The Gao Family and Gao Qingrong—Another Kind of Countryside

by David Borenstein on February 27, 2010

“20 years ago I tried to move to the city and you kicked me out, calling me a peasant; now you’ve ruined the city, and you want to take my farmland and force me to become an urbanite”

- Gao Shengjian (Gao Qingrong’s father)

gao qingrong

NAME: Gao Qingrong
AGE: 37
OCCUPATION: Farmer
POTENTIALLY A CANDIDATE FOR: The Nobel Peace Prize, as part of a group of 1000 grassroots activist women from around the world.

In the not-so-distant past, rural life was glorified in China. Just as it was a peasant revolution that established modern China, the simplicity and honesty of the peasants established the moral standard of the nation. During the Cultural Revolution, urban Chinese were even shipped out to the countryside to learn from the peasantry.

But since then the fickle narrative of Chinese history has changed direction. The Chinese idiom ‘zhao ling xi gai’ can describe modern China’s policies towards the countryside: to issue an edict at dawn that is rescinded at dusk.

Since the mid-80s, Chinese policy and society has embraced an unequivocally urbanized vision of the future. The consequences of this have not merely been disproportionate investment and reform in urban areas and a resulting economic disparity between city and countryside (at a record high today). It has also subjugated the idea of the countryside. The idea of a modernized future is one liberated from the backwardness of the village or peasant.

Accompanying this attitude is a perpetual national conversation about the “quality” (suzhi) of a person. While the image of the cosmopolitan, trendy urbanite often signifies someone of “high” quality; the image of the old-fashioned farmer almost always means “low” quality. It is common to hear rural Chinese use this expression as a means of self-deprecation.

These new attitudes have turned an old Maoist practice on its head. Policy makers, academics and officials now promote rural migration to the cities not only for bringing capital into the countryside, but also for “civilizing” the village. The idea is that the farmer can learn from urbanites while in the city and then return to the countryside with improved quality.

But all of this has created a vicious circle. National discourse and policy scorning the countryside have created a developmental model where the vast majority of economic opportunities are located in cities. It has also created a national culture that equates the urban with civilization. As a result, most rural Chinese have a deep desire to leave their hometowns— both for the economic opportunities and the chance to become culturally adequate.

#10 Village of Luoxi Township— the place where I do field research—is a typical example the consequences. Most people of working-age have left for the cities, and the village has become a ghost town with virtually only young children and elderly remaining. (The only place that is always filled with activity is the government-sponsored training center for helping people acquire skills to work in factories in the cities). Furthermore, problems with sanitation and waste have become serious because many of those who remain—either harboring plans to leave as soon as possible or just disdaining the countryside—neglect to care for their community. This bleak reality not only creates a countryside that reinforces people’s desire to leave but also the very prejudices that helped create it.

But there are rural Chinese like the Gao family fighting to change this.

The Gaos operate a direct marketing model, organic farm in Anlong Village, Sichuan. Working in a co-op with seven other families, they run a project they have come to call Healthful Vegetable Delivery. It involves selling produce directly to consumers while incorporating only sustainable and organic farming techniques. Once a week the Gao’s eldest son, Gao Yicheng, delivers produce from the co-op to multiple drop off points in Chengdu, 30 kilometers away.

The co-op uses the term “urban-rural mutual aid” to describe their operation. In this spirit, the Gaos intimately engage with customers in Chengdu and frequently invite them over to learn about farm work or eat with the family. The model has proved successful— unlike the vast majority of rural Chinese, the Gaos are able to support themselves solely through family farming and do not rely on urban migration to survive.

My friend Matthew Hale describes the context of the Gao’s work in a recent edition of Chengdoo Citylife Magazine:

“These efforts, through small-scale and voluntary cooperation among rural households in collaboration with urbanites, to clean up the environment, combat deleterious effects of China’s development, and reconstruct the urban-rural relationship, are hallmarks of China’s alternative rural development movement…This NGO-based movement emerged around 2002 through the convergence of several dozen left-leaning academics and grassroots activists concerned with the dissolution of china’s rural communities since the 1990s.”

In many ways—especially in their warmth and hospitality— the Gaos closely resemble many of the rural Sichuanese I have encountered elsewhere. But there is also something obviously different about them and their community.

Anlong village radiates the vitality that #10 Village lost long ago. Potted plants, orchards and drying produce envelop every corner of the colorful courtyard that leads up to their home. Animals are conspicuously absent from both their two-acres of pristine farmland and dinner table, as the family are practicing Buddhists and vegetarians. Scattered around the property are the different experiments they (often in coordination with environmental NGOs) have conducted for making their home a greener place. They have developed manmade wetland water filtration system, installed an “ecological urine-diverting dry toilet,” make compost, and use rice husks instead of soap to clean dishes.

