselves."
Jiangs keeps five big sows in two pens on the hillside behind her house,
which were built with the compensation payments from the project authorities for
her family's 4 mu or 0.24 hectares, of land submerged in the reservoir
area.
The government gives the displaced families 150 kilograms of grain per year
as compensation for each mu, or 0.06 hectares, of land they have lost to
the reservoir.
The Jiang's now have only one-third of the total amount of land they had
before the reservoir project. On it they grow maize and plant vegetables used
for making pickles, Fuling's most well-known product.
A methane gas tank that utilizes swine excrement was built beneath the
family's pigsty and the gas is piped to the kitchen for cooking.
"This saves 150 yuan (US$18) worth of liquid gas per year that the family
would otherwise have to buy for cooking," said Zhu Jie, deputy director of the
Fuling Resettlement Bureau, who added that the richest families of the village
are those running businesses, such as providing bus service.
To help the 121 relocated villagers settled down in their new village, the
local credit co-operative granted loans of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) per
household in funding for planting cash crops, including fruit trees, helping
them to raise such things as American nectarines.
Last year, the per capita net income of the newly settled villagers reached
3,010 yuan (US$362), over 400 yuan (US$48) more than the national average and an
increased of 660 yuan ( US$80) over the figures for the previous year.
Jiang considers her family one of the lucky ones among the tens of thousands
of people the project will eventually move from the reservoir area in Chongqing
and Hubei Province.
Completed resettlement
One year ago, the 660-kilometre-long reservoir of the Three Gorges Project,
the world's largest hydropower station, was successfully filled with water.
Started in 1993 and scheduled for completion in 17 years, in 2009, the
reservoir will flood 632 square kilometres of valley, including 24,500 hectares
of farmland with a current population of 844,100 people.
A woman carries a
girl on her way to catch a ship transporting some 600 residents from Nanxi
Town of Yunyang County in Chongqing on June 21. Most have resettled in
Dongtai of Jiangsu Province. [newsphoto] | Since
1993, more than 800,000 local residents have left their home villages for new
settlements, with the water level in the huge reservoir reaching depths of from
135 to 139 metres.
More than 400,000 people are scheduled to be moved during the project's last
two phases, beginning this year.
By 2009, the Three Gorges Project will have moved no less than 1.2 million
urban and rural residents from their ancestral homes and farms, and relocated
them in newly built towns and small cities along the banks of the Yangtze River,
as the depth of the reservoir continues to climb towards its final figure of 175
metres.
About 85 per cent of the relocated population are from Chongqing, and the
rest are from Hubei.
They are now living along the 660-kilometre-long banks of the reservoir,
stretching from the dam site at Yichang in Hubei Province to Chongqing.
Most of the displaced people have moved directly up the mountains behind
their villages, to new locations 40 metres or more above their inundated
hometowns, and have settled down in their new locations to make a living.
But some 140,000 have moved to 10 other provinces or Shanghai municipality,
leaving their native places forever.
According to officials from the State Council's Three Gorges Project
Construction Committee (TGPCC), the reason for relocating villagers long
distances from their birthplaces is not just the lack of sufficient farmland in
the reservoir area, but also for the protection of the environment around the
reservoir in years to come.
Last month, a group of 741 residents left their homes in Yunyang County, in
Chongqing, to move to new homes in Sheyang County, in East China's Jiangsu
Province.
This marked the beginning of the relocation of the last 23,400 people to be
moved out of Chongqing to economically-developed areas.
In total, about 165,000 migrants from the Three Gorges reservoir area will be
moved to other areas, including 10 other provinces and Shanghai
municipality.
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