Posted on 02/11/2004 6:51:13 AM PST by dead
As the water on what the Chinese now call Ghost Beach rose, one of the cockle pickers used his mobile phone to make a last call to his wife 8000 kilometres away.
"I am in great danger," Guo Binglong told her. "I am up to my chest in water. Maybe I am going to die. It's a tiny mistake by my boss. He mistook the time. He should have called us back an hour ago."
Then, as the water in Morecambe Bay in the north of England rose further, Mr Guo said: "Tell the family to pray for me. It's too close. I am dying."
He was a devout Christian, like the rest of Zelang village, a telling mixture of old tumble- down farmhouses and four-storey Western-style villas overlooking the South China Sea. The villas belong to those who made it to the West and survived.
Of the 19 people who drowned in Morecambe Bay last week, three came from this village. Several others were from nearby villages.
It was in the shadow of a huge mock-Romanesque church that Mr Guo, 29, used to go to work with his father and two brothers.
One of the brothers, Guo Bingzhong, said: "We could make 10,000 yuan [$1550] a year between us. It was not enough for a decent living for all our family." As well as his wife, Mr Guo had his elderly parents and two young children to support.
Mr Guo arrived in Europe on a legal visa, his family said. He regarded the Morecambe job as a good one; there was a waiting list for places. He was averaging £6-£7 ($14-$16) an hour for the cockles, and since arriving in Britain six months ago had sent about £2000 home, although that was only a tenth of the fee he had paid snakehead gangs to get him there.
Another of the village victims was Guo Changmao. His family had disappeared on Tuesday, possibly over fears of the unpaid debt to the snakeheads.
Among other victims, Cao Chaokun was 37, Lin Lishui 36 and Yu Hui 35. Each had a wife and children. All the relatives fear what will happen to them now. One widow, He Xiuyu, begged for help in going to Britain to see the body of her husband, Xie Xiaowen, to make sure he was dead.
While the women weep, the men seem to be deciding who will be the next to go. All think the British Government owes them a chance to do legal work in the West in return for their loss.
Guo Binglong's father, Guo Ke Shu, thinks it should be his eldest son.
"We are a big family and we depended entirely on my son," he said. "Only in Britain can we get back the money to pay our debt. The most important thing is for the British to send his body back. They will do that, won't they?"
In the next room his son's wife, sister and mother chanted in ritual mourning. "The water is up to his chest," his mother kept repeating, over and over.
In that one a Brit food critic said, Cockles taste like 'pickled snot' and that the Welsh eat Cockles for breakfast with 'slimed seaweed'. Now, how he knew what pickled snot tastes like is a mystery. Then again, Brits will eat about anything won't they.
That also might explain why they put curry powder on/or in EVERYTHING (almost).
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