While most of the Gaos are active in promoting their work, I spent the majority of my time at their farm talking to Gao Qingrong, the 32 year-old eldest daughter. Her job was previously the same as most other rural Chinese—working as a migrant laborer in a coastal city. However, when she came home for Spring Festival in 2007 she saw how difficult it was for her mother to tend the farm on her own and decided to stay.

Her timing fortuitously coincided with a Chengdu-based environmental NGO giving a workshop in Anlong Village about sustainable farming practices. Since then, she has devoted herself to promoting and developing sustainable, community-oriented farming practices.

Gao strongly believes that prevailing attitudes concerning the countryside hurt villages. “Our media and culture dupe us into believing we don’t want to farm,” she told me. “But we can think for ourselves and set our own path—I don’t need to migrate.”

She also remains positive for the future. There are plenty of possibilities for sustainable farming to continue expanding in China, she told me. “People will come to learn about the environmental and health dangers of conventional farming,” she said. “Once people know about them and they’ll make a change.”

The Gao’s co-op is part of a profoundly different countryside from what I have seen in #10 Village and elsewhere. Through “urban-rural mutual aid,” they have found a way to circumnavigate the social and economic disincentives of family farming.

The model that Gaos operate is not a solution to all of China’s rural problems. However, its strategy has been effective in locally contesting national attitudes towards the countryside—all while turning an enclave of Anlong village into a much brighter place to live.

Before I left the farm, Qingrong asked me what I planned to do after I was finished getting my education. I told her that I wasn’t sure, and playfully asked her what she thought I should do. Her response beamed genuineness: “I haven’t been able to do much studying but I do know that whatever we do, it should be to make the world a better place.” “You’ll figure something out,” she said

Thanks to Matthew A. Hale (Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Washington) for introducing me to the Gaos, informing me of much of what I know about alternative rural development in China and providing me with the Gao Shengjian quote at the beginning of this post.

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Jun Jun– One Night in Beijing

by David Borenstein on February 17, 2010

Junjun

NAME: Jun Jun
AGE: 17-20
OCCUPATION: Migrant
IMPRESSED BY STRENGTH OF: Michael Horn

The first time I met a Chinese migrant was almost 4 years ago, on my first night ever in China. After my flight landed in Beijing, a representative from the teaching program I was with whisked me away to a cheap hotel in the outskirts of the city. The arrangements were to stay there one night before taking a train the next evening to the school I was assigned to teach at in Yueqing, Zhejiang.

Hidden beneath the hotel, accessible through an underground stairwell, was a dimly lit nightclub blasting music loud enough to be heard five stories up in our rooms. When I finally settled in, I felt dazed and tired from the long flight, but I had waited too long to finally be in China to just go to sleep. Me and a few other volunteers decided to investigate the underground nightclub with the loud music.

The bartender was a middle-aged man with flowing, long hair— done in a perm and dyed brown. His leopard print shirt was exceptionally tight. The place was mostly empty, so we sat down in front of him and ordered drinks. I started to talk with him, but my fledgling Chinese was too weak and the music too loud. He shot me a smile and walked to the other side of the bar.

Around the time my ears felt like they may have sustained permanent ear damage, I noticed that there were many private rooms around the nightclub. If me and my friends were to sit in one of those quieter, more brightly lit rooms, not only could we have a better chance of hearing each other, but we could also read my Lonely Planet and make plans for the next day. I approached the bartender and pointed to a private room: “Room, how much?”

My beginning Chinese textbook didn’t prepare me well enough for his response, but I did catch that he wanted 100 RMB (at the time about 12.50 USD). The price seemed high, but me and the other volunteers decided to split the cost of the room. Our program had told us about ‘special prices’ in China for clueless foreigners who don’t know any better, but we were either too tired or dazed to fight it that night.

A few minutes after we sat down in the private room, a skinny Chinese boy probably in his late teens walked in. His button-down shirt was fastened only in one place, revealing a low-cut, red muscle shirt. The confusion of him suddenly joining us quickly intensified. The boy took a seat next to my friend and fellow volunteer Michael Horn, draping him in his arms. He looked at Michael and spoke in English, with a thick, sultry Chinese accent: “You are so strong.”

It took almost ten more minutes of increasingly awkward conversation to tentatively determine that what we had paid for was not a room.

