Moreover, due to the barren farmland and poor transportation of the new settlement they were being sent to, village officials would rather resign than persuade the residents to relocate.
The negotiations were locked in a stalemate at the beginning of December last year. "The locals either refused to see you, or splashed cold water on you dufring freezing nights when you were speaking with village officials," said Xu.
Xu finally persuaded the locals after taking 68 batches of them to the new settlement to conduct investigations.
"The folks were persuaded easily. They are simple people," said Xu, quite grateful. "However, when seeing such a beautiful village destroyed by the rush of waters, all the officials responsible for the relocation burst into tears."
The journeys to the new settlement were not easy, with many immigrants suffering from long, arduous trips.
In 1953, He Zhaosheng, a relocatee to Qinghai Province, once spent a day on foot getting to the bus station and several other days to get to the destination by truck, only to find life was rather hard due to the poor farmland and dry weather. Within just one year, about 5,000 of the relocatees died abnormally. Some even tried to flee back home, but died on the way
Adaptation to the new environment and integration into the local society was another challenge for the immigrants.
From 1966 to 1968, some residents of Zhechuan Township were asked to move out to Jingmen and Zhongxiang in Hubei Province, where the living conditions were even worse than Qinghai.
Suffering from poor harvests and water scarcity, they were not welcomed by locals either, which often stirred violence. As a result, many decided to move back, even knowing their homes had been destroyed by waters. They then built new houses on the riverbank and made a living by fishing.
A few immigrants even chose to seclude themselves in remote mountains to avoid constant relocations, according to Wu Jiabao, head of the Disciplinary and Supervisory Group at Nanyang Immigration Bureau, who once found a family living on a mountain near the Danjiang River.
"They were clothed in rags and had no idea of what year it was then," said Wu.
Starting from 2003, residents living near the water reservoir were not allowed to build new houses, leaving many of them waiting for the relocation in shabby rooms.
Wu added that generations of immigrants have lost homes to make way for the water diversion project. Right now, he hopes to help them settle down and start a new, secure life as soon as possible.
