The above photo, from a “water appreciation walk” organized by a Beijing environmental NGO last weekend, captures nicely what to me is the most stunning characteristic of China’s new green movement: It’s almost incomprehensible optimism. These people are standing next a shallow, fetid ribbon of water filled with algae blooms that runs (or rather, sits and festers) between a pair of sloping concrete banks along the western edge of the new Olympic park. The paper in the kid’s hands is a set of statistics detailing the doom that awaits Beijing as its water supplies dwindle. Yet he is smiling. His audience is rapt, not in the least defeated. The scene reminded me of another Chinese movement that once produced similar imagery (see below). Let’s just hope for better results this time around.

For more photos from the water walk, click here.

For a summary, I couldn’t do better than Andrew Leonard, author of Salon’s How the World Works: “A lifetime of blog posts decrying the environmental toll of high-tech industrial production does not begin to approach the impact of Michael Zhao’s 20-minute documentary on the processing of e-waste in Guiyu, China.”

Michael’s a quiet killer of a journalist, soft-spoken and unassuming and ludicrously dedicated. Which is precisely why he was able to get this footage. On more than one occasion, he walked into these secretive industrial hells, digital camera dangling innocently around his neck as if he were a lost tourist, filming as he feigned ignorance—a feat he was bullied into recounting innumerable times on his return.

It didn’t end there. After he came back, I watched him labor into the wee hours on a multimedia version of the story for the better part of a year, the ironic glow of a computer screen lighting his lone face long after saner and less dedicated students had succumbed to the temptations of bed.

In other words, a rare work of pure journalistic intent, well worth the time to watch.
The entire film is available here.

Michael’s introduction to the film appears on China Digital Times. See also a video interview with Michael, “EWaste: Dumping on the Poor,” produced by the Asia Society.