──── PROLOGUE ────
The bump on the road caused her to look up from her notes. The camouflaged faces of the soldiers sitting across from here were focused entirely on her. They didn’t say anything, of course. But the stared at her nonetheless. Apart from the intermittent radio communications that broke the monotony, the only other sound was the rumble and whine of the vehicle.
Ling ignored the stares and went back to her notes and maps. She had reviewed the numbers a dozen times, and they were always the same. There must be a solution to this problem somwhere. There had to be!
One of the soldiers sitting across from her removed his water bottle and unscrewed the top before taking a gulp. He then screwed the top back on and stowed it away. Ling stared at the soldier and then looked past him; past the metal wall of the armored personnel carrier and well past the dusty mountains beyond.
Water.
When available in quantity, it was the catalyst for the birth of human civilizations since millenia. Proud human civilizations had been built on the fundamental essence of water. Man’s hubris allowed him to think that the civilizations were his doing. All the accumulation of knowledge, culture, art and wars was built at some level on the presence of water. Whether it was ships that made their way to the far corners of the earth or the agriculture that fed the populace and allowed the luxury of art and culture. Water. It was behind it all. And when it dissipated away?
Proud armies and warriors simply fell on their knees for the lack of water. Civilizations crumbled. Art and culture dissipated and gave way to anarchy and the reduction of humanity back to the beasts...
A voice yelled at her from above the rumble of the vehicle: “lost in your thoughts again?!”
Ling looked up from her notes and saw Professor Honghui smiling at her from the seat to her left. Ling returned the smile. “Just reviewing the numbers again, sir!” Ling shouted back as the engine whine kept pace with her volume. “Perhaps we missed something!”
Honghui shook his head in dismissal: “No, you haven’t missed anything. The numbers are true. And you know they are true. You just don’t like where they lead us!”
Ling stared at Honghui and said nothing. Honghui had known Ling for a many years both as a graduate student and as a fellow academic at Beijing University. A man of fifty-three years, Honghui was the leading Chinese expert on Hydrology and had spent many years working for the Chinese government on the placement and impact analysis of hydroelectric projects across mainland China. In the last decade, he had spent his a vast majority of his research work in the Tibet Autonomous Region, or TAR, at the behest of Beijing. The latter had provided him plenty resources, both financial and logistical, to conduct strategic studies on what was now the most valuable resource of the twenty-first century...
“Don’t worry too much, Ling!” Honghui added reassuringly. “There is a solution yet! There always is! Once we get back to Lhasa, we will review the numbers toge...!”
The APC braked abruptly. Everyone inside the transport was jerked to one side by the inertia. Ling managed to catch her notes just before they slipped away from her lap. Honghui recovered his grip while holding the handle on the sideall above and behind his headrest.
He cursed beneath his breath.
“What now?!”
The radio communications from the driving compartment and the vehicle commander broke the silence over the cabin speakers: “Squad dismount!”
The soldiers sitting next to Honghui and Ling instantly got to work, grabbing their rifles and equipment. The soldier directly next to the two doors in the back of the vehicle unlocked and pushed them open. The cold evening wind swept through the cabin, causing the two civilians to shudder and reach for their jackets. Ling saw the dark blue skies outside and the bright floodlights of the vehicles in their convoy as soldiers began spreading out. A cacophony noises from a crowd of people and of orders and responses from the soldiers filled the air above the droning rumble of the idling vehicle engines.
As Ling watched in silence, Honghui unbuckled himself and moved over to the seat opposite her, immediately next to the entrance doors. He began stretching his head to either corner of the doors for a better glance of the situation...
“Now just what do you suppose that...”
“Halt!” A cold voice yelled at the old professor. “Get back inside the vehicle!” Honghui and Ling saw a young PLA Lieutenant walk up to them to block the view. Honghui was not easily intimidated by the soldiers. After all these years in Tibet, he had seen a great many things. Including a vicious rebellion by the ethnic Tibetans as well as a full-scale war with the Indians earlier in the decade.
“Listen, boy!” He shouted hoarsely, “I demand to know what is going on! Why have we stopped?”
The PLA Lieutenant was not accustomed to having his orders questioned. He scowled and began pushing Honghui by his shoulders back into the cabin.
“Hey! Hey!” Ling shouted in defense of her colleague and leapt forward, dropping her notes and other papers. “Get your hands off! Who do you think you are?! Do you not know who this man is?! General Donghai will get a personal report on this misbehavior! What’s your name and unit?”
“General Donghai? I...well...” the young officer stumbled, not knowing whether the threat was a bluff or not. “this is for your own safety! I am under orders!”
“That’s not what I asked! I asked you your name and unit!” Ling demanded again as she swept the young man’s arm off of Honghui. This wasn’t the first time she and Honghui had had to use the General’s name to get some respect from the rank and file men of the PLA garrisons in Tibet.
“Just stay here!” the lieutenant continued in a much more subdued voice.
“Do you honestly think that I...” Ling’s sentence was cut short by a two quick bursts of rifle fire that cracked through the air. The cacophony of noises from the crowd turned to shrieks and yells and the sounds of a stampede. She let go of the young lieutenant’s arm and pushed herself up using the doors of the vehicle until her head was above the roof of the APC.
Chaos was everywhere. They were just outside the town of Xigaze, about one-hundred and fifty kilometers west of Lhasa. The town was lit up with lights against the black-blue skies above and bounded by the silhouettes of the massive Himalayan mountains all around. But more directly in front of her, she saw the rear ends of the two other ZBD09 wheeled armored vehicles with their floodlights on and soldiers armed with rifles on the ground next to the vehicles. Massive crowds of people were running past the vehicles. Ling thought she saw some shops on fire and riot police moving into action with their shields...
“Get back down!” A PLA army captain leapt up behind Ling, grabbed her diminutive form by both arms, manhandled her below the roof and pushed her back into her former seat. Before she could say a word, he slammed the doors closed on her and Honghui.
“So what is going on out there?” Honghui asked as Ling recovered from her abrupt return to the confines of her seat.
“Another water riot,” she answered matter-of-fact.
“Tibetans?”
“Probably, professor.” Ling said as she picked up her papers and pens from the floor of the vehicle. “Who else could it be?”
Honghui sighed and nodded agreement. Drinking water had become increasing scarce in the high-altitude desert regions of Tibet. There might have been enough water at one time for the ethnic Tibetans, but with the mass forced-migration of Han Chinese populations into Tibet, that was no longer the case. The massive artificial growth of the human population in the Tibetan mountains had rendered local water resources a preimium resource, both for drinking as well as for irrigation and power. And while the latter could be offset by the construction of nuclear power plants, you could not make up water in the desert by sheer willpower. And climate change had not helped. The increase in global temperatures in recent years was drying up the Tibetan landscape. Water now had to be resourced and distrbuted under guard, especially in the summer months of each year...
And that distribution never reached the actual inhabitants of the lands: the Tibetans. In a most agonising and tragic irony, the Tibetans were now dying of thirst in their own lands, while the mainland Chinese diverted the scarce water resources. Beijing was determined to extinguish the Tibetan culture. Wittingly or unwittingly, it was achieving its aim in the most brutal way possible.
“We have to do these things,” Honghui said apologetically, more to himself than to Ling. “We have our own countrymen to feed first. There just isn’t enough water to go around for everyone. But the misery of these people here breaks my heart.”
“Worse is yet to come professor,” Ling responded as more rifle shots and increased shrieks of hundreds of people filled the air outside. “And then, as now, we must do what we must to ensure that China is not deprived of something as essential as drinking water!”
“Even at the cost of other cultures and civilizations, Ling?” Honghui asked academically.
“Of course, professor!” Ling answered in surprise, as though the answer was so obvious. “this is the Chinese millenia! If history teaches us anything, weaker cultures have to step aside for a new power to rise in its place. And each new power needs resources. The last century was defined by oil. This one will be defined by drinking water. And we must control it wherever it exists! There is no other choice.”
“Of course,” Honghui said as he rubbed his tired eyes. He knew better than to argue against his idealistic former student. This was the generation that grew up on Chinese power and economic growth, he reminded himself. They will not be deprived. Ling was energetic and driven, typical of the new youth in China. She was intelligent and competant and drove that towards her research work in hydrology. Perhaps she really was the person to take over what needed to be done in the near future, Honghui thought as he rested his head back on the padded headrest of the seat and closed his eyes.
Honghui knew what the future held. And when they presented their results to General Donghai and the Tibet Hydrology and Water Resources Department in Lhasa, this misery would eventually and inevitably spread to hundreds of millions of people outside of China’s borders. With so many lives to be sacrificed for the sake of China’s citizens, perhaps fatalistic idealism really was the only characteristic that would give its carries the iron will to do what must be done.
And Dr. Ling Qi was clearly suited for that role.
