Agence France-Presse
January 17, 2001

Wuli village: Wei Dongying dumped 30 plastic bottles from an oversized plastic bag onto her living room floor. “Look at all the different colors: red, black, yellow, brown,” said Wei as she picked up the bottles containing samples of water taken from the canals and viaducts surrounding Wuli, a village of 1,500 people in eastern China. “The water used to be clear here. Now look at it. Filthy, undrinkable polluted water.” … Wuli is described in China’s media as being one of the nation’s so-called “cancer villages”, a legacy of the pollution caused by a chemical industrial park with 25 factories that was set up there in 1992. … The situation in Wuli is a depressingly familiar one around China, especially along China’s heavily industrialized eastern beltway where factories take advantage of the natural waterways to expel toxic waste. … Read the full story.