Fisherman's wife battles to turn the tide against polluters

When Wei Dongying left her native Guangxi in 1991 to be with her husband in the Hangzhou village of Wuli, she thought she would play the relatively quiet role of a fisherman's wife.

But instead of passing her days along the Qiantang River helping her husband, the 38-year-old is engaged in a fierce battle to save her adopted hometown and its 1,000 residents from the ravages of pollution, caused by 26 chemical factories indiscriminately dumping toxic waste into the village's water system and the river.

Together with her husband, she often takes their fishing boat down the Qiantang River in the middle of the night to catch polluters attempting to release poisonous effluents without being detected.

'We common folks need to defend ourselves,' she said.

'The government doesn't care about us.'

Armed with just a middle-school education, Ms Wei has also been recording all the people who have died or are suffering from cancer-related illnesses. Using her data, Ms Wei has detailed Wuli's predicament in letters to the mainland media, as well as provincial and central government agencies.

In doing so, she has spent more than 20,000 yuan of her family's money.