Comments on: The Gao Family and Gao Qingrong—Another Kind of Countryside

By: 门吸

门吸 — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:35:08 +0000

Gao Shengjian讲的棒
ccp就是这么不要脸
所有的政策法规都是随他们的利益而制定
人民的权利随便他们践踏

By: CHINA

CHINA — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:07:52 +0000

Nowadays , Do you study in hangzhou??Welcome to call me when I am free.

By: china study group » Blog Archive » AsianSnapshots on the Gaos of Anlong organic farming co-op, Sichuan

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:07:11 +0000

[...] the risk of boring people who’ve read their fill of reports about this project, here is yet another. It’s on a new group blog worth checking out in its own right, AsianSnapshots. AS posts [...]

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:51:03 +0000

Hi David,
I really liked this post, I’m impressed at how deep you have gotten into China and the amazing people you are meeting. I thought just being Gege’s roomate was cool but this is really extraordinary.

I hope to read a book from you soon.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:45:37 +0000

David, Great job again, I have been sitting at the computer all day reading all your articles. Smile!!!

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:41:51 +0000

Nice “snapshot” of the Gaos. Every time someone else writes or talks about Anlong, another dimension of the project is highlighted. Your experience in Nanchong allows you to see more clearly how the Gaos and their neighbors are trying to forge a difference path from the “vicious circle” dominant in rural China. Until you mentioned this I hadn’t taken seriously the aspect of how the general appearance and cleanliness of a village relates to its development model – the more people neglect their village, the dirtier and uglier it gets, and this makes people even more inclined to neglect and abandon it to those villagers “unfortunate” enough to be stuck there.

One minor correction: the father’s name is Gao Shengjian, not Chengjian (someone else had misspelled this in a previous report, and we always call him “uncle” so I forgot until I noticed his name in my notes). Missing from the opening quotation is his reference to farmland: the main immediate cost of becoming an urbanite is the loss of one’s farmland. I’d say the overwhelming majority of rural residents – at least those near cities, where their land has market value – consider this a tiny price to pay for the honor of becoming an urbanite. The Gaos are proposing that land should be valued not in terms of money, as a commodity, but as the foundation of a living community.