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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] China--the rest of the story, from a rural viewpoint
  • Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:21:11 -0700

Rural Exodus for Work Fractures Chinese Family
By JIM YARDLEY

Published: December 21, 2004

SHUANGHU, China - Yang Shan is in fourth grade and spends a few hours every day practicing her Chinese characters. Her script is neat and precise, and one day, instead of drills, she wrote letters to her parents and put them in the mail.

"How is your health?" she asked.

Shan, who is 10, then added a more pointed question: "What is happening with our family?"

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Her parents had left in March. Their absence was not new in Shan's short life. Her father, Yang Heqing, has left four times for work. He is now in Beijing on a construction site. Her mother, Ran Heping, has left three times. She is in a different city as a factory worker.

Over the years, Shan's parents have returned to this remote village to bring money and reunite the family. They leave when the money runs out, as it did in March. Her father had medical debts and needed cash to see another doctor. Shan's school fees were due, and her grandparents also needed help.

"I think they are suffering in order to make my life better," Shan said of her parents. She added a familiar Chinese expression: "They are eating bitterness."

For the Yang family and millions of others in the Chinese countryside, the only way to survive as a family is to not live as one. Migrant workers like Shan's parents are the mules driving the country's stunning economic growth. And the money they send home has become essential for jobless rural China.

Yet even that money is no longer enough. Migrant wages have stagnated, education and health costs are rising, and the rural social safety net has collapsed - a crushing combination that is a major reason the income divide is widening so rapidly in China at the expense of the rural poor.

Migration also has meant that urban and rural children in China are growing up in starkly different worlds. In cities, upwardly mobile couples call their precious only child xiao taiyang, or "little sun," as in center of the universe. Children are indulged with clothes, toys and snacks: childhood obesity is a new urban ill.

In the countryside, the new vernacular phrase is liu shou, or "left behind" child. Millions of children like Shan are growing up without one or both parents. Villages often seem to be missing a generation. Grandparents work the fields and care for the children.

"We are a triangle, three people in three different places," said Mr. Yang, 36, the father. "The pain of missing one another is very difficult. All parents are the same in this world. All parents care about their children."

But Shan's parents, strapped with debt and obligation, are among the untold millions of people in rural China caught in a brutal cycle. Studies show that medical costs are the leading reason that people fall into poverty in China. Many city residents still have some health benefits, but peasants now fall under a pay-for-service system. Sickness can mean bankruptcy.

Mr. Yang went to Beijing in part to earn enough money for medical treatment. He was warned four years ago that he needed treatment for prostate problems, but he could not afford it. Now, his health has worsened on his construction job. He has missed days and is jeopardizing the pay he needs to see a doctor.

His wife, Ms. Ran, 33, wants to visit her daughter in February for the Lunar New Year, when migrant workers traditionally go home. But she said her factory in the city of Baoding will fine her $72 - roughly six weeks' pay - if she does not work straight through to July. Shan's school fees are due soon, and the family needs more money.

Shan has never left this village in mountainous central China, a few hours' drive from the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River. She is still a child, but she understands the pressures on her family and how her own future depends on getting an education. She grew worried when the school began asking for next semester's tuition.

"I love school," she said.

A Desperate Village

The students in Shan's fourth grade class rose in unison as the teacher, Du Nengwei, tapped his pointer against his desk to start the lesson.

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The Yangs were together in the village for a year. But medical and school bills forced them apart again. When Mr. Yang left for Beijing last March, his wife left for a plastics factory. She later quit and tried to join her husband in Beijing.

"We are a family," her husband told her. "When we can, we should be together."

They were together for less than 10 days. Ms. Ran worked at a pastry factory but quit because the pay was so bad. She also said the cost of renting a room and living together in expensive Beijing would have erased the couple's savings.

She returned to Baoding and the metal ball factory in September. She is an inspector, an easier job that pays up to $40 a month. She is not lonely because several cousins work at the factory. They talk about their children or visit a local park together. There are days when she says being away in a big city can be exciting.

"There are no department stores where we are from," she said.

In November, she bought a bottle of shampoo for her long black hair. It was first time in her life she had ever bought shampoo. It cost $1.50.

These lighter moments are leavened by the dark. On the telephone, she pleads with her husband to see a doctor. "I said, 'When you get paid, spend all your wages to get better.' I said I would send my money home to take care of the family."

"But he doesn't really want treatment because it will cost so much," she said.

The grandparents called in December to ask for another $25 for Shan's tuition next year. Mrs. Ran wants to visit her daughter in February at New Year's. But her bosses insist she must work until July or again lose pay. She is angry but has decided she must stay. Her daughter does not know yet.

"I just hope that Heqing will recover and we can work together to put Yang Shan at least through high school," Ms. Ran said, when asked what she wanted for her future. "If his health doesn't improve, I'm worried we'll only be able to send her to middle school."

"It's a hard life," she added, "but we have no other choice."

An Unknown Future

Shan's grandparents say she almost never cries. She is happy playing with her friends and her cousins. Her parents both called on her birthday in July. She said it had made her happy.

In early December, she sat outside and practiced writing. The letters she had sent her parents months earlier never reached them; she did not have a reliable addresses.

Now, she started writing in a notebook.

"I want a ticket, a boat ticket and a bus ticket," she scribbled for a visiting photographer.

Where does she want to go?

"To see my parents," she answered. "I want to see my mom and dad. I think about them all the time."

For the moment, her earlier, darker image of their life had lifted. She wanted to join them. She wanted to be a migrant worker.

"I think their life is very good," the little girl answered.

"Their life is smooth."







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