Chinese independent documentary director Zhang Zanbo recently visited Taiwan to promote his newly published book. He had released the documentary “Falling from the Sky” in 2009, focusing on the unfortunate experiences of Hunan farmers living in the rocket debris drop zone. The film was banned by the Chinese authorities. Just a few days ago, rocket debris fell on a residential area in Guizhou, causing panic and cries from a woman.
Zhang Zanbo is in Taiwan to promote his new book titled “Grand Scenery: Strange Landscapes and Desire Games on the ‘Royal’ Grasslands of Inner Mongolia” (two volumes). The book is published by the Chunshan Publishing House.
According to a report by Central News Agency on January 26, since the summer of 2018, Zhang Zanbo has been “infiltrating” the Inner Mongolia scenic area to observe up close the chaotic live broadcasts using grassland wolves as “props.” Through his writing and lens, this non-fiction work explores issues such as enclosure of tourist areas, animal exploitation, ecological destruction, fading traditions, and the trends of live streaming and photography, documenting various phenomena of deceit, betrayal, violence, greed, and exploitation on the natural grasslands.
In 2010, Zhang Zanbo entered a construction site on the Huaihua Expressway in Hunan under an alias, filming the construction workers and local residents. Four years later, he compiled his filming notes into the book “The Road: Slow Life in High-Speed China,” published in Taiwan. The documentary feature film “The Road to Heaven” with the same theme was completed and shown in 2015. “The Road” won the Grand Prize at the 2015 Taipei International Book Exhibition, and “The Road to Heaven” was nominated for Best Documentary at the 53rd Golden Horse Awards.
“The Road: Slow Life in High-Speed China” was later renamed to “The Road: Construction Chronicles in High-Speed China” in 2015 and was published in China by Guangxi Normal University Press, soon becoming a banned book.
During his visit to Taiwan to promote his new book, Zhang Zanbo conveyed his thoughts using the words of Nobel Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich in 2015: “Do not surrender to despair, but sit down and write.”
Since 1990, villagers in the area have faced the danger of rocket debris falling once or twice a year, or even more. The sudden falling debris damages crops in farmers’ fields, topples trees in the villages, crushes roofs of houses, and can even kill livestock owned by villagers.
In 1998, a 16-year-old girl was killed by falling rocket debris from a satellite named “CASC-I” in the area. In the film “Falling from the Sky,” the father who lost his daughter appeared on camera with a face full of sadness and helplessness, touching many viewers.
In recent years, rockets launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center by the Chinese government still frequently result in rocket debris falling near densely populated areas.
Recently, surveillance footage from around 11:41 PM on January 23 showed a woman standing in her yard, seeing rocket debris hurtling toward her from the sky. She was terrified and clung to the man beside her, crying out in fear. The debris then hit the ground and exploded. After the explosion, the man quickly rushed indoors to bring out a child.
According to reports from China Central Television, on the night of January 23 at 11:32 PM, the Xichang Satellite Launch Center successfully launched Communication Technology Experimental Satellite No. 14 using a Long March 3B carrier rocket. However, official media did not mention the situation of the rocket debris falling.
According to the official website of the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense’s announcement in the early hours of January 24, the rocket’s flight path passed through central Taiwan towards the western Pacific Ocean.
A video of the terrified woman crying out was posted on X platform, and many netizens mocked the Chinese government’s development of so-called “high technology” regardless of people’s lives: “SpaceX has advanced to rocket recovery, but we can’t even control where the rocket debris falls.” “They use the people’s wealth to launch a bunch of junk into space without caring about the safety of the people on the ground.” “This is why neighboring countries get nervous when China launches rockets!”
The UK’s Telegraph once quoted Chris Quilty, founder of space research company Quilty Analytics, saying that satellite launch failures are not surprising, but what is shocking is that they (the Chinese government) launch from inland rather than from the coast like all other non-communist countries. Launching from the coast could make debris fall into the ocean “rather than on your people.”
On X, a netizen commented that most countries place satellite launch sites near the coast or near the equator; launching near the coast reduces harm to residents from falling rockets, while launching near the equator utilizes the Earth’s rotation to increase thrust. For example, the Kennedy Space Center in the U.S. is on the eastern coast of the southernmost state of Florida. The Chinese government is political-minded, not professional. To maintain secrecy, they place critical satellite launch sites inland in Sichuan’s Xichang, with rocket debris discarded along the way through provinces like Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, and others. In the past two years, to intimidate Taiwan, the Chinese government deliberately let rockets fly over Taiwan, making Fujian and Jiangxi provinces along the way also areas of rocket debris.