Hong Kong: Parched Colony

Buddhist monks and nuns in Hong Kong last week chanted prayers to the pulsating tick-tock of sticks beating on fish-shaped wooden blocks. Throngs of Chinese paraded through downtown streets carrying huge paper dragons representing the rain god, and the blare of drums, gongs and cymbals exhorted the heavens to send rain. When a brief shower dampened Hong Kong one afternoon, marking the first rainfall in six months, men and women clapped their hands and shouted for joy.

Hong Kong is suffering critically from the longest drought in years. The vital textile dyeing industry lost an estimated $1,700,000 in the first four months of this year. The only brewery faces curtailed production, and deliveries of soft drinks have fallen 60%. The reservoirs are so nearly dry that Hong Kong authorities last week imposed a strict new ration on the city: four hours of running water every other day. In private homes water is used first for bathing, then for washing clothes, finally for gardens. Ordinarily. Hong Kong buys 5 billion gallons of water annually from Red China's Shumchun Reservoir, just across the border. Last month the colony contracted to buy an additional 700 million gallons from the Chinese at a cost of $29,890. At the reduced rate of daily consumption of 36 million gallons (compared with the normal 60 million gallons per day), Hong Kong's reserves will be exhausted in 66 days.

Hardest hit by the drought are the farmers of the New Territories, who desperately need spring rains to save their rice and vegetable crops. Those farmers who own wells padlock them at night to foil water thieves. At week's end, the shortage had grown so serious that ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet were ordered to cease taking on potable water in Hong Kong "to avoid further drain on the local water supply."