'Garbage village' cleans up its act

TIANJIN-Every year with the advent of summer, Wang Qingli shuts all his doors and windows and sprays insecticide all around his house.

"The smell was just disgusting, and the mosquitoes and flies were appalling," Wang said. "Whenever the south wind blew, nobody in the village would open their doors."

Wang, 62, lives in Liujiamatou village in Tianjin. The village, which covers 133 hectares, once hosted more than 3,000 migrant workers, who converged there to recycle garbage.

Now residents like Wang are bidding farewell to their smelly lifestyle as the government begins cleaning up the area. Trees have replaced trash.

In the 1990s, garbage from downtown Tianjin was taken to Liujiamatou where villagers quickly realized it could be used to feed pigs, giving rise to a number of pig farms. People began to collect garbage from restaurants and bring it to the village. That contributed to the growth of the industry-and the local stench.

"In 1995, most of us were raising pigs," Wang recalled. While the industry brought plenty of benefits to locals, it also made the vicinity smell "really bad".

As job seekers flooded to Tianjin, residents began to rent out their extra land to migrant workers, who sifted through the waste for things that could be sold or recycled, such as clothes and domestic appliances.

At its peak, more than 3,000 migrant workers were collecting garbage, and mountains of rubbish were piled up on the land they rented.

"The smell of rotting food and pig waste made us sick," Wang said.

Also decaying was the reputation of the village. "No girls would marry into the village," which was thick with flies, and "children suffered from sore throats", Wang said.

"I only went over to collect rent from the migrant workers," Wang said. "Everybody had to spray insecticide."

But annual rental income for each resident was more than 10,000 yuan ($1,600), so most villagers found a way to tolerate the smell.

Aware of the damage caused by the trash and raising of pigs, the local government has now cleaned up the village. In 2015, Qingguang township, which administers Liujiamatou, cleared more than 140 hectares of land, and got rid of more than 1,600 dump sites. Trees were also planted.

Last year, police intercepted garbage trucks, and the land once rented out to migrant workers was transferred to the government for planting.

These days, Wang Liqing often takes his grandchild for a stroll down the trail near fields once buried under rubbish.

"The government pays us to use our land and has promised profits when tourism gains steam here," Wang said. "But more important, the air is great now, and we can open our doors in the summer."