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Ritual and reality

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-21 07:23

Swimming across Zhujiang River by 3,000 Guangzhou citizens headed by its mayor on Saturday was an annual event with symbolic significance far beyond a sporting activity.

Just as the mayor said two years ago when the event was initiated, it was a test of how much the city had achieved in cleaning up the polluted river water. It was also a manifesto declaring that efforts would continue to clean up the river water.

Zhujiang is the mother river of this most prosperous metropolis in South China. And it used to be quite natural for local residents to frolic in the river in scorching summer. It was unchecked discharge of waste from the booming economic activity along the river that contaminated this waterway and made swimming in it only a memory for local residents.

The stinking river is a pain in the heart of every local resident. And cleaning up this river has been on the agenda of the local municipal government for years.

In the past five years, the water quality within the section across the city has improved considerably, but still far from reaching the standard good enough to enable residents to swim in it any time they want.

The cross-river swimming event was initiated two years ago as a symbolic move to promote the efforts to turn the polluted river into a clean one. Special efforts are made to open up watergates in major reservoirs upstream to dilute the polluted water, test water quality and choose the proper section and date when water quality is the fittest for swimmers.

The sad message is that something that used to be routine for river swimmers two decades ago has been reduced by increasingly serious pollution to a symbolic ritual. The irony is that no one will dare to swim in the river without much of the efforts organized by the local municipal government.

The inspiring message is that the symbolic ritual has epitomized both the local government's determination to clean up the river and the strong desire of local residents for a clean mother river.

The last thing local residents want to see is that the event remain a symbolic ritual in the years to come, with the goal of turning the river clean repeatedly postponed.

The promise by the mayor that the water quality would be further improved by 2010 when the city will host the 16th Asian Games sends the message that more efforts will be made in this regard.

Hopefully, the consistency in government policy and awareness cultivated by this event should be where the hope is.

(China Daily 07/21/2008 page4)