A lone man navigates his boat in a lotus-covered Honghu Lake. (Photo : en.hubei.gov.cn)
The local government plans to relocate the people living on houseboats on Honghu Lake in Hubei Province as part of its continuous conservation measures.
Jianghan Plain’s freshwater lake, located in the southwest of Honghu City, needs further protection, reported the Global Times.
Shi Changhao, deputy head of the Honghu Wetland Bureau, told the paper that their agency asked factories discharging pollutants directly into the lake to move their operations in other places.
The local government has been asking fisherfolk to relocate and has been removing the nets they placed on the lake since 2000. Those who complied looked for other means of livelihood elsewhere.
One fisherman, 53-year-old Zhu Zhangsheng now works as a performer at the Lantian Ecological Park. He established a new profession as a leader of a folk performance group.
The government gives itself until the end of 2016 to completely remove all existing nets.
Many fisherfolk have been living in the lake for decades. The scenic and historic lake has been serving as a home to Wang Yunjun and his family since the ‘50s.
Wang is joined by nearly 1,500 other families, with “more than half of the fishermen” being “illiterate” and “elderly,” according to the Global Times.
Many dwellers engage in aquaculture, particularly in farming crabs. Its “massive” cultivation, according to Shanghai Daily, has damaged the ecosystem of Honghu Lake.
Crab farming “took up as much as 70 percent of the lake area,” reported China Daily in 2005.
Hubei’s local authorities implemented the Honghu Lake Wetland Protection and Restoration Demonstration Project (HLWPRDP) in 2004. They recruited people to render patrol services.
The polygon-shaped shallow lake covers an area of 348 square kilometers. Lotus grows abundantly there.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) calls Honghu, now a popular tourist destination, “a national icon.” It served as a battleground in 1930 for the Maoist army, according to an article by the New York-based UNDP.
The six-act Chinese modern opera, “Red Guards on Honghu Lake,” is based from this battle. It was made into film and was shown in 1961 entitled, “Red Guards of Lake Hong.”
