Want to visit the backwater Yunnan town of Jinding, which sits in the shadow of Asia’s largest lead mine? Of course you don’t. Luckily, Greenpeace has done it for you, and come away with this 360-degree, interactive video shot from a drone.

Don’t be fooled by those blue skies. Jinding, in the impoverished county of Lanping, is heavily polluted, according to a Greenpeace East Asia (GPEA) investigation:

GPEA’s field work was conducted in mid-April of this year. The team collected household dust and earth and water samples in Jinding Town. Tests showed that cadmium and lead contamination in the area is widespread. Further analysis revealed that the samples’ cadmium, lead and zinc content have a direct correlation to proximity to the Jinding Zinc Industrial Smelting Plant.

The health effects have been troubling:

In 2006 Yunnan Jinding Zinc Corporation Ltd. acknowledged that the minimum distance between residential areas and the plant should be 600m, and promised to relocate residents accordingly – a promise yet to  be fulfilled. The plant has caused numerous health problems for the villagers, especially amongst children, who are particularly susceptible to lead absorption.

A GPEA review of blood lead poisoning cases across China over the past 10 years has found that a third of all cases are caused by lead-zinc smelting. As the largest lead producer and lead polluter in western China, the problems are particularly severe in Yunnan.

It’s yet another reminder that pollution takes many forms in China — soil in this case; also see: water – and sometimes is not so easily masked. As GPEA puts it:

This is just one way we can show the world this scandal. We can’t let Yunnan Jinding Zinc Corporation Ltd. keep getting away with hiding from their responsibilities. They must keep their promise to relocate local residents.

Oklahoma and Texas play an annual football game called the Red River Rivalry. When it comes to actually red rivers though, none compare to the one found in Boluo County near Huizhou, Guangdong province earlier this week. It’s like the jungle’s menstruating.

The Nanfang reports:

After the many storms that have deluged Guangdong Province with heavy rain, rivers have completely turned bright red or blue, reports Xinhua.

A printing factory is believed to be the cause of the discoloration, and has been ordered to close down.

As always in China, we’ve seen this before. (We even used the same Elizabeth Economy-inspired headline. Sorry about that.)

Picture This: Guangdong River Turns Bright Red (The Nanfang)

2014 has been an auspicious year so far for elephants. In January, the Chinese government crushed — the technical term for destroying — a whopping 6.15 tons of tusks, equivalent to one-sixth of the illegal ivory seized worldwide in 2012. The following week, Chinese officials worked with Kenyan authorities to apprehend the Chinese kingpin of a Kenya-based ivory ring.

These efforts are part of the Chinese-led wildlife trafficking operation with the badass name Cobra II, which led to more than 400 arrests and three tons of recovered ivory, basically all within the month of January. This government crackdown is a big deal in China, the world’s largest ivory consumer.

These efforts are part of a global trend. China’s crush followed a U.S. crushing of six tons of tusk in November and a Filipino burning of five tons (almost all of its national stock!) in June. Hong Kong, the “gateway for illegal ivory entering China,” announced a two-year plan to burn 28 tons of tusks.

Tusk-onomics

But will destroying ivory stockpiles hinder the illegal trade? Economists argue these efforts drive up the price of ivory by decreasing supply without affecting demand. Even if the supply doesn’t change (after all, the ivory to be destroyed is already off the market), the highly publicized campaign may still create the perception of scarcity, leading to similar effects.

Conversely, past campaigns to decrease the price of ivory by flooding the market with tusks have failed. In 2008, China and Japan were allowed to buy more than 100 tons of ivory in a one-time sale. Despite optimism that this effort would undercut the illegal ivory market, it backfired. The Chinese limited supply by only releasing a few tons of ivory each year. This drip-feed of legal ivory failed to meet demand, and even led to the perception that elephants were no longer as endangered. Smuggling increased, and legal ivory now often serves as a cover for the illegal tusk trade. Unless there’s a good way to distinguish legal from illegal ivory, these two markets will always go hand-in-hand.

On the right track?

