The front page of the Nanhu Evening News tells us today that “The news that everyone is paying attention to right now is the heat.” This has been the case for the past few weeks. As we covered on Danwei, newspapers in Shanghai recently wondered if the summer of 2013 might end up being even worse than the heatwave of 1934. Now, the Zhejiang, Jiaxing-based Nanhu Evening News has given a face to the fight against the heatwave facing China. The front page of this newspaper is dominated by a photograph of a man in a boiler suit with his arms dangling down a manhole. The headline below demands that people “Pay respect to the temperature warrior.”
This caption of this photograph reads, “Yesterday, beneath the searing midday sun, the ground temperature in central Jiaxing reached more than 70° centigrade. On the south ring road, a water service repairman named Gong Jinqian lay on the scorching ground, fixing a broken water meter for local residents. He spent more than half an our on the furnace-like ground until the meter was fixed, and when he got up, his entire body was drenched.”
Gong Jinqian may have been the most photogenic hero in Jiaxing yesterday, but he was not alone in his bravery. Chu Tianrong saw an old lady faint due to the heat and came to her rescue, taking her back home and arranging for a doctor to visit her there. After a 16-year-old girl fainted in the Lindai Library in the Pinghu district of Jiaxing, Ye Xiao went to her aid, calling the local police station and fanning the girl with her cap until officers arrived.
In Jiaxing, people responded to the heat not only with individual acts of heroism but also with kindness. A further story relating to the heat in the Nanhu Evening News begins, “The persisting heat is testing our people and it is testing the city, but it is also testing people’s care for one another, and our sense of civilization here in Jiaxing.” But in the face of an examination in Shanghai which saw people wilt and eggs fry, Jiaxing has, by the judgement of its own journalists, passed with flying colors. Volunteers have been going door to door to offer their services in heat mitigation, while a series of “Compassion Benches” have been set up to give people a rest, and especially prominent have been Environmental Protection Department workers who unflinchingly kept working under the boiling sun. One, Hu Dengyu, only sought shelter at the Jianguo Road Environmental Protection Workers Compassionate Rest Point after toiling in the heat for four hours without the slightest break.
Having spent ten years working for the Environmental Protection Department and with his skin tanned the colour of soy sauce, Hu thought he had seen it all, but confessed that this heat wave was too much even for folk as hardy as himself to manage. “Thank you so so much for this Compassionate Rest Point”, Hu said. The Jianguo Road rest point is far from the only one: a further 34 have been set up around Jiaxing. Here, workers like Hu can cool off in summer, warm up in winter, rest their feet and quench their thirst.
The story of Hu Dengyu and the Environmental Protection Workers Compassionate Rest Points is only one of the tales of heat-inspired compassion mentioned in the Nanhu Evening News. There is also the story of a couple in their 80s who came to look after 91 year-old Mrs Li, who has no close family in Jiaxing. Then there is Xu Weiping, Party Secretary of a housing community in Jiaxing, who opened up the community’s Elderly People’s Activity Room so that two street sweepers may be able to sleep in air-conditioned comfort. Finally, there are the people, young and old, of the Muhe community who spent over an hour carrying water around to make sure the trees in their neighbourhood would not go thirsty in the scorching heat. In the face of some of the highest temperatures in recent memory, says the Nanhu Evening News, Jiaxing has passed the test of civilization thanks to local heroism and compassion.
Sources and Links
Nanhu Evening News (南湖晚报): 致敬，高温战士