At first glance, it may seem like just a black truck filled with bottles of water, but a closer look reveals a darker – or rather murkier – side to what’s sloshing around inside.
Chinese artist "Nut Brother" can point to some success from his Beijing exhibit that used 10,000 bottles filled with contaminated drinking water from the village of Xiaohaotu in China’s northwest Shaanxi province to raise awareness of contaminated rural groundwater, although it did not go down so well with Beijing authorities.
The mobile exhibition is being driven around Beijing as a reminder of the costs of the country’s rapid economic development. Nut Brother – an artist known for advocacy work on environmental and social issues – created the exhibition in defiance after his initial show was shut down.
The central government acknowledges that years of unbridled economic development has resulted in areas of the country with contaminated ground water. While it has stepped up clean-up projects in recent years, environmental activists say awareness of the issue lags far behind that of air pollution, while enforcement of quality standards is patchy.
"People have focused more on air pollution, because smog is easy to spot. But not much attention has been put on water," said Nut Brother, who previously drew attention to air pollution by making a brick from smog particles that he had collected with a vacuum cleaner.
So in June, he set out to change things. Shocked by Shaanxi’s dirty drinking water during a work trip to the province in May, the 37-year-old enlisted the help of villagers to fill 10,000 empty Nongfu bottles and brought them back to Beijing, where they were installed in a museum.
While that prompted the environmental bureau covering Xiaohaotu to launch an investigation and oil giant Sinopec to partly stop drilling in a gas field residents say is the source of the contamination, Beijing authorities took a dim view of the art and confiscated most of the bottles.
Two weeks later, authorities from the Industrial and Commercial Bureau dismantled his display, removing most of the bottled water.
Nongfu Spring Company later filed a complaint claiming his work infringed on its copyright.
“Nongfu Spring literally means ‘farmer’s spring water’, using village farmers as a brand,” Nut Brother told AFP. He uses a pseudonym and says he does not want to use his real name to “protect” himself.
“But the reality is farmers don’t drink this water. A lot of their water is seriously tainted with pollution.”
Nongfu Spring Company’s legal department refused interview requests and calls to their public relations team went unanswered.
Large parts of China are blanketed in toxic smog and suffer from polluted waterways as a result of the country’s economic boom.
While much attention has been paid to the impact of rapid industrialization on China’s air, the effects on the country’s water supply are less well known – and less visible.
Across China, much of the water is “unfit for human contact”, according to a 2017 report by Greenpeace East Asia, and 14 of 31 provinces failed to meet water quality targets despite a nationwide push for improvement in previous years.
“They’ve been drinking this water for more than 10 years,” Nut Brother said.
The samples contain high levels of iron and manganese, which can be toxic in large doses, he added.
“It’s not fit for consumption but the villagers have no choice.”
The roving exhibit seems to have startled some visitors.
“It’s shocking to know we have people who drink this kind of water,” one of the onlookers said.
Another passer-by bravely took a swig from the bottle.
“You can definitely feel bits of the dirt,” he said.
“It makes me feel very lucky to be able to drink clean water. Very lucky.”
ART ACTIVISM
Drawing attention to social issues has been a staple of China’s art scene since the 1980s, propelling activist-artists like Ai Weiwei to global stardom, although it has become less prevalent in recent years as the Communist Party under President Xi Jinping has been increasingly intolerant of any form of dissent.
Residents of Xiaohaotu, where the average annual income is about 10,000 yuan ($1,497), have complained for years about local water pollution. They say the ground water, used to farm and drink, was polluted by the Sinopec gas project launched in 2005.
Huabei oil-and-gas company, the Sinopec subsidiary in charge of the project, declined to comment and referred Reuters to an online statement announcing that drilling had been partly suspended pending the outcome of the environmental investigation.
The Xiaohaotu environmental bureau found that the local water contained levels of heavy metals, such as iron and manganese, that exceeded national standards by as much as 4.2 times. Its investigation continues.
