(Page 3 of 4)
Hualong New Village was established in August 2005 to provide housing for families displaced by the Dimaluo Power Station, a small dam in Yunnan's Gongshan County. As I wandered through sterile looking cinder-block houses, I noticed the only land devoted to growing crops was a small sloped area covered in rock piles; a few corn stalks wavered in the breeze on dusty patches of soil among the stones. After introducing myself to a group of villagers and outlining some basic questions regarding the resettlement process, one of the women practically exploded: "It's bad here; we have nothing. We don't have any land, no money, no jobs, the government isn't doing anything to help us, and now we don't have any food. You want to know if our new houses are nice? Take a look for yourself-there's nothing inside." Peeking through the door, I spied some bedding. There were bottles scattered about the floor. "We used to have plenty of food and were full after our meals. Now many of us often go hungry. The forest was close to the old village and we could forage for medicinal plants, fungi, and food, but now we're too far away. There's no place for livestock either-our goats and chickens have all died. And there isn't any clean water here-we have to walk ten minutes to fetch river water." I shuddered at the thought of drinking water from the murky Nu River, the regional substitute for a landfill and sewage system. "We all used to be healthy, but now we're always getting sick."
One day in Dimaluo, a group of government officials notified eighteen families that they had to move into homes in Hualong New Village, seven miles down the hill. They were told that in fifteen days their houses in Dimaluo would be demolished to make room for a new power station that would improve their lives. According to one of the new village leaders, "We saw the new houses being built but didn't know who they were for; no one knew why the government was working there because none of us ever went to look. We had no idea these homes were for us. We never agreed to living here."