Investigating slag and beaten severely, self-rescue association chair Zheng Miaozhen grows braver the more setbacks she faces against evil forces
Zheng Miaozhen, 55, a banana farmer and chair of the Dalin Village Anti-Waste-Slag Self-Rescue Association. At the end of September 2014, she was beaten severely in a conflict with on-site personnel while inspecting the slag backfill area alone, and to this day she still holds her post.
With a head of graying hair in a simple bob and a dark complexion tinged with what looks like sunburned redness and swelling. Having just finished busy work in the banana plantation, Zheng Miaozhen could hardly hide her exhaustion as she got home and sat on a low stool to take off her rain boots. Before she had even gotten her shoes off, she picked up the phone, "Hello, hello, hey! Okay, go ahead."
After pausing for 7 or 8 seconds, Zheng Miaozhen stood up and stood barefoot in front of her home. She looked toward the coconut grove ahead, and said into the phone again, "Okay, yes, understood, sorry to trouble you to keep observing. After the reporter leaves, I'll hurry over right away to meet you."
Asked her, "Who was that? Did something come up?" "Haha, that was my husband! He saw people coming and going over by the slag field and told me about it." Zheng Miaozhen flashed a mouthful of white teeth and a big smile.
"Then why do you talk like a commander-in-chief?" Zheng Miaozhen looked a little embarrassed, "It's been like this for six years! The farmers around here, including my husband and kids, whenever they discover anything unusual over by the slag backfill area, they always report the news to me right away."
Zheng Miaozhen: The countryside is too beautiful, my home is too good, how can I not speak out when slag barges in
Every morning at 5:30, Zheng Miaozhen gets on an old bicycle, its two tires creaking and clattering as they turn and turn, accompanying her humming and singing all the way to the banana plantation.
As if she had forgotten those vexing slag matters, Zheng Miaozhen's gaze was no longer sharp and angry, and as soon as she parked the bike she said, "Kaohsiung's Qishan is a good place, and living in Dalin is even happier. To our east are the foothills of the Yushan Range, and to our west are the foothills of the Alishan Range. When it rains, both sides of the mountains have beautiful sea of clouds. Those foreign beautiful sights on postcards are nothing special; we have them right here, and we can see them anytime, anywhere."
Zheng Miaozhen is from Alian, Kaohsiung, where her parents ran a small grocery store together. Coming from a merchant family, she had never done farm work. After marrying 28 years ago, she followed her husband back to his hometown of Dalin Village to settle down, and only then gradually came into contact with agriculture. But because Zheng Miaozhen had long worked in early childhood education, farming was mostly just helping out. She never imagined that she would later become the chair of the self-rescue association leading Dalin residents against slag.
When the slag incident broke out, she quit her job
Wearing a banana work shirt covered in black spots from oxidized banana sap, Zheng Miaozhen showed a puzzled look, "Almost everyone in Dalin Village farms. The water they use is either groundwater or water from the nearby Qishan River. These are all gifts of nature. By what right are they being destroyed? Do government officials, scholars and experts not worry at all that the slag buried twenty or thirty meters underground will affect the groundwater?"
"As soon as the 2013 slag backfill incident broke out, everyone was very scared. I remember at that time there were reports, petitions, protests, or monitoring and photographing; there were so many things to handle urgently every day that I had no choice but to quit my job as a kindergarten teacher and farm together with my husband, so that I could both keep up the monitoring and keep the whole family fed." As she spoke, Zheng Miaozhen grew more and more agitated!
"Such a beautiful farming village, filled with this kind of stuff, harming our lives and our existence. If we don't protest and don't tell the government, it really won't do!"
