- Feng Zhaoyin
- BBC News, New York
Like many people who came to the United States, Leng Hongsheng wanted to find freedom.
He was born in Northeast China during the Sino-Japanese War. After the Cultural Revolution and subsequent reform and opening up, he did not come to the United States until the 1990s.
It is believed that he used to be an engineer in China, but in New York, he made a living by picking up rubbish and collecting used goods, collecting plastic bottles and old appliances for recycling along the streets of Flushing, Queens every day.
Even so, he still lives happily. He also brought his family to the United States, received a green card, and determined to develop a better life in the United States.
But his American dream came to an abrupt end last month. The small basement where the 82-year-old Leng Hongsheng and his wife and daughter lived were flooded by sudden flooding, and they drowned before they could escape.
At that time, Hurricane Ida hit New York City and brought record-breaking rainfall. The brutal flooding killed 14 people. A month after the disaster, their bodies were recently cremated.
Most of the victims in New York, including a two-year-old child and an 86-year-old woman, were Asian and Hispanic immigrants living in illegally converted basements.
These unfortunate victims have exposed a problem. Extreme weather has paralyzed infrastructure, severely hit low-income community residents, and deepened social inequality.
Many experts call this “climate apartheid” (climate apartheid) and say that if fair measures are not taken to intervene, the problem will only get worse.
After tropical storm Ida made landfall in Louisiana, USA, the wind speed was 240 kilometers per hour, causing serious damage to the area it passed. Dozens of people were killed and thousands of houses were destroyed.
On September 1, Ida approached the northeastern United States, becoming the hurricane that caused the most casualties since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
In New York, heavy rain began that day in the evening and continued until after midnight. A few days before that, another tropical storm broke the rainfall record, but Ida quickly broke the record again.
In just a few hours, the rainfall exceeded the average rainfall for the entire September, triggering one of the worst urban floods in U.S. history.
Wu Ming (pseudonym), who lives in the same building as Leng Hongsheng, was awakened by the sound of water at about 11 o’clock in the evening. He opened his eyes and found that the flood flooded the house on the first floor.
He looked out the window and saw the cars on the road floating on the water. He told the BBC, “I have lived in New York for 10 years and I have never seen anything like this.”
In just two minutes, the water quickly rose from his knees to his chest. He tried to escape through the front door, but the door was blocked by the violent flood, and he couldn’t push it open. He followed the flood and escaped from the back door. Go and spend the night restlessly in the stairwell hiding outside.
Wu Ming, a construction worker in his 50s, said: “I thought that after this night, it would be better tomorrow.”
The warmth of humanity was also seen in the disaster. One resident swam into the house and rescued a cat and a dog, and the occupants on the higher floors let other people take refuge in their homes.
Wu Ming once thought that he hadn’t seen Leng Hongsheng’s family yet.
“I want to help them too, but the flood is so fierce that I can’t even see the door of their basement.”
Under the climate crisis, floods are believed to be an environmental disaster that affects the world‘s most people.
According to estimates by the World Bank, today, about 1.5 billion people in the world face at least a moderate risk of flooding, which is equivalent to one-fifth of the population on the planet. Nearly 90% of the population facing the hidden danger of floods live in low- and middle-income countries in the southern hemisphere, but rich countries are not without risks. Nearly 160 million people in developed countries are also at risk of flooding.
In the next 10 years, there will be more flooding sites in Europe, North America and other parts of the northern hemisphere, and in these places, it is also the poor who suffer the most.
Approximately 41 million people in the United States are at risk of flooding, mainly in densely populated areas and areas prone to flooding.
Shannon Van Zandt, a professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University, said that low-lying areas that are prone to flooding are mostly low-income and ethnic minorities because they have poor living conditions and cheaper rents.
She added that compared with the minorities of American citizens, immigrants, regardless of whether they have legal status, are more vulnerable because they are less dared to ask for help.
Leng Hongsheng lives in a red brick three-story building in Flushing. There are several households living in the whole building. A building like this stretches for at least three blocks nearby.
Including Leng Hongsheng’s family, a total of three families shared this underground space. The inside is about 90 square meters. Even in broad daylight, there is no natural light deep in the basement, and you can’t see your fingers. The only exit is a staircase leading to the backyard.
A few days after the flood, sludge, debris and dumped furniture were still scattered around the basement, and a strong musty smell permeated the surrounding blocks.
In many large cities in the United States and the world, housing is a major problem, especially in the city center, where low-income people are forced to live in such poor conditions.
Jacqueline Klopp, deputy director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University, said, “New York does not have enough housing for all residents, and immigrants are even more vulnerable among the disadvantaged.”
Many of these people can only find housing through informal networks in their communities, usually illegal buildings without qualified permits.
According to estimates by the New York City Government, there are about 50,000 illegal basement apartments in New York. Although illegal basements are at risk, residents worry about no place to live and homeowners worry about fines, so few people report them.
The other two people who shared the basement with Leng Hongsheng were also Chinese immigrants, but they were not at home that night. One household happened to be returning to China to visit relatives, and the other was a single man who was out of work to deliver takeaway meals.
According to neighbors, Leng Hongsheng is in poor health and has suffered multiple strokes in recent years. Relying on government relief, his daughter Leng Ling suffers from autism and needs someone to take care of it at home.
