Investigating the slag site, she was beaten and seriously injured, yet Zheng Miaozhen, commander-in-chief against the evil forces, grows braver with every setback
Zheng Miaozhen, 55, a banana farmer and chairwoman of the Dalin Village Self-Rescue Association Against Waste Slag Backfill. At the end of September 2014, she went alone to inspect the slag backfill area, clashed with on-site personnel, and was beaten and seriously injured; to this day she still stands her post.
With a head of graying, plainly combed hair, the dark complexion of her face tinged with a sunburn-like redness and swelling. Having just finished work in the banana plantation, Zheng Miaozhen could not 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 a pause of 7 or 8 seconds, Zheng Miaozhen stood up and stood barefoot in front of her house. She looked toward the coconut grove ahead and said into the phone again: "Okay, yes, I understand, I'll trouble you to keep watching. After the reporters leave, I'll rush over right away to meet you."
Asked who it was, and whether something had come up at the last minute? "Haha, that was my husband! He saw someone coming and going over by the slag field and let me know." 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 here, including my husband and kids, whenever they spot anything unusual over by the slag backfill area, they always report the news to me first."
Zheng Miaozhen: The countryside is so beautiful and my home is so good, how could 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 rattling as they turn and turn, accompanying her humming and singing all the way to the banana plantation.
It seemed she had forgotten those annoying slag matters; Zheng Miaozhen's eyes were no longer sharp and angry. As soon as she parked the bike she said: "Qishan in Kaohsiung is a good place, and living in Dalin is even more of a blessing. To our east are the outlying ridges of the Yushan range, and to our west the outlying ridges of the Alishan range. When it rains, both sides of the mountains have beautiful seas of clouds. Those foreign beauty spots on postcards are nothing; we have them right here, and we can see them anytime, anywhere."
Zheng Miaozhen is from Alian in Kaohsiung, where her parents ran a small grocery store together. Coming from a business 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 farming. But because Zheng Miaozhen had long worked in early childhood education, her farming was mostly just helping out. She never imagined that she would later become the chairwoman of the self-rescue association leading Dalin residents against the slag.
When the slag incident broke out, she quit her job and has fought on for six years to this day
Wearing a banana work shirt covered in black spots from oxidized banana sap, Zheng Miaozhen's eyes showed puzzlement. "Almost everyone in Dalin Village farms. The water they use is either groundwater or water from the nearby Qishan River. These are gifts from nature, so by what right are they being destroyed? Don't government officials, scholars and experts 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 afraid. I remember that back then there were reports, petitions, protests, and monitoring and photographing; every day there were so many things to handle urgently that I had no choice but to quit my job as a kindergarten teacher and farm together with my husband, so I could both keep up the monitoring and keep the whole family fed." As she spoke, Zheng Miaozhen grew more and more agitated!
"In such a beautiful rural village, filling in this kind of stuff endangers our lives and our very existence. If we don't protest and don't tell the government, it really won't do!"
