[Si Cheng Dong smiles awkwardly and waves his hand to catch my attention. We are meeting at a small café in the early morning. Dong was previously mayor of Sandouping, home to the bygone Three Gorges Dam. He led his community to eliminate methylmercury, a product of the collapsed Dam.]
We had all heard odd stories about the first outbreak. At first, they were through gossips between the local villagers who traveled back and forth westward for business ventures. No one knew exactly what happened other than that the Dachang villagers deemed a young boy as “cursed” for his hostile behavior. No one then would’ve thought that this mere 12-year-old boy would be the start of a disturbing worldwide crisis. The mysterious plague spread quickly throughout the country and reduced China’s population significantly. The government had known about this problem; in fact, I think they are to blame for the creation of this plague, but was oblivious to the ongoing attacks. China was so afraid of your country finding out this incident that it tried to mask its outbreaks through distractions with Taiwan. The government executed its plan so effectively that the rest of the world thought the first outbreak originated in South Africa.
I was the mayor of Sandouping at the time, home to the newly built Three Gorges Dam. Its purpose was to reduce the chances of floods by increasing water space in the Yangtze River (Hvistendahl). The Dam also became a popular monumental site for visitors and achieved great success in economic aspects with the rise of tours and its focus on being environmentally friendly. But once the zombie outbreak worsened and became uncontrollable, the Chinese government began to seclude itself from internal affairs. The government no longer supported the dam and withdrawn its military, abandoning it to the zombies. No one went outside during this time either, people stuck to their homes due to the fear zombies. It was almost as if we had abandoned our own city. The sky was always dark from day to night and time seemed to pass by very slowly.
I can understand why the dam collapsed under the heavy weight of zombies. The government built the reservoir on two major and active fault lines, the Jiuwanxi and Zigui (Watson). They had already detected noticeable cracks that continued to worsen throughout the dam completion project, but ignored our community’s concerns to halt the project. The Dam triggered countless small earthquakes, even before the outbreak.
Three years into the war, the dam collapsed and all its pieces, including debris, rocks, trees, and houses swept up by the dam, raced down the river and into the sea. There was such a large sum of zombies on the dam that it just ruptured from the weight. The government did not put out military troops to guard the Dam when it was such an important monumental site of the country. They also seemed to ignore the fact that Dam required intensive supervision because it could be a potential source for natural disaster. When it broke apart, a tsunami of water released from the Dam left the river polluted. There was no clean water for the people. But an ameliorative solution we used to provide safe and drinkable water for the community was through the old-fashioned, boiling water method. We planned to have as much clean water as possible for our whole city and boiling tons of water was not very time efficient. Additionally, the Dam destroyed many villages, temples and ancient grounds worth of priceless history and submerged historic relics, thousands of years old, under water. There were zombies in the water as well.
Due to the contamination of water, methylmercury levels increased, putting the villagers at risk to neurotoxin poisoning. Methylmercury is a poisonous substance that lives in the environment and negatively affects human health once ingested (Heller). Bacteria from the debris reacted with mercury in the water and soil from the Yangtze. People contracted this poison by consuming whatever fish they could find in the river (Karimi). Many fish had high levels of this due to the unclean water and on top of that fish naturally have high levels of methylmercury because it leaves their bodies slowly and accumulates in their organs. People noticed this dilemma mostly affected pregnant women and young infants. Methylmercury causes damages to the central nervous system, or brain and spinal cord damage (Heller). Babies were tragically born with small heads, cerebral palsy, and slow development. It was such a shocking sight to see when mothers held their newborn infants with horror and disgust. Some had even abandoned their infants outside to the zombies. Sometimes I would do something very ordinary such as reading a book or watching TV and I would suddenly remember their piercing screams, the sounds of shredding, and then horrifying silence. The poisoning also affected adults and the symptoms included blindness, deafness, and impaired mental functions as well as cerebral paralysis. I was very fortunate to not be too highly exposed to methylmercury.
[He points at his hearing aid.]
