Eastern Chinese river turns blood red
YouTube screen grab
Digital Reporter
Monday, July 28, 2014, 8:39 PM - Residents in China's Zhejiang province have been left scratching their heads after a waterway mysteriously turned blood red.
Witnesses say the river looked normal at 5 a.m. local time Thursday morning - but within an hour, the water in the Xinmeizhou village river had turned bright red.
Air quality experts haven't determined the cause, but water samples suggest the crimson hue is the result of illegal dumping.
“We suspect that somebody dumped artificial colouring in the water because he thought the typhoon yesterday would cause heavy rain, and nobody would notice,” Jianfeng Xiao, Chief of the bureau told China News.
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“It turned out there wasn’t heavy rainfall yesterday, so the evidence is left behind,”
Residents say that the strange colouring could have come from the paper manufacturer, food dye factory or the clothing company that line the river.
This isn't the first time a Chinese river has turned blood red.
In 2011, northern China's Jian river turned bright crimson for two days, baffling residents.
It was traced back to workers illegally dumping red dye into a city storm pipe connected to the waterway.
A man holds water taken from the river. Courtesy: YouTube
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