China is the world’s biggest ivory consumer and home to the largest ivory-carving factory. Ivory from a registered dealer is legal in China, and the demand is significant: in the Chinese culture of gift-giving, it’s a prized item. Under current circumstances, the country doesn’t have much of a shot at ending the illegal ivory trade. Linking it with bribes is perhaps a first step toward ending the trade, and is surely part of the appeal of China’s crush, which took place not far from Dongguan, Guangdong province.

Chinese-run ivory smuggling operations abroad are both an embarrassment to China and a threat to its relationship with other nations. By cracking down on such cases, the government sends encouraging signals to important African nations like Kenya.

While the ivory crush does not mean an end to China’s illegal ivory trade, it’s a promising sign. Ivory crushes accompanied by programs such as Cobra II give us hope. Nonetheless, without further restrictions on the legal ivory trade or an anti-ivory government campaign, elephant poaching will surely continue as Chinese wallets grow.

Further reading:

• Beijing’s Elephant Graveyard: How China Still Drives World Ivory Market, The Telegraph
• China’s Ivory Crush is Important First Step, National Geographic
• Crush and Burn: A History of the Global Crackdown on Ivory, The Atlantic

Killing these and other endangered species is illegal in China, but enforcement is lax. Fortunately, the Global Times takes animal rights very seriously. Just look at last week’s cartoon on dolphin hunting in Japan.

Still, at least it’s ostensibly illegal in China. Looks like we’re going to need a more robust regulatory apparatus.

A 700-year-old tree in Shifang, Sichuan province withstood the efforts of a crane trying to secretly knock it down. Check it out. That’s what happens when an immovable object is actually immovable: 30 meters tall, 2.4 meters in diameter, apparently.

Via Hug China:

A local timber trader brought with his workers and secretly felled down a 700-year old tree in a Nanmu village, Bingchuan town, Shifang city, Sichuan province, and then when they tried to haul away the tree with a crane, the tree was so heavy that it overturned the crane, Ifeng.com reported Friday.

Of course, the crane would eventually tie the score at 1 apiece by actually destroying the tree.

Chinese netizens have overwhelmingly expressed anger and grief over the death of the ancient tree and hailed the overturn of the crane as nemesis invited by what the thieves had done.

Nature is fucked, as are we.

700-year-old tree secretly chopped down but too heavy to be hauled away, overturns crane (Hug China)

Hundreds of residents staged a not-in-my-backyard protest in Jiangmen, Guangdong province on Friday to oppose plans to build a uranium processing plant. SCMP reports that the protest, a restrained and civil affair, was largely organized via social media. The uranium complex, featuring three 30-hectare plants, would have been the nation’s biggest, reports NY Times. It adds:

Organized through social media and billed as an innocent stroll through the streets of Jiangmen, the demonstration was the latest example of urban Chinese willing to defy the authorities over environmental concerns. The government would not be likely to tolerate a similar gathering to demand political reform or an easing of news media restrictions.

Reached by phone, several residents said they were outraged to learn about the plant only last week when the government announced the project and then gave the public 10 days to submit comments. “They didn’t even let us know about it until it was almost started,” one man, Liang Naihe, said in an interview.

On Friday, the administration of Heshan, which operates under Jiangmen, announced support for the project.

One day later, the project was scrapped. Reports Voice of America:

The city government of Heshan, in the southern Guangdong province, said on its website Saturday that it was stopping the $6 billion project by China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC).

Mayor Wu Yuxion said the Heshan government respects the public’s opinion and will not apply for approval for the project.

Indeed, environmental protests have been uncannily successful in the past year, most notably when anti-PX protests in Ningbo led officials to say no “paraxylene (PX) project would be allowed in this city.”

Nonetheless, Sina Weibo censored images and updates from the events in Jiangmen. Mass demonstrations, even when officially sanctioned and producing the protesters’ desired result, walk too fine a line.

(Images Tea Leaf Nation, Global Voices)

Someone doesn’t enjoy his job. Reports The Telegraph, Zhou Shengxian, who is China’s environment minister, was “quoted by state media as saying: ‘I’ve heard that there are four major embarrassing departments in the world and that China’s ministry of environmental protection is one of them.’”

Mr Zhou, an economist and veteran Communist Party member, blamed his ministry’s malfunctions on “overlapping” remits, which confused the agency’s role in handling issues such as carbon emissions and water monitoring.