The government paid no attention to our crisis. They put so much effort in trying to conceal their misconduct with the outburst of zombies and putting troops near Taiwan but could not even put troops near the dam before it caved in or put troops after it broke to help clean up. Do you see where this is going? China did not care about its people in their time of need and only worried about not looking weak in front of the USA and Russia. China had high-quality resources and much political and military power however, it was no use trying to win the government’s side. I heard other cities tried asking for help but were unsuccessful. There was no way we could effectively persuade the government for assistance in killings the zombies, cleaning up the broken dam in the water, and most of all getting rid and preventing further problems with methylmercury.
That’s why I came up with a plan to mitigate the effects of methylmercury. As a community, we were very desperate for an effective plan. As mayor and leader of my village, the community counted on me to be their last hope. The plan we executed was for everyone to help clean the debris out of the river. That means carrying out the trash and throwing them into a giant pile. I can say that mostly everyone was glad to work together in this hard labor. This method required much effort from as many people as possible. It was not easy at first because of our unfortunate low population and many had given up hope. It was also very dangerous because of the many active zombies in the area. We split into two groups; one to fight zombies and the other to clean the debris. Those who fought zombies had the difficult task of fighting zombies with whatever weapon they could find on the ground. We had no automatic nuclear weapons or machine guns. The brick, wooden, or concrete weapons in our fists brought out primitive urges in us during unexpected situations. Once, I was out by myself because I was stupid and naïve to think that there were no zombies around. I was walking along the river when I felt two arms grab my right shoe. I quickly spun around and saw it on the ground with missing legs. I jumped down on it and repeatedly smacked its head with a rock so hard that its head flattened out into a pancake.
[He laughs for five seconds and clears his throat.]
The other group that cleaned debris had to pick up large pieces from the dam, parts of trees, houses, and cars and set them into piles. It was a long process, but it was the first step and most efficient way to clear out the mess from the dam. We developed stronger bonds with those around us amidst the fear of the unknown future. Somehow we learned to smile and laugh again. We had worked on that job for a few years and it occupied a lot of our time and effort. But we successfully cleaned up more than half of the mess in our city. Methylmercury levels gradually decreased, but fishes were still affected by them. We had to give up the consumption of fish for a long time.
Were there any other better alternatives?
Initially, no. We lacked a lot of resources, government assistance, and of course: people. During the cleanup, we realized that by cleaning up the Dam we were only preventing methylmercury from increasing. It, however, could not treat the methylmercury in our bodies. Some of our intelligent people researched the interactions between selenium and methylmercury a year into the cleanup. Selenium was easy to obtain as it is a mineral found in water, soil, and even certain foods (Kiefer). The data they found showed that selenium could possibly counteract the toxicity of methylmercury. In a series of lab experiments, they fed a selected number of fishes with different concentrations of selenium (Karimi). After a month, they analyzed the effects of selenium in their bodies. The data were unclear on whether it helped get rid of the pollutant or not. They found that 80 percent of the methylmercury initially stayed in their bodies, but also that some fish resulted in no methylmercury left in their bodies. Additionally, they found that lower doses of selenium were more effective. It was concluded that selenium could not negatively impact our bodies unless you take anything above 400 micrograms a day (Kiefer). Although further research would determine its capabilities, we decided to do something risky with what we discovered. They spent the majority of their times researching to produce selenium supplements. We were also advised to consume foods high in selenium available to us such as whole grains, seeds, and mushrooms. The rest of the fishes were also fed selenium products as well. Even if it does not help in limiting methylmercury in our bodies, it is a good dietary source that aids in antioxidant properties and may reduce various cancers (Kiefer).
The supplements were a hit. Many people all over China went crazy trying to get them. People who were exposed to methylmercury in their cities such as Shanghai and Wuhan traveled here to buy these supplements. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken these and, to be honest, I’m not sure if they work for me it not. Perhaps it works for other people in my city but not me. Life is not fair sometimes.
[He shakes his head while chuckling darkly.]
Do you regret taking them?
With the lack of government assistance, the best solution for now is to continue cleaning up the mess from the Dam and our villages. It effectively cleans our environment of debris and limits levels of methylmercury in the water but it does not decrease levels in our bodies, which is fine with me because our ecosystem is the top priority. To answer your question, not at all. At the time, everyone was willing to do whatever it took to become healthy again. We were already mentally dead and physically dying little by little, what was the worst that could happen? With the new technology and resources that we have now, the next step would be developing higher quality services that can further eliminate methylmercury in the waters and in our bodies.