Mr. Tang, sixty-five, lives on a canal that flows into the Huai from the city of Bengbu. About five years after the canal was built (a good thirty years ago) foam bubbles up to a meter wide have been rising to the surface. Illness and death rates in his village have been on the rise ever since the pollution started. In 2005, when journalists from the CCTV state broadcasting station were traveling through the village, Mr. Tang stopped their cars and begged them from his knees to test the water in the canal. But the villagers had to keep drinking the groundwater until 2008, when they finally received access to running water. For two of Mr. Tang's brothers and an uncle, this measure came too late; they died of cancer in 2001, 2002, and 2005. Anhui Province, November 2011