So, what are the world’s other three major embarrassing departments? Funny you ask, because Chinese microbloggers have a few ideas:

Thousands of fish have been dredged out of a reservoir near Sinan River Power Station, a hydroelectric dam in Yunnan province. How many thousands? Whatever 1,177 tons comes out to — about half a million, give or take many thousand.

The deaths began on May 20, according to Yunnan Net. Five days later, 1,177 tons of fish, mostly tilapia, were dead, including 3.6 million fry. The economic losses are estimated at 13 million yuan.

The cause was a sudden decrease in water level, leading to severe oxygen depletion, a condition known as aquatic hypoxia. There are both natural and artificial causes for hypoxia, but the article does not explicate the specific cause of this particular environmental disaster. At least these fish weren’t blasted dead in the water.

Experts and cleanup crew have been flocking to the area to disinfect and offer comfort for the fishermen. Meanwhile, efforts are being made to ensure this doesn’t happen again, with households each being distributed oxygen powder for their fish farms.

(H/T Even)

A) You have to import 5 million tons of freshwater
B) Your source of tap water is “dark as soy sauce”

Both of the above for Luohe, Henan province. Via Global Times:

Local residents say since Spring Festival  (February 10) this year they have seen white muddy things in the water after it is boiled, and the water looks like soy milk, the Dahe Daily report said. On Monday, residents found the water in the river was dark, and reported it to the city’s environmental protection bureau.

After receiving complaints from local residents, Yang Guozhi, a deputy mayor of the city, held an emergency meeting on Monday, and decided to buy 5 million tons of water from the upstream Yanshan Reservoir that will be diverted into the river.

A senior official from the city’s environmental protection bureau told the Dahe Daily that water levels in the Lihe River are low at this time of year and an upstream reservoir has caused the river to almost dry up. “The temperature is high and the river water does not flow, which lowers the river’s water replacement and self-purification capacity. That is the major reason the water is dark.”

The cause is lots of groundwater, apparently. Gross.

River like ‘soy sauce’: residents (Global Times, h/t Alicia)

This is alarming.

According to Nandu.com, 238 dead pigs and 89 dead dogs were found in Dongtun village in Luoyang, Henan province yesterday. By all accounts, they died suddenly and at the same time.

Initial tests have ruled out the H7N9 virus as a cause. Thank goodness for that and all, to know the zombie apocalypse has not yet arrived, but the question still remains: why are pigs and dogs dropping dead?

Some are speculating that a nearby chemical plant’s gas emissions may have poisoned the animals. “Usually there’s a smell,” a villager said, “today it was especially bad, really big.”

People have also complained about dizziness in the gas’s presence.

“Overnight, all the dogs in the village had basically died off,” one villager said. “Those that hadn’t died were in their last gasps.”

Dozens of canines were apparently dumped by the side of the road, which may or may not be better than a river.

An official from Shanhua, the town where Dongtun is based, said the exact cause of this incident is currently under investigation.

UPDATE, 4/18, 1:34 am: The death toll is up to 410 pigs and 122 dogs. Via AP:

The city’s propaganda office said that the deaths were being investigated but that they suspected they had to do with nearby chemical factories. The factories have been ordered to suspend production and help police with a criminal investigation into the incident, according to a report on a Henan provincial news website.

No poisonous gases have been found in tests on the air around the village and its drinking water has met quality standards, said the report, which the propaganda office confirmed.

(H/T @MissXQ)

The rain began yesterday afternoon, turning into ice by the late evening, continuing through the night as snow. And behold, the above picture via BJ Reviewer.

Josh Chin is also calling for photos at the hashtag #BeijingSnowWSJ / #BeijingSnowWSJ# (for you Weibo users), so do that if you want to see your picture on Wall Street Journal, maybe. This is our favorite so far, by Hudson Lockett:

A video follows from this Youku playlist.

Another video! This one by Eyal, running in the park:

UPDATE, 3/21, 11:28 am: WSJ has published its photo gallery. This one by @sanverde might have beaten out even Hudson Lockett’s above pic. What do you think?

