Liu Hu, director of the water resources bureau in Jiashi county of Kashgar prefecture, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. (PHOTO COURTESY OF XINJIANG DAILY)

“Lung cancer!” 

The grim diagnosis from a doctor, in May 2017, stunned Liu Hu who was only 43 at that time. Fear, disappointment and bewilderment — a range of emotions overpowered his mind. Then he calmed down and chose to live up to his sense of mission. 

As the chief official responsible for water-related projects in Jiashi county, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, he was soon telling himself to carry on with his duties despite adversity, disease or disaster. 

Quietly he received chemotherapy at a hospital in Kashgar, took medicine regularly, and seemingly recovered fast so as to keep his work going.

Whether it was summer heat or winter chill, he kept visiting villagers, inspecting hill sites and pipes, discussing with colleagues, researchers and the local elders, searching for proper solutions to the area’s drinking water-related problems.

Liu has served as director of the water resources bureau in Jiashi county since November 2016. In local Uygur language the word Jiashi means “beautiful place”. 

Yet the land of beauty sandwiched between ice-covered mountains and the Taklamakan Desert, the largest in China, has been plagued by “bitter water” for centuries. With a precipitation of tens of millimeters during most of the years, its underground water and limited water in streams and ground channels had been constantly contaminated with other elements mainly due to earthquakes. 

The water became reddish and muddy after an earthquake, a Uygur elder named Keram Sayim in Ayaklang village said. A plastic barrel in his kitchen was long used to store water for sediment first. Then the water was left in sunshine for hours, boiled later and steeped with tea to reduce the bitterness. 

Without healthy water, local people suffer and few tourists will visit despite the area’s well-known fruits, said Kurax Kawul from Ayaklang village. 

Having healthy and safe water has been a prime dream of 470,000 local people in the otherwise pleasant landscape. 

Ever since he took office, Liu has made it his mission to bring “sweet and clean” drinking water to all in the county, curb water-related illnesses and lift the locals out of poverty, bearing in mind a national goal to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020.

One plan was to extract groundwater and cleanse it for drinking. However, “surface water for human consumption will reduce groundwater extraction. Reducing the extraction of groundwater is very restorative and helpful to the ecosystem,” Liu once told CGTN. Besides, it is likely to cause pollution.

Abbas Sidik, deputy director of the water bureau, noted that an idea of introducing fine water from afar had been floated for long. “We dared not think about it” because of the geographical and financial difficulties, he said. 

Months of trekking and arguing and surveys finally led to a consensus by early 2018 that the best solution was to channel melted snow water from a glacier on Mount Muztagata to Jiashi, spanning nearly 2,000 kilometers across three counties from the upper reaches of the Gez River. 

That year, China’s Ministry of Water Resources adopted a series of measures to improve drinking water quality across the country, backed up by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance.

Liu led his colleagues in searching for the exact locations and proper facilities in preparations despite his occasional uneasiness, cough and chest pains.

He kept busy at mountain valleys, construction sites, and villagers’ homes, and often on roads and other means of transport between the county, its immediate superior administrative center in Kashgar and the region’s capital city Urumqi. 

Sometimes he suffered so much that he had sweat all over him but he insisted on working. After getting some treatment he would rush back to the village to take charge again instead of getting hospitalized for treatment as was suggested by doctors. 

For seven days a week, he travelled high and low to confirm the route, visited villages and towns, checked on details of the design and planning. In Sokanasty village in Yoltograk county, the smiling official was surrounded for hours by villagers deep at night before they understood why the proposed route could not be redirected from their field or how possible re-routing could work. 

“I would be scolded by villagers for days rather than blaming me for life for not getting in healthy water,” Liu said. The villagers said Liu has “a myna’s mouth” in persuading others, “flying legs” to visit household after household, and “rubber heart” that bears flak and wrong accusations. 

Liu Hu on inspection visit to a water diversion site in this undated photo. (PHOTO COURTESY OF XINJIANG DAILY)

Only his physique failed him. A collapse at work in April 2019 left him in hospital for days, and again he did not stay as long as doctors expected, because three major works of water acquisition, channeling and distribution were set to be launched soon. 

On May 2, 2019, Liu seemed to forget all his health troubles when overseeing the formal kickoff of the Jiashi county’s urban and rural drinking water safety project, with 1.75 billion yuan (US$268.73 million) investment from the State.

