An unspoken quest

Every day at 4 pm, what-ever the weather, Zhang Haiqing begins patrolling the river near his home in the Jianggan district of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in East China. Zhang is unable to speak because he had his larynx removed after being diagnosed with cancer, so he communicates by writing messages on a type of magnetic drawing board usually used by children. He checks the river carefully and uses the board to point out areas of pollution or river cleaners who are not doing their job properly. He also takes photos and reports problems to the local authorities.

The 64-year-old started his official patrol in April 2014 after being hired as one of the first of 47 civil river chiefs by the Hangzhou government in March of the same year. He had only been working for a month when he had the surgery on his larynx, but that didn't prevent him from fulfilling his responsibilities - supervising river protection projects and pollution control. In fact, he regularly works far longer than necessary, even though there are at least 582 civil river chiefs in Hangzhou.

Zhang's patrol actually began as an irregular activity in 2009, when he moved to his current home and found the nearby river was black and smelled rank. "Day and night, the smell was so strong it often woke me up," he recalled.