A few weeks before the unfortunate incident, Wu Ming also asked Leng Hongsheng’s wife, Shen Aihua, why she continued to live in such a poor place. She said they have applied for federal housing, but are still waiting for approval.
Wu Ming sighed: “Their American dream has not been realized.”
New York City officials said that the floods in New York caused people to drown in six homes, five of which were illegal basements to rebuild apartments without a license.
Insufficient and unaffordable housing forces the poor to risk their lives to live in harsh environments. These low-income communities usually do not have trees, vegetation, and open spaces to absorb or evacuate rainwater.
In extremely hot weather, the surface of the concrete cannot absorb heat, and in the event of a flood, these surfaces cannot discharge the flood.
Most of the victims of Hurricane Ida in New York lived close to large areas of concrete surfaces, such as highways and parking lots. In the northeastern states of the United States, several people drowned in their cars because they were trapped on a highway surrounded by floodwaters.
“We have witnessed many roads being completely submerged because the floodwater cannot be discharged. If the floodwater cannot be absorbed by the ground, the road will become a river,” said Dr. Klopp.
Seven miles away from Mr. Leng’s home, another tragic victim, the Rama family from Nepal, also lived in a basement apartment near the intersection of the two major highways.
Mr. Rama, 50, came to the United States from Nepal 14 years ago. He and his wife also have a two-year-old son. The son has rosy cheeks and loves to play with stuffed monkey toys. Their friends said that the Rama family lived in a small basement because of cheap rent.
Mrs. Ramath called the neighbor upstairs in the last phone call and told her that the flood was flooding the basement.
Today, neighbors have set up a simple mourning hall outside their home, with black and white photos of the family, stuffed toys of a monkey and a few lollipops.
A few days after the flood, Rama’s aunt, Nuku Sherpa, came to worship and recite Buddhist scriptures for the dead relatives. She lives in New Jersey, not far from New York. She said that she had just cleared the flooded floor of her house that day when she heard the bad news of the death of her relatives. “Our hearts are cut,” she cried.
A few days after the flood, Wu Ming returned to his muddy home to clean up his belongings and drain the mud from the car. He hoped that the engine could start after the car was dry. After the flood took away almost everything, he I really can’t lose anything.
He said: “Even the pants I wear are borrowed.”
Professor Van Zand of Texas A&M University said that low-income and marginalized groups have more difficulty in rebuilding after a disaster. Due to the lack of resources for reconstruction or relocation, it often takes more than twice the time to return to normal life.
The gap between the poor and the rich’s ability to fight climate disasters has long been revealed.
The 2019 United Nations report pointed out that Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012 and caused a large-scale power outage. The Goldman Sachs Investment Bank building in Manhattan has long been protected with layers of sandbags. As California wildfires are spreading, the rich have hired private firefighting companies to protect them. The mansion is protected from wildfires.
The United Nations reports that by 2030, climate change will cause more than 120 million people to fall into poverty, which will instantly wipe out 50 years of poverty alleviation efforts.
The impact of climate change not only threatens basic human rights, such as lives and food, housing and water resources, but also further affects social order, the rule of law, and democracy.
The class division under climate change has already entered the public eye through fictional stories. In the Oscar-winning South Korean film “Parasitic High”, poor people living in the basement escaped from their employer’s luxury villa and returned to their homes, only to find that the floods brought by the storm had flooded their basement homes, and all their belongings were soaked in the water.
Dr. Klopp of Columbia University said that “climate apartheid” has given the world a historic ultimatum. Countries not only need to solve environmental problems, but also need to deal with social justice issues.
“We must address climate and equality issues, which cannot be separated.”
Flushing, New York is one of the earliest settlements of Dutch colonists. Since then, openness has always been one of the characteristics of Flushing. The Flushing Charter of the 17th century clearly stipulated the freedom of religious prayer, allowing Quakers fleeing persecution to be accommodated.
In the 19th century, the railway connected Flushing and Manhattan, New York. Flushing’s attractiveness increased, and the cultural and artistic circles developed rapidly, and even walked ahead of Hollywood.
In the past few decades, it has become a place of immigrants, with immigrant communities from China, Taiwan, South Korea and India.
Despite the difficult personal life, Leng Hongsheng embraced New York wholeheartedly. “He loves the art and political freedom here,” Huang Guirong, the immigration lawyer of Leng Hongsheng, told the BBC.
Leng Hongsheng was born in Northeast China in 1939 and immigrated to the United States when he was in his 50s. He likes to paint traditional Chinese paintings, and once contributed to the 911 World Trade Center reconstruction design competition. In the United States, he became politically active, published articles criticizing Beijing in Chinese newspapers, and joined the “China Democracy Party”.
He applied for political asylum in the United States in 2005 for fear of being persecuted by the Chinese government.
Leng Hongsheng’s death has attracted widespread attention in China. Many people discussed the matter on social media, questioning why their family chose to live a seemingly desolate life in the United States.
A netizen asked, “He loves America, but does America love him?”
This country did lose to him, but perhaps on the other hand, he was taken care of. After his family passed away, the American Chinese community raised funds for their funeral affairs and sent their ashes back to China so that they could return to their roots.