|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PHOTOS BY LUCA GABINO
|
|
|
|
 or years, I’ve heard fables and legends about a mysterious cemetery somewhere in China. I heard whispers on the internet and from Chinese friends about mountains of broken computers, heaps of chips, motherboards, and printer cartridges virtually filling the streets of a South Asian village. But it was kept quiet by the notoriously tight-lipped Chinese government. It was kind of like the elusive elephant graveyard, but with technological offal and guarded by mean communists. I decided that I would make it my mission to go there.
I slowly discovered that 80 percent of all the electronic toxic waste collected around the world ends up in Guiyu, a small town in the southern China province of Guangdong. The town imports more than 1 million tons of this stuff every year. Almost 90 percent of Hong Kong’s computers end up there, but 60 percent of the total waste originates in the USA. The exact location of Guiyu has been kept secret by the authorities, but I already knew that Shenzhen was the biggest city in Guangdong and that it was just an hour and a half away from Hong Kong.
Even with Hong Kong being Chinese again, we had to go through customs to get into Shenzhen. We boarded the bus to Cheng Dian, guessing it was the nearest city to Guiyu. On the bus the situation got even creepier when the hostess pulled out a video camera and started filming each passenger for “security reasons.” I was the only Westerner on board. During the three-hour bus ride the same advert looped on the in-bus televisions. It showed Shenzhen as a city of fun, happiness, and luxury. Looking out the window at the gray factories, the sea of cement, and the columns of smoke I had to ask myself if any of the other passengers were falling for it. Toward the end of the journey I found a university student who spoke a little English. Taking a chance, I asked her where Guiyu was. She acted quite perplexed at first and replied that no such place existed. But I could tell she knew something, so I begged her until she scribbled directions on a piece of paper.
We arrived in Cheng Dian at night and I took a room in a cheap hotel. I spent the next day trying to find someone who would tell us more about Guiyu. The locals denied its existence. Fortunately I found a taxi driver who was willing to take me there for the relative mountain of cash that is 40 euros. I handed him the directions that the girl on the train had written for me, and we set off in almost total darkness. The driver eventually dropped me off at the only hotel in the proximity of Guiyu. From the car, all I could see was a big white block of cement surrounded by garbage. I stepped out into the most surreal landscape I have ever seen.
It was a sea of garbage. The heaps of trash began accumulating next to the hotel walls and did not stop for as far as the eye could see. The whole town was a construction site, with the old wooden barracks being replaced by unfinished houses. You can still spot Guiyu’s rural past in the barracks that once clearly constituted most of the town, but the e-waste economy required more accommodation for the 200,000 migrant workers who moved to Guiyu in the past six years. Everywhere around us people were busy carrying or unloading computer parts. Huge piles of outer shells lay next to construction sites, layers and layers of motherboards and CD players were dumped in the courtyards, and thousands of bags of chips spilled inside and outside, forming massive mountains between the tiny dwellings. Children were dividing tiny chips by color in the street.
|
|
TO BE CONTINUED:
CTRL+ALT+LANDFILL | 1 | 2 |
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Mar 14, 2009 wrote:
neil flannery needs to live in the hellhole for a few weeks and then say it isn’t for real. china will always allow their poor to be used.
what, you are living in your nice house, driving your nice SUV, with 2 laptops and a desktop to boot?
Trust me ... this stuff is real look up other sites to confirm before your insensitive chip starts to go beserk | | Anonymous, on Mar 14, 2009 wrote:
Typical China government mentality. To cover it up, keep it a secret and let their people be pawns in their own games. I am Asian and I am just appalled by China and their tactics. They think people are just expendable and I am just flabbergasted by this. I am saddened by the treatment of the chinese laborers and their poor. It is so very difficult to get ahead if you are poor and there are many, many poor in China. I just think that we should do our part to recycle, reuse, refurbish -- but not send it to these poor people making less than my lunch a day! This stuff is toxic !! (Ok wrote: "whats the big deal? is this like, computer nerd mecca, or is it really toxic?" -- before you post, look it up and realize that you just made some very insensitive comments and stupid ones at that. | | Anonymous, on Dec 22, 2008 wrote:
Great! This is what I was looking for. Im sorry to bother you but I am actually going to write my senior thesis on e-waste and I will want to travel to e-waste recycling centers and cities like this, so it would be wonderful if I could get any sort of help that you are willing to offer. Please email me to shirubadanieru@me.com
Thank you very much. | | Anonymous, on Nov 11, 2008 wrote:
News isn’t old if it’s still happening. All you fucks who happen not to live in Guiyu think life is just grand because you don’t have to deal with that. "It isn’t important because I don’t live there." Excuse me, but your one life is worth nothing if you only choose to be ignorant. It does exist, try out some research.
/thread | | Anonymous, on Jul 6, 2008 wrote:
News isn’t old if it’s still happening. All you fucks who happen not to live in Guiyu think life is just grand because you don’t have to deal with that. "It isn’t important because I don’t live there." Excuse me, but your one life is worth nothing if you only choose to be ignorant. It does exist, try out some research. | | |
| |