“The faster that we finish the project, the earlier people can drink the healthy water, and one day earlier is also one step closer to winning the battle against poverty,” Liu kept encouraging himself and others.

To ensure that pipelines were laid properly, he often had to walk 20 to 30 kilometers within a day. While finding pipeline problems at Yoltograk village, he ordered the whole line rebuilt.

At that time the whole country roared ahead with poverty-alleviation efforts. It turned out that Jiashi and Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province had the nation’s last groups of 25,000 people still troubled by substandard drinking water. Among them, Jiashi county had 4,044 households and around 15,300 people.

Instead of heading toward hospital, Liu moved to live inside the main water plant in early 2020. 

However, the COVID-19 outbreak prevented construction crew from returning and resuming work on Feb 10. Liu patiently called the construction teams and workers one by one. However, most of the answers were: “Sorry, I was in home isolation”.

“No matter how daunting the difficulties are, we need to find a way to adjust the plan to ensure that the project is completed on schedule”, Liu said. 

“Liu kept in touch with technicians in Kashgar,” recalled Osman Rahman, who once drove for Liu. “We welcomed people from one community after another and kept sending them to the site.” Liu’s diligence and persistence paid off as construction resumed in March.

But he had to skip proper treatment time and again, and even “suspended chemotherapy for five months,” said Rahman. One after another, problems were solved. 

One day in April 2020, when fixing some equipment at a main water plant, his mobile phone rang. “Hu, when are you going home?” His father asked with some hesitation. 

“I’ve been busy lately, and I’ll go home when the expected water arrives,” he told his father before hanging up.

Three days later his mother called and said his father missed him, and Liu promised to visit them after glacier water arrived. His wife Song Guirong also called and asked him to visit his sick father.

His father, hospitalized for weeks, longed to see him. People suffer too much from the bitter water, he told his family, and he must help end it. 

Liu quickly returned to project sites, watching out for progress day and night. Days later during a testing, water leakage was found in a station at Kizkant village of neighboring Tokuzak county. When he directed installment of new pumps and pipes, it was 4 in the morning. He led his colleagues on to the next station against freezing wind, without a moment’s rest for the whole night.

At one point, he suddenly blacked out without any warning and fell to the ground while coordinating a team of engineers and construction workers. When he regained consciousness, Liu brushed off the incident and headed back to the frontline of the water project. But soon he lost vision in his left eye.

Xie Chengxin, a doctor who is in charge of treating Liu, said Liu’s treatment was fair in 2017 and reasonable in following months. But busy schedule kept him from sufficient rest and recuperation and failed him in proper treatment later. “The time of his treatment was much delayed,” Xie said.

Good news came for Jiashi on 

May 26, 2020. Safe potable water traveling in 112 kms of trunk conduit and 167 km of branch channels reached more than 100,000 families in the county via 1,548 kilometers of distribution pipes. 

“Sweet water arrives!” the villagers in Jiashi kept telling each other following the news.

“No matter how busy I was, I am happy,” a village Party official named Kurax Kawul, who helped renovate pipelines and equip water outlets, exclaimed. “This time this is really healthy water! A new beautiful life dawns on us.”

With Liu’s guidance and supervision, the project was finished one month ahead of schedule, which had already been squeezed to about a year from the three-year normal. 

Liu cried out. “The hopes of generations and generations of the locals to drink safe water are fulfilled in our time,” he said. “You know, how proud we are!” 

A month later the last groups of people in Sichuan also received healthy water, marking the end of thousands-of-years-old potable water problems for all in the Chinese mainland.

Meanwhile, the cancer cells again sent Liu to the sick bed. “I have no regrets in this life,” he told his family. “All my work is worthwhile.”

Liu was admitted to hospital again in September 2020, but this time, he was getting paralyzed and became speechless by early March. “The cancer cells have spread and metastasized to the bone marrow,” said the doctor, Xie, who is involved in his ongoing phase-four chemotherapy.

Ani Mehmet from Olturgulluk village was in tears when visiting the hospital. “You helped us to get healthy and clean tap water, and solved the problem of my son’s tuition paying problem, but you exhausted yourself too much,” the villager said. 

On Feb 25, on his bed in an ICU ward and with the help of his brother, Liu watched on a mobile phone a live broadcast of the grand gathering in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during which awards were granted to role models in the fight against poverty. 

When Liu heard President Xi Jinping mention his name for honor, his lips trembled and tears rolled down his cheeks. 

Xinhua and Xinjiang Daily contributed to the story.