Hong Kong taps into the kindness of strangers

Long friendship

It wasn't the first time that people on the mainland had made sacrifices to ensure that Hong Kong could have a supply of clean water. The story began more than 50 years ago.

Chow Kee-lin, 69, was born and raised in Hong Kong. She was 16 in 1965, and still clearly remembers the moment she saw fresh water from the Dongjiang River pour from her tap, ending a shortage that had persisted for two years.

Hong Kong suffered a drought in 1963. In May of that year, the temperature hit 33 C on eight consecutive days. At the height of the drought, the city's reservoirs had just 43 days of water in reserve.

Eight members of Chow's family shared a 7.4-square-meter room on the third floor of a tenement in Sheung Wan, near the Tung Wah Hospital.

They shared a toilet and kitchen with their neighbors, and had to put their chopping boards on the toilet lid and remove them whenever they used the toilet.

"We received water (from the tap) every four days, for four hours each time," Chow recalled, adding that her family used every available container to store the liquid.

The water was pumped from the first floor to the upper floors, and the neighbors on the lower floors would take more than their fair share, leading to quarrels.

"Mosquitoes bred in the water but we still had to drink it. We had no option," Chow said. "We did not have spare water to flush the toilet, so we had to go to a nearby mountain to relieve ourselves. There wasn't enough water to take a shower, so we used wet towels to wipe our bodies."

The situation was so bad that several associations, including the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce and the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, sought assistance from the central government.

As a response, in December 1963, the authorities in Beijing committed 38 million yuan to the construction of the Dongjiang-Shenzhen Water Supply System.

On March 1, 1965, about 68 million cubic meters of water from the Dongjiang River began flowing into Hong Kong every year.

In the past five decades, and after a major reconstruction project and three large-scale expansion programs, the annual water supply to Hong Kong has risen to 820 million cubic meters.

According to the Jiangxi Environmental Protection Agency, the water quality in the source area of the Dongjiang River has remained above Class II of the national standard for 50 years.

Asked whether she knew the fresh water came from the Dongjiang River, Chow raised her voice a little, and said, "Of course, I know."

She was touched by the efforts of the people of Jiangxi. "The lives of mainland people were very difficult at that time. Many experienced famine, but they still gave us generous help supplying fresh water when Hong Kong was in dire need," she said.

"I appreciated their help. But many young people nowadays do not know about the close relationship between Hong Kong and Jiangxi province in the 1960s."