Waste Tide in WASP-Land

CHEN QIUFAN –

TR. KEN LIU — WASTE TIDE –

2013–2019

This is a masterpiece with the main defect of all masterpieces, it sounds kind of timeless, out of time. We are in China in the waste industry before China reduced drastically its waste processing for mainly the US and Europe. But even if China is no longer the main actor in the field, some other countries, underdeveloped or just starting to develop, are in this business that is an industry that will take several decades to clean up and close up. And I will say nothing about the floating waste islands in the various oceans and the drastic consequences they have on the planet. See the Epilogue.

Apart from that, the depiction of this industry is outrageously sickening.

First of all, it attracts a lot of migrant workers, like everywhere in eastern China, because the salaries are motivating by being higher than in the rest of China and work is more regular, at times more intensive, despite regulations and controls. Many of these migrant workers keep links with their central or western provinces and their families, and they travel there once, twice or three times a year for the various one-week-long vacations and festivities like, first of all, the Chinese New Year. And since now China is developing full speed in the west…