China Digital Times

China news tagged with: rural China (7)

• An Advocate for China’s Rural Poor

  

  In 2008, lawyer Liu Yao (刘尧) advocated for farmers whose land was being illegally requisitioned. A scuffle by the farmers at Lankou hydropower station, the site under construction on their property, landed Liu in jail. Tom Mitchell, South China correspondent for Financial Times, writes on Liu’s story:

  Prison was hard for Liu Yao. The crusading Chinese lawyer spent 16 months behind bars at a county lock-up in Heyuan, a city in the southern Guangdong province, ­surviving mainly on a diet of instant noodles and preserved bean curd. His days were spent making plastic bags. His pens and law books were taken away, he says, and he was denied access to newspapers and his case file. When he was freed in April this year his dark hair, which had been shaved off, grew back white.

  Liu, 47, was first detained by the authorities on December 19 2007, two days after he led farmers from Bainitang hamlet to the disputed construction site of the Lankou hydropower station, which was being built on their land. In the confrontation, wooden boards and other construction materials valued at Rmb50,615 (£4,500) were allegedly destroyed or stolen. The farmers’ lawyer was ­formally arrested a month later, accused of inciting unrest. In June 2008 a county court sentenced him to four years in prison.

  [...] Liu says he will continue to appeal against the verdict. He complains that, as a convicted felon, he can no longer practise as a lawyer. “I’m unemployed now and can’t take cases,” he says. “It’s ridiculous. In trying to stop a crime I was branded a criminal. Sometimes the law is very malleable.”

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  • November 7, 2009 10:24 PM

• Documentary: China from the Inside – Women of the Country

  

  Documentary Film Series “China from the Inside” came up with a series of films with various topics about China. In this episode “Women of the Country,” the film explores women’s current living circumstances in rural China, carried by Youtube:

  China’s women have always been under pressure: from men, from family, from work. Now more and more are under new pressure — from themselves — to take control of their lives; to get an education; to have a career; to marry for love. It’s a slow, difficult process, and it is changing China.

  Mass migration from the countryside to the cities is increasing prosperity, but fracturing families. It also gives women new roles — whether running the farm back home, or as wage-earners in the city. Xiao Zhang has lived in Beijing for 14 years, cooking and cleaning. This episode follows her home to her village 600 miles away for Chinese New Year, where she is reunited with the children she hasn’t seen for a year. The cameras capture the visit of the local Birth Planning Officer to check on young wives, the plight of unwanted girl babies and abortion issues, and a village wedding which turns nasty.

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  • March 13, 2009 4:23 PM

  • Slideshow: A Wedding in Rural Yunnan

    

    Photographer and blogger “Flying Bird and Fish” posted a group of photos of a wedding in rural Yunnan. He says that generally Chinese parents don’t hesitate to spend most of their savings on their children’s weddings and they try their best to make the wedding nice and festive. However, the wedding style in rural area is still very different from those in cities. From blog.sina.com.cn:

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    • March 10, 2009 8:30 PM

  • Slideshow: Road to School

    

    A blogger “Flying Bird and Fish” posted a series of photos he took in a mountain area showing some rural children walking to school in a dangerous cliff road. He says that he was scared to see the scene. His hands were sweating and his legs were even trembling while taking photos of the children, via blog.sina.com.cn:

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    • March 1, 2009 7:26 PM

  • China Wheelie Promo Video

    

    Vimeo.com carries a short video by Rob Luxton documents his journey in China. His video introduction is as below:

    Rob Luxton’s adventure on a three wheeled recumbent tricycle will take him 25,000km all around China, passing through every province on the mainland. The expedition will also help raise awareness and money for two Charities. Sowers Action and Care For Children . Both dedicated to improving the lives of children in poor areas throughout China. Beginning near Hong Kong the journey is estimated to last two and half years taking him from busy cities to remote mountain villages, deserts to great plains, deep lush valleys to the the scary heights of the Tibetan plateau and finally into the jungles of the South, before returning to Hong Kong in August 2009.

    
    China Wheelie Promo Video from rob luxton on Vimeo.

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    • February 28, 2009 9:57 AM

  • Documentary: The Life of Rural Chinese Children

    

    This documentary tells about the life of left-behind children in rural China whose parents move to the cities in search of work. These children are taken care of by their grandparents, other relatives or by themselves. Some of them even have to take care of their younger brothers or sisters, via Youtube:

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    See a slideshow of left-behind children in Qinnan, via fengniao.com:

    See also CDT’s previous post As China Booms, Millions of Children Are Left Behind by Wall Street Journal and Slideshow: Migrants’ Children

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    • February 16, 2009 12:28 PM

  • China Tests Micro-Insurance For Rural Poor

    

    Wu Qi of Xinhua reports on the government’s latest efforts to introduce micro-insurance to rural China.

    Dai Yongheng never imagined he would make history. But he did just that on Sept. 3, 2008. The middle-aged farmer from north China’s Shanxi Province procured a fixed-term life insurance for all five members of his family. He paid 150 yuan (21.90 U.S. dollars), becoming the first micro-insurance deal in rural China.

    The insurance policy pays 75,000 yuan if something happens to Dai’s family in Dongpao Village, Qixian County, China Life Insurance, operator of the policy, said.

    One day later, all 1,017 residents from Xishantou, Macha and Huaishu villages of neighboring Qixian County took out a group insurance policy for accidental injury. If anyone in the village gets hurt, there is a total of 50 million yuan to cover expenses. For example, every villager put 10 yuan into the pot. The insurance company guarantees each of them a 5,000 yuan payment. The total is higher because the villagers bought the policy together, the first group policy of its kind in the country.

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    • October 11, 2008 12:07 PM

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