China’s drought: a taxi driver’s response
Liu Zhenxiang, aged 48, is a typical Beijing taxi driver. But most of his worries are not about fuel prices, traffic or fares – they are about north China`s crippling drought.
Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau held a meeting on May 28 at which a number of local people were invited to put forward their ideas on improving the capital`s environment. When bureau deputy director Du Shaozhong saw Liu, he joked: “Mr Liu, you had better keep your speech short and to the point; if you read out the whole of that 28,000 character essay you sent in, no-one else will have time to speak!” Liu replied in the affirmative: “The essay might be long, but it all comes down to one point,” he said. “How do we store more water in north China?”
The bureau had begun a campaign on March 26 encouraging the public to: “Put forward suggestions for conservation in the capital and prepare for the green Olympics.” A month later, Liu stopped off at the bureau and handed in his essay, “Drought in northern China: its causes and solutions”. The essay was later identified as one of the best proposals the bureau had received.
Liu believes that the direct cause of the drought is north China`s ever-decreasing rainfall. He looked at rainfall data and found 700-800 millimetres fell every year in some parts of the north China plain. But between 1997 and 2005, the average annual rainfall in Beijing was only 466 millimetres. He wanted to know why it was so much lower.
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