Did you know that Tuesday, March, 12, was Arbor Day in China? On Zhi Shu Jie (植树节), literally Plant-A-Tree Day, people celebrated by planting anything they could. As Sina Weibo user @粮仓一鼠 put it, “Although there is no land to plant a tree, we can grow a pea in a flower pot.”

Like him, many others posted pictures of their work to Weibo. It was a fun and silly activity for many, but the outpouring of response also showed that lots of people desire cleaner air and are passionate about creating a better environment.

On Weibo, a post called “Show Off Your Green Spirit on Plant-A-Tree Day” attracted more than 3 million forwards. Some netizens posed with new flower pots in their office, some snapped pictures of themselves watering trees near bus stops, while others smiled at the camera while eating with stainless steel chopsticks instead of ones made of wood or bamboo.

Other netizen reactions:

@粮仓一鼠 wrote that he was going to plant a tree in a small courtyard below his apartment complex, yet he was afraid that the new tree would take up nutrition from a bigger tree nearby.

@济南陶玉山: Our suburb has a holly tree. The branches are horrendous. After work, I will get the big scissor from the office to trim the edges.

@美丽水滴: We still have to work on the holiday. So my husband and I already watered the multiple pom trees at Seawall.

@向日葵吖頭: I didn’t find a place to plant a tree. And are we not allowed to plant a tree in public spaces? Anyway, I bought two cacti and a pot of tulips and our bedroom is greener than before.

@小米噗一直很脱线: My suburb had a game show today and I won a pot of ivies and a dozen Chinese roses! Those are so expensive! I love Plant-A-Tree Day.

@颐高数码太原店: Alright, planting a tree on Arbor Day is impossible, as we all know. Our home has no space for a single tree. For the spirit of the holiday, I still want to encourage everyone to not use wooden disposable chopsticks. Since we cannot plant a tree, let’s not kill one. Happy Arbor Day!

@阿黎seven: I was eating lunch today when I remembered it is Plant-A-Tree Day. Well, I don’t know where to get a baby tree, so for the spirit of the holiday, I selected a few onions in the kitchen, carefully buried them in the backyard and watered them. They will grow very quickly!

@广州天气: A fifty-year-old tree produces an amount of oxygen worth 31,200 USD; it takes in carbon dioxide that prevents environmental damage that’s worth 62,500 USD; this tree also provides for birds as a shelter, and is worth 31,250 USD. A tree’s help to our environment is substantial. Even though we cannot always plant a tree, make sure you don’t stomp a small tree either. They will grow up and contribute to our health and environment in a positive way.

@小小小丹兄: I don’t care if we can’t find a place to plant a tree. I put together twenty-something pots and gave some to my neighbors. Their kids will have a lot of fun watering and taking care of them.

These are all small contributions, but as the saying goes, if everyone did just a little to help the environment, we’d all live in a cleaner, better place.

Xiao Yi is a travel enthusiast who tweets @ellies_day.

Seriously, now: forget the jokes, forget about water safety concerns, forget everything until this question is answered: what possibly could have gone through the mind of the homicidal pig farmer who dumped more than 6,000 pigs into the Huangpu River?

Did a pig farm explode? Does circovirus cause pigs to go mad and jump in water, as if they were on fire? Is it us who have gone mad? Have a look, this is how we’re talking about the dead pig-count nowadays:

By 3 pm Wednesday, 685 dead pigs had been fished from the Huangpu River, 43.8 percent fewer than the day before, and raising the total number of swine carcasses to 6,601, said a statement released by the Shanghai municipal government.

A 43.8 percent decrease of an increase in the number of dead pigs.

You know what’s really fucked up? Officials are now talking about dead pigs as if it was normal:

“This is not the first time we have found dead pigs. Farmers in the neighboring Zhejiang Province habitually throw them into rivers, putting Shanghai at risk of water pollution,” Xu Yonghua, a deputy director with the Jinshan district water authority, told the Global Times.

What? That’s CRAZY. I don’t know what else to say. Only an insane person would hear that and not scramble for the nearest shotgun or pitchfork. Play those words back in your mind: Farmers HABITUALLY throw DEAD PIGS into the water, putting Shanghai AT RISK OF WATER POLLUTION.

