Shen An-pao (沈安寶) has spent almost half his life crawling through the stinking underworld of Taiwan's sewers.
Despite his age, Shen, who is pushing 70, still spends a great deal of time crawling through fetid, dark sewers with his crew to open up, repair and maintain underground sewerage systems wherever his services are needed.
While city dwellers enjoy the comfort of being able to flush their toilets, take showers and wash their dishes, most have probably never given a thought to the work that goes on below, with Shen and his crew putting up with the high temperatures, dark corridors and stinking air to maintain the sewerage system.
PHOTO: CNA
Shen has been living his “ninja turtle” life from 6am to 10pm each day for the past 32 years without complaint, despite the fear and fatigue that his job entails.
Shen moved from southern Taiwan to Taipei with his wife at the age of 26 with just NT$800 in his pocket. After trying a variety of jobs, including driving a taxi and a tour bus, and working on construction sites, he became a sewer worker. Starting out as an employee, he later on opened his own company.
Despite the physical demands and the potential hazards, Shen takes pride in his work, talking of how the underground piping systems he takes care of transport domestic and industrial wastewater for treatment before being flushed into the sea.
“We underground workers not only provide residents with a clean and sanitary environment, but also contribute to the nation's environmental protection efforts,” Shen said in an interview after emerging from a manhole wearing a safety helmet and sweat covering his brow.
One of the major challenges of his work is to build new underground pipelines connected to sewer pipes from buildings and larger underground trunks that transport the sewage to treatment facilities.
In the past, he and his coworkers used to built the sewers manually, he said.
“The gravity and high pressure underground can make you breathless. It can even cause the bends or caisson disease,” he said.
Geological variables also affect the speed of building new connecting pipes, he said.
In ground made up of ordinary gravel, he and his company can drill and lay down new connecting pipes at a rate of 20m to 25m a day. However, upon encountering bedrock, like that found in Xindian and other suburbs south of Taipei, that rate can fall to just 5m per day.
Shen said the penetration rate of modern sewerage systems is one of the indices used to gauge a nation's development status, adding that most industrialized nations have a penetration rate of more than 80 percent.
In Taiwan, however, only Taipei has a penetration rate of more than 80 percent; most cities and counties had less than 30 percent, he said.
“Taiwan still has a long way to go,” he said.
Shen, an elementary school graduate, said he has been running a business that provides jobs for members of his extended family, including his younger brothers-in-law and his own children, as well as a number of other workers who have stuck by him for years.
“We've beaten the global economic crunch. My employees have never been put on unpaid leave,” Shen said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai