During our stroll through the village, we passed by the buildings in the photo above. As one can tell from the appearance of their roofs, doors, and windows, they hadn't been used in quite a while. When I asked our guide, Hong Gao, about them, he said that they had once been the village school.At one time 100 or more students attended classes in the village school. But now the school is closed because very few younger adults, including young couples with children, live in Changyucheng Village. These people have moved to Beijing, Changping, and other nearby cities because they offer more work opportunities (工作机会). Villagers can make much more money working in factories and other businesses, even on construction sites, than they can by farming here.
As my previous blog posts and photos about this place emphasized, it's clearly very difficult to earn a decent income as a farmer in Changyucheng Village. The growing season is short, the plots of land are very small, and the variety of crops that can be grown here are limited.
I just finished reading Michael Meyer's fantastic book, THE LAST DAYS OF OLD BEIJING, about the capital’s vanishing hutong (胡同) alleys and siheyuan (四合院) courtyard houses. Meyer lived in a siheyuan south of Tian’anmen Square and the book is based on this experience. It has a memorable cast of characters. One of my favorites is Meyer's neighbor, an old woman who turned her TV set on all day to a Beijing Opera (京剧) Channel. She became very irate when the small electric heater Meyer bought for his room blew out the Siheyuan's fuse box and interrupted this programming. Hell hath no fury greater than that of an elderly Chinese lady deprived of her Beijing Opera broadcast!
Another memorable character is a young shaved noodle chef named “Soldier Liu”. He got this name because he had served in the PLA. Soldier Liu's family hailed from a small farming village in Shanxi Province. At one point, Meyer took a trip to Soldier Liu's village, which is located near Pingyao, one of China's last cities with intact ancient walls. Pingyao is also where Zhang Yi Mou shot his film “Raise the Red Lantern” (大红灯笼高高挂). Soldier Liu's sister remained in the village after her brother and parents moved to Beijing to set up their noodle restaurant in Meyer's neighborhood.
When Meyer met this woman, she informed him, “Everyone except the elderly have moved to the towns.” Soldier Liu's sister added, “In fact, this has always been a prosperous village … things have never been that bad here. It's just that people know they can make more money in the city.”
The same holds true even in provinces like Hunan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, all of which are blessed with good soil, abundant water, and a year around growing season. These places have also seen massive migration (移居) from rural to urban areas. The Chinese call these migrant workers 农民工. Those from relatively prosperous rural areas can still earn much greater incomes doing factory (工厂) assembly line or construction work than they can from farming.
Over the past 1-2 decades the 农民工 has sent vast sums back to their villages. These remittances have made it possible for them build better houses in their hometowns. The money has also enabled the 农民工 to send their sons and daughters to high school—in China free universal education extends only through middle-school. After that, families must pay tuition. While it's not a lot of money, it can be a major burden for poor families. These children can now at least contemplate going on to a college or university. Finally, the extra cash has been used to buy small luxuries, such as motor scooters.
Last Sunday, March 8th, I took a stroll down one of favorite nearby places, the wide 国子监 alley by the Confucian Temple. I did a post a while back on coffee culture coming to this place and will be shortly doing a follow up story on it. The 农民工in the photo below are construction workers. Interestingly enough, they were doing a project which involved restoring old Siheyuan housing rather than replacing it with new high rises (I'll have more to say about that soon as well).
I asked one of the younger fellows about his old home town (老家). He mentioned a place in surrounding Hebei Province and added that his parents were farmers. In Hebei Province, as well as in neighboring Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, farmers are literally running out of water for their crops. Indeed, this whole area of China, including Beijing, is facing a looming ecological disaster brought on by severe water shortages.
I shot this 农民工 photo in West Beijing, just east of the Muxidi Subway station while on my way to the city's incredible Capital Museum (首都博物馆). My colleague Mike Watts mischievously suggested that the photo's caption should read, “A Hard Day at the Office”.And in fact, these people do lead incredibly hard lives. To start with, those who are married often leave their spouses and children behind when they move to the cities. It's not just men who do this, but women as well. Many females do assembly line work in textile and electronics factories, while in Beijing, large numbers of women from poor Anhui Province work as maids. Indeed, when I lived at Erwai, I had a maid who happened to be from that province. We often chatted a bit in Chinese—she naturally spoke no English—and this lady informed me once that her son and husband were back in Anhui.
To be sure, lots of villages share Changyucheng's lack of very young people. However, there are many others where the children have stayed behind in their villages after one or both of their parents have moved to the cities to work. I vaguely recall hearing on a Chinese TV newscast one night several years ago that 25 percent of China's children are being raised by a single parent or their grandparents.
This happens mainly because of China's system of residence permits (户口). In order to get a Beijing residence permit, one pretty much has to be born in the city. Either that, or you need to have studied at one of the capital's many universities and then and worked here for some length of time. The same goes Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities that are highly sought after as places to live.
While the 农民工 and other individuals can move to and live in Beijing without a residence permit, not having this document makes them second class citizens. To start with, they’re deprived a certain welfare benefits and other services. More importantly, they have to pay tuition if their children attend elementary and middle schools in the city.
The cities are reluctant to let anyone and everyone get a residence permit. In particular, they fear that granting migrant workers residence status will place a severe strain on social services, especially education. And this fear is somewhat justified. For example, in her excellent recent book, THE CHINA PRICE, Alexandra Harney notes that one Chinese city actually did suspend tuition for the children of non-residence permit holding families. This experiment was quickly ended after the crunch on school finances became too great.
On top of that, the 农民工 face considerable prejudice (偏见) from city-dwellers. Most urban Chinese regard these people as uncouth and uncultured country bumpkins (乡巴佬). I must say that I sometimes get exasperated with these people. This typically happens on a crowded bus or subway car. The 农民工 often plop their trademark big plastic zipped collapsing bags—these function as both a suitcase and duffle bag—in the middle of the aisle or near the doorway of crowded buses or subway cars. This cheap luggage and shabby attire makes it easy to spot the 农民工; Mike Watts calls them the “village people”.
And now the 农民工 are bearing the brunt of the Middle Kingdom's current economic downturn. Even during China's boom times, they were often seen as expendable and faced very bad working conditions. Now it has been estimated that some 20 million of 农民工 have lost their jobs due to the mass closure of factories producing export goods.
All of the news reports I have read make it clear that very few of these people are happy about the prospect of becoming farmers once again. A 农民工 quoted in one story bluntly stated, “I hate working in the fields!” And who could blame him for feeling that way?!
Over the past few decades, China has certainly undergone rapid and massive urbanization, the likes of which the world has rarely seen. Nevertheless, over half of the country's population still lives in rural areas. That's still clearly far too many people. China could grow as much food as it does now and grow it more efficiently with a far smaller number of farmers.
With the downturn in the coastal export-oriented manufacturing sector, it seems like the old model of using urban factory work to absorb the surplus rural population is no longer viable. However, every crisis present opportunities and this one is no exception. Another way of dealing with the problem of too many farmers, which would also be far less socially disruptive, would be to allow for greater rural entrepreneurship in the form of small-scale factories, workshops, and other businesses.
As Huang Yasheng, who teaches at MIT's Sloan School has argued in his recent and brilliant study, CAPITALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS (the title can be translated as 有中国特色资本主义), this was actually done during the 1980s in the early stages of the opening up and reform process. So-called Town and Village Enterprises flourished in China's poorest provinces, like Guizhou, Yunnan, and Gansu.
These privately owned business lifted large numbers of people out of rural poverty. They also played a major in making wealth and incomes more equal during the 1980s. In the 1990s, by contrast, when the focus shifted to urban areas, income inequality quickly rose, turning China into one of the world's least egalitarian countries.
The country's current leadership has recognized these problems and sought to address them in the so-called “New Socialist Countryside” (社会主义新农村) policy. And the next steps it takes in this direction will determine the future trajectory of China for many decades to come.
The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.
长峪城 (chang2yu3cheng2).
工作机会 (gong1zuo4ji1hui4). As noted in a very recent blog post, 工作 is both the verb and noun “work”. Thus 机会 is opportunity.
胡同 (hu2tong2).
四合院 (si4he2yuan2).
京剧 (jing1ju4).
刘士兵 (liu2shi4bing1). The first character is the Chinese proper name “Liu,” while the other two is the word for common soldier. In China, one’s title, as well as the “Mr./Mrs.”, comes after one’s proper name. Hence the department in my company is called 杨经理 (Yang2jing1li3); the last two characters mean “manager.” And my Erwai students called me 高老师 (Gao1lao3shi1), or “Teacher Gao”. Gao was the first character in my Chinese name, 高德伟, or gao1de2wei3; my first and only Chinese teacher from my Henan days gave me this name and it means “great in moral stature.” I now have to do my best to live up to it!!
大红灯龙高高挂 (da4hong2deng1long2gao1gao1gua4). The first four characters means big red lantern—the character for “dragon”, 龙, is thrown in with that noun—while 高高 means “very high”. Mandarin speakers will often repeat and adjective for emphasis. Finally, 挂 is the verb to raise or hang.
移居 (yi2ju1). According to my Chinese friend, 路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4), 移居 is more appropriate to use than the Chinese word for “emigrate” (移民; yi2min2, or literally “move people”) here. That's because people who 移民 plan to or have the ability to settle permanently in the places they move to. As noted later on this post, this isn’t the case for the 农民工.
农民工 (nong2min2gong1). 农民 is the word for “farmer,” while 工 is a shortened form of the Chinese word for worker, 工人 (gong1ren2).
国子监 (guo2zi5jian1).
老家 (lao3jia1). 老 means “old”, while 家 is a shortened form of the word for hometown, 家乡 (jia1xiang1).
首都博物馆 (shou3du1bo2wu4guan3). The first two characters form the Mandarin word for capital, while the last three are the word for museum.
户口 (hu4kou3).
偏见 (pian1jian4).
乡吧佬 (xiang1ba5lao3). There are two other words for this expression. One used by Beijing inhabitants is 土佬冒 (tu3lao3mao4). The first two characters literally mean “old soil/earth.” You can also say 乡下佬. But whatever term you use, all of them are fairly insulting. Again, many thanks to 路红艳 for helping me out here.
有中国特色资本主义 (you3zhong1guo2te4se4zi1zhu3yi4). Really informed and perceptive readers will note that the title of Huang's book is a clever play on the Chinese phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (有中国特色社会主义). In both these phrases, the first character is the verb “to have”, while the second and third characters stand for “China” (literally “Middle Kingdom”). 特色 means “special feature”—you could say 堵车 (du3che1; traffic jam[s]) are now a special feature of Beijing (是北京的特色). 资本 is the Chinese word for capital, while 主义 means doctrine. So put together, they mean “capitalism.” And when combined with 主义, 社会, which means “society”, becomes “socialism.”
社会主义新农村 (she4hui4zhu3yi4xin1nong2cun1). Here as in so many other cases, Chinese word order is the opposite of English word order. Literally translated, the phrase means “Socialism” (社会主义) “new” (新) “countryside/villages” (农村).
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