China has a 💩 City now

China literally now has a poop town. We talk about Flint, Michigan all day. This is happening in Hangzhou as we speak. This city is next to the beautiful West Lake. Historically, it's a very, very important place. But local residents began reporting that their tap water turned a different color. Call it coffee, caramel, dark chocolate, whatever the name is. At first they thought that this was just something wrong with the pipes. Maybe it's corrosion. Maybe it's, you know, all the rusting. And that that was it. But then people started to get the smell. It smells like sewage, smells like poop, smells like all of the worst things. Some of them even apparently smells like the ocean. I guess, you know, the stinkiness of the fishiness of the ocean. And of course, they began uploading videos to the social media space. And that's when people started to generate discussions on this. And also some people said, at first I thought it was just my cooking or my chicken that had gone bad. But it turns out, obviously, it's not their cooking. It's the water that they use. According to Internet comments and these discussions, somehow someone accidentally connected the sewage pipes to that of the water pipe. And that's what caused it to get a brown day. And people scrambled to buy bottled water. At first, the local government didn't want to report this. They thought it would just go away after they fix it and pretend like nothing happened. But obviously, as the day go by, people were struggling, you know, versus the few people that everybody in the area started to report that their water stinks and that their food tastes weird, smells bad. So you know, obviously, this generated this public opinion situation across town. And quickly, Chinese Internet memes took over. There's actually a famous poem about the city and its beauty, particularly because it's next to the beautiful West Lake. It's the best way to describe the current situation. I'll explain. So here's the original poem lines. So if we do the English translation, it would be beyond green hills, more hills arise. Beyond tall towers stretch the skies. West Lake songs and dances flow. Will such delights know and yet know? The breeze is warm, the wine is sweet. It lulls the crowd in soft deceit. Drunk on dreams, they fail to see. Hangzhou's no match for lost Bianli. So this is a Song Dynasty poem, and it's actually a critique to criticize the lack of effort by the Southern Song court against the invasion of the Jin Empire from the north. And so this was a call out to the attitude of them obviously not doing much, right? So Internet users found this great sort of connection to the current situation that the local authorities aren't doing much to solve the water issue. So they made their own version. I guess you would say the brown version. So it goes like this. It says beyond green hills, more towers grow. Yet dragon pipes reek far below. Now, Hangzhou officials have come out to say that the water is safe to drink now, to use, etc. But video is still showing that it's running brown, it's running dark yellow, and all of the things, right? Even after some of them filtered it with a cloth, the water appears clearer, but the smell is probably still there. But of course, we already see some of these CCP shows saying that, oh, it's normal. Hangzhou gets this every single year. There's nothing to worry about. First of all, if you're like Flint, Michigan, every single year, that's not normal, right? That's and I'm not even talking about an isolated case in China. These are just some of the places they constantly release chemical or like dirty industrial water waste into the lakes. I've covered this already, but they do this very often. And sometimes they even do this in plain sights or in just like, you know, very famous river streams, etc. For example, in this community in Nanjing, the water turned bright blue. In Hubei, this little community had their water change color. And also here you have some of the water turned red color and you have obviously a lot of these colors aren't normal. It should be clear. Water is clear. It's not blue. The point is, it's really ridiculous when people say, oh, yeah, what about Flint, Michigan? Like Flint, Michigan? Yes, it's really bad. It's probably still pretty bad, but that's one place, whereas in China, you don't even get to talk about these things because nobody, honestly, nobody like these can you can upload the videos. You'll get in trouble. There's actually a Chinese blogger. He's an environmentalist. He does this to expose this for a living on Chinese social media, constantly gets like threatening emails and not emails, but also not just emails, but like phone calls from the government to tell them to take these things down. So yeah, it's like, why don't you just solve the water issue? They won't. And before we continue, let the other David tell you about our upcoming trip to Singapore. So why am I going? Well, it's probably the only place outside of China where we can witness the entirety of the Belt and Road Initiative from its rise to the downfall, the decade of Xi Jinping's ambition and possibly witness the beginning and the end of the CCP's economic might. I am once again asking for your financial support. Sorry, that was my best Bernie impersonation. But in all seriousness, by donating, you become the driving force behind our mission, which And here is how you can join us while we're so grateful for any amount of donation that you can provide to us for this journey. If you donate $15, you will receive a personalized thank you letter from me. By donating $35, you receive a personalized thank you letter from me and exclusive behind the scenes photos of this trip, which will capture moments you will never see anywhere else. By donating $65, you will get a digital book packed with outtakes, unseen footage and my personal reflection, offering a raw insider look into the ghost city and all of its former It also includes all of the $35 tier donation rewards. And if you donate $100 or more, you will receive exclusive never for sale merchandise from China Insider specifically tailored for this trip, which is a unique keepsake for our top supporters plus all of the previous tier rewards. Your generosity will fund the equipment, travel and production of this trip. And we just can't thank you enough for sticking with us for the journey so far. And we hope to bring you all of the best stories around China. And this trip definitely will be one that's worth remembering. So join us on the journey and donate today. OK, so now because of this water situation, people there are panic buying bottled water. They're trying to stock up on the supply there. But here's something interesting. A story recently related to this that's going to, you know, make it really hard for the Chinese nationalists, these patriotic little pinks go mad. So what happened is China has two top beverage brands. One is called Wa Ha Ha and the other one is called Nongfu Springs. So now it seems like the Chinese nationalists may have to boycott both of these brands. As it turns out, the founder of Wa Ha Ha, who is now passed away, has three secret children who are all American citizens. So here's a story. Last year, there was a beverage brand company called Nongfu Springs, and on some of their drink designs, it had apparently featured elements that look like the Yasukuni shrine from Japan or just in general Japanese inspired elements, which is ridiculous considering that Japanese buildings are literally inspired by Chinese Tang dynasty building structures. So at the end of the day, they're just mad at their own inspirations. But that's not the point. The point was they also found out that the founder of Nongfu Springs Sun has an American citizenship. So, you know, obviously anti-Japan, anti-America, this whole nationalism wave came. Everybody started boycotting the Nongfu Springs brand, threw away the waters, etc. And then at the same time, they're all like, hey, we have to go embrace Wa Ha Ha because look at Wa Ha Ha. You know, they're patriotic. They don't feature some of those Japanese stuff or the American stuff. And so suddenly overnight, Wa Ha Ha, the beverage company, became this like poster child of Chinese patriotism or nationalism. Fast forward to today, though, the story just dramatically slapped these little pinks across the face. As it turns out in the in a court filing, this is within the companies, but in Hong Kong, it revealed that the founder of Wa Ha Ha, who is now passed away, had three secret children who are all living or at least they were there. They probably live abroad, but they all hold American citizenships, too. So now it's like overnight people are going to be like boycotting Wa Ha Ha because guess what? The one you thought that was really loyal to China, the poster child of Chinese nationalism is actually doing the same thing as Nongfu Spring did. And they also found that the founder of Wa Ha Ha had moved a huge amount of assets overseas. So all this patriotism, all this loyalty, all this love China just turned out to be a big, big facade. So I guess overnight your water turns to cool water. Your drinks can't be drank because they're not Chinese enough. And what do you do? Definitely not Wa Ha Ha or Nongfu Springs. Let me know your thoughts in the comments and also check out our donation link to support our Singapore campaign. And once again, if you like this video and subscribe, it'll help us a lot to reach more people and bring out new content on China every single day. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next time.