Posts Tagged ‘rural life in China’
Shenzhen as you’ve never seen it before
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on September 2nd, 2010
But only because it’s a different Shenzhen, also located in Guangdong province. This is Shenzhen village, only differs from the mushrooming megalopolis ofthe south by maybe one million GDP points. It’s a collection of mud houses and brick houses among rice paddies by a side road leading to pretty much no where. Every house has a mushroom shaped shade – three boulders supporting a straw roof. These are made to provide shelter for the cows.
Kong Beifen, who drives a motorcycle in the nearby township of Nanfen is from that village, and enjoys telling people he lives in a mud house in Shenzhen, which he consider a terrific joke (with the advantage of also being true). His wife works in Foshan city of Guangdong, at a light-bulb factory, and his four brothers all work in different parts of the province except for one who went as far as Liaoning to open a tea-house there. “He is the best of us all”, says Kong, who remained in the village to take care of his aged parents and his three children.
“People here are very poor” Kong says, then takes me to see the house of a rich man, allegedly the main tourist attraction in the area. it’s early afternoon and the road is swarmed with kids on bikes, cycling back to school from their lunch break. Kong’s three children go to school in the village. The one in town is too expensive for the family to afford. He points at another village, farther from the road and at the foot of the hills. “This”, he says, “Is a village with very good Fengshui. Many people there went to university”.
Gold Rush
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on August 26th, 2010
Beiya village: Rice fields and a gold mine
(Originally posted on China Digital Times)
The two ancient cities of Dali and Lijiang are probably as famous as a tourist site in China can be. Picturesque and enchanting, they are swarmed with tourists from both China and abroad who come here to admire the magnificent mountain scenery and rich minority culture at this gateway to the Himalayas. The clear streams, lush mountain flora and snow-capped peaks of North-West Yunnan aren’t what one would associate with pollution and contamination but it was right here, few kilometers off the main road connecting Dali to Lijiang and about half way between the two, that over a hundred children were hospitalized after dangerous levels of lead were found in their blood.
It all started… actually no one knows exactly when it started. In the village of Beiya (北衙) tells differ: some say signs of ailment in Children started about three months ago, and were spotted by teachers in the local school who alarmed health authorities. However, one mother, whose daughter is still in the hospital, says the child, now 12, has been feeling bad since the beginning of this year. “But I gave her some herbal medicine and thought she’ll be all-right” she says with remorse. “I can’t afford the cost of a medical check in the hospital, and it has been a drought year…” Some experts in the ministry of health suggested that drought conditions worsened already existing pollution, therefore causing the number of affected children to peak.
Beiya's main street
Another mother, who only gave her surname, Yao, said there have been similar cases as early as 2008. “But then we thought those kids have just had bad luck”. Her daughter, who is seven, was released from the hospital few days ago and is recovering at home. Her son, 3, also tested with high levels of lead but was released earlier and is now happily, if somewhat slowly, wanders around the yard, chasing a dog. His arm is in an improvised sling made of a scarf: he hurt it when he slipped in the yard the day before. “He falls a lot” Yao explains. Another couple hurriedly sent their two years old daughter to her grandmother’s in a nearby county. “She is supposed to drink a lot of milk to get well, but she can’t drink any, or eat any fruits. She gets weaker because she doesn’t eat but she gets sick when she does, so what can you do”?
The government of Heqing county, where Beiya is located, publicly announced the case at the end of July, and took upon itself all the medical costs. According to the official report (that was quoted in Chinese and international media), the air contamination was caused by small illegal gold mines operating in back yards by peasants trying to make some quick cash. Those were allegedly all closed down in an aggressive campaign following the poisoning.
Heavy load: A woman in Beiya
The official report failed to mention the odors that would hit you as soon as you enter the valley of Beiya, the air is murky and it smells: not the usual smell of dung, sewage or untreated household waste, but something that feels like it belongs in a more industrialized area. Then again, maybe it was merely my imagination, and the cough that refused to let go during my two days in Beiya might have been psychosomatic. The report, however, completely ignored the most noticeable feature in this valley – the mining operation of Yunnan gold mine company. This is no backyard illegal mine but a big factory, complete with machinery and workers dormitory. It started operating here more than ten years ago, locals say. According to the company’s website, Yunnan resources and minerals corp adheres to safety regulations and strictly enforces environmental protection measures throughout its mines.
Some residents of Beiya are convinced it was this mine that caused the lead poisoning. Others have a theory that links the incident to the newly laid railway that passes nearby. “The kids used to play there” One farmer explains why she thinks that. They don’t know anything about the results of an investigation and have received no compensation, but the hospital costs, as well as parents travel costs, were covered by the local government. Their grievances with the mining company are of a different nature.
“They wouldn’t hire us to work” Yao says. “They don’t want us because they say we have no education and no qualification so they bring workers from other places. I know the people who work there get medical insurance. That could have been helpful to me”. Her neighbor, Ms. Sun, doesn’t believe the latest poisoning or the investigation will change anything, or make the place safer. “Mei Banfa” (nothing to do, no solution), she says. “We have no guanxi and no influence. The bosses of the company probably have many friends. My only hope is that my husband will earn enough money (He works in Fujian province) then we would move to a safer place”.
If you’d have a chance to talk to the manager of the gold-mine, what would you say to him?
Yao: “I would tell him my daughter is sick and that I need money. I’d ask him why he wouldn’t hire us. We are good people. We want to work and earn our living”.
The more things stay the same, the worse they get
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on August 22nd, 2010
The village? the village is still the same. Nothing ever changes there.
