Guiyu

See also: guīyú, guìyú, and Guìyǔ

English

Map including 貴嶼墟 Kuei-hsü-hsü (AMS, 1954) →OCLC

Etymology

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 貴嶼／贵屿 (Guìyǔ).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡweɪˈjuː/

Proper noun

Guiyu

1. A town in Chaoyang, Shantou, Guangdong, China.
   • 1996, Charles S. Gitomer, Potato and Sweetpotato in China: Systems, Constraints, and Potential‎^[1], Lima, Peru: International Potato Center, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 56:

     In Guiyu Township, Chaoyang County, Guangdong, the average yield for potato is 9.75 t/ha and for winter sweetpotato yield is about 17.25 t/ha.

   • 2002, Jim Puckett, 5:35 from the start, in Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia‎^[2], spoken by Mary Ryan, Basel Action Network, →OCLC:

     Following up news articles and e-mails from mainland China, BAN was directed to an e-waste processing area known as Guiyu on the Longdong River near the city of Shantou in the northeast [of] Guangdong Province, four hours by car from Hong Kong. In the course of three intensive days in and around Guiyu's four villages, the small investigative team witnessed firsthand what passes for recycling of e-waste in Asia.

   • 2003 February 24, Peter S. Goodman, “China Serves As Dump Site For Computers”, in The Washington Post‎^[3], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 October 2023‎^[4]:

     On a recent morning in Guiyu, in Guangdong province, hundreds of men squatted in concrete-block sheds, sifting through computers and printers and breaking them into scrap with their bare hands.

   • 2008 January 12, Jon Mooallem, “The risk-filled afterlife”, in The New York Times‎^[5], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 March 2023, International Business‎^[6]:

     The residents of Guiyu, including children, make their living sorting, dismantling and burning computer parts or bathing them in nitric and hydrochloric acids to recover precious metals.

   • 2013 May 30, Ivan Watson, “China: The electronic wastebasket of the world”, in CNN‎^[7], archived from the original on 31 May 2013:

     On seemingly every street, laborers sit on the pavement outside workshops ripping out the guts of household appliances with hammers and drills. The roads in Guiyu are lined with bundles of plastic, wires, cables and other garbage.

   • 2018 January 23, David Stanway, “China trash town's cleanup bolstered by import ban”, in Reuters‎^[8], archived from the original on December 24, 2019:

     GUIYU, China (Reuters) - The dizzying stench of burning plastic still drifts through the alleys, workshops and warehouses of Guiyu, the southern Chinese town that has long symbolized China’s role as the main recycler of the world’s waste.[...]In the 2000s, Guiyu became a symbol of the environmental devastation caused by recycling hazardous waste with little regulation after being singled out by groups like Greenpeace and featuring in a string of international media reports. Trash is still the mainstay of Guiyu’s economy, but hundreds of recycling businesses have been consolidated or shut completely in recent years and authorities are now cracking down on smuggled waste, further starving small and polluting businesses of supplies. “Although the dismantling of old electronics is the leading industry in Guiyu, we should say it was more a profession than an industry,” said Zheng Jinxiong, vice chairman of a government commission tasked with running the recycling industry park, set up on the edge of town.

   • 2018 February 14, Harald Franzen, “China cleans up electronic recycling”, in Deutsche Welle‎^[9], archived from the original on February 15, 2018, Environment‎^[10]:

     For a long time, Guiyu in China was considered the world's biggest electronic trash dumping ground.

   • 2021 March 9, Yi-Ling Liu, “Sci-Fi Writer or Prophet? The Hyperreal Life of Chen Qiufan”, in Wired.com‎^[11], archived from the original on 09 March 2021:

     Before writing his debut novel, The Waste Tide, a 2013 eco-thriller about a workers’ uprising in a futuristic dump called Silicon Isle, Chen spent time in the southeastern city of Guiyu, one of the world’s largest dumping grounds for electronic waste, observing migrant workers toil in the toxin-laden trash.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Guiyu.

Translations

a town of Guangdong

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 貴嶼／贵屿 (Guìyǔ)

Further reading

• Guiyu at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.