It was around this time that the boy caught on that we were not interested in his services. He was also unsure of whether he should stay or leave—after all, we did pay for him. We invited him to stay. I went to the bar and bought him a beer, and we chatted for a few hours.

His name was Jun Jun. He was kind, polite and had the patience to speak with a foreigner with only basic grasp of the Chinese language. He told me that he wasn’t from Beijing but from the countryside of one of the provinces surrounding Beijing municipality—just like all the other boys there. When I told him that we were thinking about sightseeing in Beijing the following day, he helped us plan a schedule. When he found out that it was my first ever night in China, he welcomed me and warned me of some things I may encounter and not be used to.

He was the best ambassador China could have provided me on my first night there.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

When I woke up the next morning, I thought about what had happened since the last time I woke up in a bed. In 30 hours, I parted with my friends and family, flown across the Atlantic, gone to China for my first time, and purchased and befriended a male Chinese prostitute.

I decided to go back down the underground stairwell to get another glimpse of the nightclub before I left. With the lights turned on, things began to make more sense. The dirty brick walls were covered with posters of half-naked men, and the stench of all sorts of carnal acts emanated out of the private rooms. I noticed that Jun Jun and many of the other employees I recognized from the previous night— young men aged about 15-20 years— were waking up in the private rooms. There weren’t any customers around; the nightclub was also Jun Jun and the rest of the staff’s home.

The middle-aged bartender was sitting behind the bar, still wearing the same skin-tight, leopard print shirt from the previous night. Beside him, sitting on the far side of the bar on his right side, was a big tub of lubricant that I had failed to notice the night before. For a moment, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of disgust. He was probably the boss of this bar, and the money he made to upkeep his flowing, brown curls almost definitely came through some sort of exploitative means. But I tried not to pass judgment— not on my first day in a foreign country.

As I walked out of the bar, I waved goodbye to Jun Jun.

Later, as I was checking out of the hotel, a group emerged from the underground stairwell. At the head of the pack was the bartender— behind him, a small bevy of his teenage employees.

They reached the street outside and it became obvious how different they were. Their colorful, skin-tight clothing and flamboyant body language blatantly stuck out from the rest of the backdrop. They were outsiders in two different ways. While the kind of person they liked made them homosexuals, the kind of place where they were born made them migrants. (With few exceptions, those born outside of Beijing can only register as Beijing urban residents— and enjoy the resulting social and economic benefits— if they purchase an apartment in Beijing: something far out of the reach of most rural Chinese.)

Just as I was about to lose sight of them, I noticed an elderly man had taken offense at the bartender and his boys. He confrontationally glared at some of the boys in the back of the pack— an explicit expression of disapproval.

The bartender caught sight and immediately sprung to action. He put his arm around the boy and stared right back into the eyes of the elderly man. He stared until the old man relented and walked away.

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Master Yang–Writing Against History in Baisha

February 9, 2010

NAME: Master Yang
AGE: 68
OCCUPATION: Dongba Master/ retired prison guard
FAVORITE CALLIGRAPHER: Zhu Da (朱耷)
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OCCUPATION: Salesperson for Oracle China
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AGE: 51
OCCUPATION: Shopkeeper
FAVORITE DRINK: Baijiu (Chinese rice wine)
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NAME: Silang Laji
AGE: 23
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AGE: 26
OCCUPATION: Personal trainer
INTERESTING FACT: Trained masseuse and Chinese traditional herbalist

The world was both shocked and mesmerized by the scope and depth of China’s preparations for the Olympics last summer. Efforts to ready Beijing for the October 1st celebration of the People’s Republic of China’s 60th anniversary were similarly awe-inspiring. One million volunteers [...]

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NAME: Gege
AGE: 33
OCCUPATION: Journalist
AVERAGE NUMBER OF ALL-NIGHTERS PULLED IN ONE WEEK: 1.5
My first week in Chengdu I became interested in writing about the former drivers of Chengdu’s man-powered sanlunche, who, following a 2008 government ordinance prohibiting the iconic pedicabs from operating in Chengdu, have had to find new jobs and embrace unfamiliar lifestyles. I asked [...]

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Tuan– A Vietnamese Perception of US Foreign Policy

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NAME: Tuan
AGE: 35
OCCUPATION: Motorbike Driver
FAVORITE AMERICAN POLITICIAN: Bill Clinton

I spent my first afternoon as an expat exploring the area between my new apartment (near Hoan Kiem Lake) and my new employer (the Center for Economic Development Studies). Moments after stepping out onto Tho Nhuom Street, I was hailed by a vivacious motorbike driver – a [...]

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Asia Snapshots

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