This came from a former student of mine in Lijiang. He Works in town now, cleaning tables at a restaurant and taking driving lessons in his spare time. Most of his classmates also work in town, doing similar jobs. Few went to university. None stayed in the village. “There is nothing to do there” he says, and his friends all nod.
“The village” is the same village I wrote about few times before, Baoshan in north-west Yunnan province. I was a volunteer there for a year in 2005, and have been trying to go back for a visit at least once a year ever since.
The youths of Baoshan might think of it as a dull place where nothing ever changes, but from one visit to the next, I do see changes. For the worse.
More and more fields look abandoned, with no one wanting to stay in the village and cultivate them. Those who stay are the elderly, who got older since my last visit, but still work the remaining fields, having no one else to do this for them.
Construction of the road to Baoshan area has finally been completed (I wrote about that painful process here). The asphalt goes almost all the way, leaving only about 20 Km of rough dirt road that only takes an hour. The rest is a smooth, dreamy ride that only takes slightly longer than it used to before. You see, in the process of paving, the width of the road somehow shrank, leaving barely enough space for one vehicle to pass. If they drive very slowly and take dangerous curves carefully, they are almost guaranteedto get to Lijiang town safely in no more than 5 hours. This is the best villagers can hope for nowadays, and the best that could be managed with a meager budget, that no doubt got even scantier due to other necessities such as banquets and cigarettes and the new dwelling of a party secretary.
Rough Roads and ageing people is bad news for the local education system. Some devoted teachers, with the help of some donors, have done wonders to students test results in recent years: The number of Junior-high kids who passed High-School exams soared from 25% in 2004 to more than 50% in 2009 – not bad for a school where classrooms are always freezing or leaking, or for students who often can’t afford to buy a separate notebook for each class, or for teachers who normally get only about half their salary every month.
But not impressive enough, apparently. The coming school-year, few of the smaller elementary schools in the villages will not open, and the only middle school was shut down. Not enough teachers could be recruited (I wonder why). So first graders will have to walk for half an hour or more on mountain paths to attend classes. Middle-school students could either move to Lijiang or to a smaller town, about two hours drive away when the road is passable: That means a boarding school, which many families can’t afford. In turn, it means more kids with less education and less prospects.
So that’s the situation. Not the best you can find in China. Most definitely not the worst. Just another Nong Cun where nothing ever changes.
The Road not Taken
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on January 1st, 2010
Wow, I haven’t been updating for quite a while, not having anything very interesting to say (I know that has never stopped me in the past but I promise it wont stop me in the future either). If it wasn’t for all the spam, could have forgotten I even have a blog.
Not blogging or writing anything, I’ve had the free time & good fortune to be travelling again, particularly to spend a couple of weeks in North-West Yunnan, one of the most beautiful, most interesting parts of china, and always where my true home is in this country.
Not going to tire my sole reader with any travel stories – everyone, after all, has been to Lijiang or Tiger Leaping Gorge and have their own opinion, even if it’s – more often than not – the wrong opinion. For me, however, periodical visits to the rural areas of Yunnan serve as a kind of reality check. It’s easy to see only the well-regulated, fairly prosperous central Beijing, where I happily dwell. and it’s is even easier to draw conclusions about China from what one sees here. It is sometimes useful, however to look elsewhere, and the Lijiang region is a pretty good example of a previously impoverished yet rapidly developing area of China, with a handful of environmental issues and minority conflicts thrown in for good measure.
So, then, during one long drive through the snow range, we saw two roads diverge in a yellow wood.
We took the one less traveled by, a road that leads to Baoshan township(宝山乡), the administrative name for what is actually a spread of small villages inhabited by Naxi minority people. I have written about the area and my extraordinary experience there before, including here and here.
For at least six or seven years now, the people of Baoshan were waiting for an improved road to connect them to Lijiang city, the urban center for this region. A paved road to replace the current hard-to-navigate dirt road would – or so they hope – allow them access to markets for their agricultural products. It would also supposedly draw more tourists (and their Yuans) to the villages, helping villagers to generate some additional income.
After years of talks and planning, that road is finally being constructed. Actually the 20 or so kilometers road has been under construction for over six months now, making accessibility to the township much worse than before, sometimes leaving villages cut off from the outside world for days at end. The work is being mostly done by hired local peasants with little experience ad hardly any heavy machinery except a small road roller and an old bulldozer very much similar to the one my two years old nephew loves so much to play with.
Not that people complain much: Their local government is giving top priority to the project, giving it most of the budget left after paying it’s officials to doze off in their offices everyday. Seriously, I believe the township government is actually slightly better than the Chinese average (though it’s just my impression that might be wrong), and they seem to be genuinely interested in improving living conditions in their domain.
So far, no better or worse than the frustratingly slow pace things usually advance in rural China, so lets go back to the point of diversion and take a look at the other road (not taken. by me. this time).
That one, snaking north through a high mountain pass, is a state of the art road, fully paved, complete with safety fences, road signs and wide niches for truck drivers to stop at (I know it sounds pretty standard and maybe not that impressive, unless you’ve got down some mileage in West China. Good secondary roads are pretty rare there). It was built in about three months to afford regular supply of workforce and materials to a big dam on the Yangtze, constructed by state owned HuaNeng power company.
And that has made all the difference.
A road in Yunnan (not the one mentioned above)
China Mobile can help you plant rice
Posted by: Rachel in Minorities, Stories from the Countryside on April 15th, 2009
They that sow in tears will reap in joy: This poster was hung on a door of a small shop in North Yunnan.
“This spring sowing season. Mobile comes to your help”
The ad offers 30 Yuan of agricultural products (seeds, I guess) for at least 60 yuan prepaid cash in a mobile phone account. The lord hath done great things for them indeed.
