From BBC News:
A careless relative of one farmer started a fire to clear what was left of their already-harvested field. Unfortunately, the wind fanned the flames and before long, the fire had spread to nearby unharvested fields.
Farmers desperately cleared a path in front of the flames to halt their advance. They succeeded, but not before the fire had destroyed 60 mu (1 hectare =15 mu) of wheat fields.
Furious villagers in Donglu, in Shandong Province , demanded compensation from the woman responsible after seeing a sizable chunk of their annual earnings go up in smoke.
Donglu villagers are typical of others across China. Some provinces are richer than others, but all farmers generally earn less than their city cousins.
In January this year, when the Chinese government held a news conference to talk about the economy’s performance in 2006, the overall growth rate of 10.7% made most of the headlines.
But at the same event, the government also revealed that the income gap between rural and urban workers widened last year. Workers in towns and cities now earn more than three times more than farmers. [Full Text]