But I thought…

…the city government said Wednesday while reassuring the public that official tests show drinking water remains “unaffected.”

I don’t even care anymore that the pig farmer responsible has been detained. (By the way, he has been detained.)

Ear tags that identify a pig’s place of birth are showing that many were born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang. Recovered tags led authorities to a pig farmer in Jiaxing who was detained Wednesday for investigation after admitting he had thrown pigs in the river.

After disposing of more than 6,600 bodies — a number that is still increasing by hundreds every day — he loses his mind like the butcher’s assistant after skinning Luohan in Red Sorghum, right? Or maybe not. Because we are all crazy, because this world is.

Number of recovered dead pigs in decline (Global Times)

UPDATE, 3/18, 12:34 am: 8,354 pigs.

Previously: “Pigfestation” Is What We’re Now Calling It, Because Nearly 6,000 Dead Pigs

Unsatisfied with “hogwash,” “bay of pigs,” and “bacon” — all perfectly good and scurvy ways of describing the deathcarts of pig carcasses dredged out of the upper regions of Shanghai’s Shuangpu River this week — we now have “pigfestation,” courtesy of Bloomberg Businessweek:

What’s behind Shanghai’s pigfestation? Chinese media say the carcasses come from upstream farms, where a large number of pigs died in January and February. While the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday that there has been “no mass swine epidemic” in the area, authorities have identified the cause of death for at least some of the animals as an outbreak of porcine circovirus, the Shanghai Daily reported on Monday, citing the city’s agricultural commission.

And here’s Sina with the latest death count:

The number of dead pigs collected from Shanghai’s Huangpu River has increased to 5,916, Shanghai authorities announced Tuesday.

Lovely. Remember when we first reported this story, and 900 seemed like a lot of wasted pork? Those were the days.

Pigfestation Threatens to Spoil Party for China’s New Leader (Bloomberg Businessweek, h/t Barbara Demick)

(This story first appeared on BJC Kinja)

Babe: Pig in the Drinking Water. You’ve read the story, seen the video (above, if not). Now hear what the Onion, et al., have to say about the thousands of dead pigs in the Huangpu River, a source of “most” of Shanghai’s drinking water for its 23 million residents.

WSJ, above link:

Pigs suffer a wide variety of illnesses. A 2007 outbreak of high-fever blue ear disease killed around 50 million pigs, according to British and Chinese researchers. The World Organization for Animal Heath reported in January that Chinese authorities culled 948 pigs in southern Guangdong province after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease there. Mr. Chen said there are no signs of an epidemic but noted the approaching springtime is the key period to prevent disease. Research firm Genesus Genetics estimates China’s total pig population at more than 470 million.

Mmm, bacon water. MSNBC:

The Shanghai government said in a statement posted on its website on Monday that workers were continuing to collect carcasses from the river and it was closely monitoring the water quality although no pollution has been found so far.

INTERLUDE:

Via Perry Bible Fellowship, of course.

I see dead pigs. Associated Press:

Authorities have been pulling out the swollen and rotting pigs, some with their internal organs visible, since Friday – and revolting images of the carcasses in news reports and online blogs have raised public ire against local officials.

The Onion (via The Good Doctor):

Over 2,800 pig carcasses of unknown origin were found clogging Shanghai’s Huangpu River, the main drinking water source for the city, sparking widespread fears of contamination. What do you think?

@adamminter @abesauer @tomphillipsin My bets are on the word ‘hogwash’ appearing in a headline.

— Mara Hvistendahlさん (@MaraHvistendahl) 2013年3月11日

Sorry, this is the better link for @tomphillipsin report from the bay of pigs. See last line…telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews…

— malcolmmooreさん (@MalcolmMoore) 2013年3月11日

I’m more worried about Huangpu River contamination to those poor delicious pigs than anything else I mean cmon amirite?

— William Cさん (@HeyItsChili) 2013年3月12日

UPDATE, 3/13, 12:35 am: It’s now 5,916 pigs, according to Sina. Many suffered from circovirus, a disease that affects pigs but not human beings. Also, the water apparently remains uncontaminated.