However, such enmity dealt her a huge blow in 2008 when she lost an election tokeep her job as head of Fanling village.
Tian had served in the post for three years, winning support in 2005 thanks to herconcept of “building a green village”. It was a hard-won opportunity to experiment withand exemplify her sustainable management beliefs at the grassroots level. She vetoedpolluting projects, cleaned up waterways, built a “green corridor” with tree planting andestablished a special water supply plan to teach villagers to save water.
She thought she was helping to restore the old, beautiful village of her childhood, butwas in the end voted out by villagers who wanted those polluting enterprises.
“I had a good cry when I learned the result. Maybe I need to change some of mymethods,” she said.
The election defeat has allowed her to concentrate more on Xinxiang EnvironmentalProtection Volunteers, which like most grassroots NGOs faces a constant fund-raisingheadache.
Over the past decade, Tian has invested 380,000 yuan (55,000) of her own moneyinto the organization. The only other funding it has received has come from several awards,including conservation and environmental grants from Ford, the automaker. Despite thehardships, she has never once contemplated giving up the fight.
“I hope to attract some enterprise members, which would be a way to sustain ourfunding, but of course they will have to live up to our environmental standards,” she said.
Tian plans to launch a project to protect Taihang mountain in 2010. She claims someillegal cement plants are quarrying on the mountains and causing extensive damage to theecology.
Listening to citizen experts
While grassroots NGOs continue to confront polluting plants in the countryside,some educated elites are also attempting to use their expertise to push the environmentalprotection message in the cities.
Amid repeated protests over the construction of incinerators in metropolises likeBeijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, a team of volunteers in the capital’s Aobei residentialcommunity has been campaigning for the central government to adopt its policy proposalon garbage treatment since November 2009.
The 25,000-word proposal, the first of its kind from Chinese citizens, followedmonths of research, which included analyses of scientific studies, interviews withenvironmental experts and media professionals, and public consultations. The draft wasrevised three times before it was sent to the authorities.
Although it is still unknown whether their advice will be accepted, experts say theiractions have offered an alternative for the public to take part in the policymaking process.
“Our society has entered an era when the public pursues knowledge aboutenvironmental protection consciously,” said Feng Yongfeng, one of the founders of GreenBeagle, a Beijing-based NGO that aims to advocate popular science among the public. “LikeAobei group, we are likely to see more citizen experts and journalists find out more aboutthe environment we’re living in.”
The public is no longer satisfied with easy steps, such as turning off lights in emptyrooms or not using plastic bags, he said. “They want to know how their life is impacted bypotential pollutions.”
One “citizen expert” is Cheng Jing, a 39-year-old electronic engineer in Beijing whohas become an unofficial authority on electrical and magnetic radiation.
He tested radiation levels at several spots in his community in 2009 as both he and hisneighbors feared they were being exposed to dangerous radiation from a nearby cellphonetransmission tower and power line. Using a surveymeter bought on taobao.com, a popularonline shopping website, the result was assuring: the levels of radiation were far below thesafety guidelines.
“The result may not be 100 percent accurate because I’m not using precisionequipment but it still can provide reliable references for our purpose,” said Cheng.
In 2009, Cheng was invited by a dozen residential communities to carry out similartests. Some citizens even have home appliances like microwave ovens and LCD televisionstested, he said.
April 20, 2010
‘Strangers’ return to a frosty village welcome
Women workers back from cities struggle to fit again into rural life.
Wang Yan reports from Hunan.
Yang Deying was dressed in a bright, white leisure suit, a color and style not often seenamong the fields and dirt roads of rural China.
“I knew I’d come back to the countryside in the end,” said the slender 32-year-old,standing at the front door of her family’s simple, brick home. “Although, my friends in thecity warned me I’d regret it.”
After spending more than 13 years as a migrant worker, Yang returned to her roots inthe central province of Hunan in 2008 to get married and become a full-time housewife.
Readjusting to village life has not been easy, however.
Like millions of other rural women who carved out lives in cities, she has found herattitude toward men, money and motherhood is dramatically different from many of hernew neighbors in Nanta village.
“It’s hard to explain but I think I’ve experienced things that those (who stayed in thevillage) will never understand,” said Yang, who has six-month-old twins.
As she talked, a group of housewives holding babies stood nearby, openly makingjokes about her. “She’s an old lady of the village,” one of them called out. “She didn’t getmarried until she was 30. We were all married in our early 20s.”
Feeling like the odd one out is common for women attempting to resettle in thecountryside, said Meng Xianfan, a retired deputy director of the Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences’ center for women’s studies, who is still involved in its research.
