{"id":115803,"date":"2010-11-29T11:34:25","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T18:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=115803"},"modified":"2010-11-29T12:42:28","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T19:42:28","slug":"chinas-other-billion-waiting-for-the-master-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/11\/chinas-other-billion-waiting-for-the-master-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Other Billion: Waiting for the Master Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
Following is the latest, and final, installment in a series of posts by journalist Rachel Beitarie*, who has been sharing with us dispatches from her journey across rural China. In this post, Rachel visits Xi Ying village in Hebei, which she finds typifies much of what she has seen so far on her trip. Here, like many of the villages and towns she visited, she finds many people struggling on with their day-to-day lives, waiting for some unknown “master plan” which they hope will ease their difficulties. (Read all 15 installments of the travelogue here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Five hours from Beijing<\/p>\n In Xi Ying (\u897f\u8425) village of Hebei, five years old Li Jie is adjusting to rural life. She was born in Beijing, where she has lived until recently, but her parents, who both work in the city, sent her here recently to avoid the census: Li Jie is their third daughter. She now lives with her grandmother. The grandmother doesn\u2019t think census takers will bother to come all the way to her village (we spoke on the week the census started). She will try, however, to send Li Jie to school next year.<\/p>\n Xi Ying is a village of only about a hundred families near the town of Jize, in the south part of Hebei province. This is the heart of the North-China plain, aptly named for being so flat. On their one Mu plots, the remaining peasants of Xi Ying grow corn, wheat and pepper, for which Jize county is famous. As elsewhere, the village population consists of mostly old people and small children. Most young adults leave the place to work in Beijing. The lucky among them save for an apartment then leave the village for good for cities like Handan or shijiazhuang. The less fortunate sometimes come back with ruined health or with injuries. Li Jie\u2019s grandmother has another son, the child\u2019s uncle, who hasn\u2019t gotten out of her house in a year, and cannot do any work \u2013 but she can\u2019t, or won\u2019t explain why. At any rate, since that son is divorced with no kids, Li Jie will be passed off as his daughter so her parents can avoid being fined for having her. The kid herself explains that in a matter of fact way before running off to play with a friend.<\/p>\n Li\u2019s grandmother, surname Zhao, is more reluctant to talk, but she is still one of the more talkative among Xi Ying\u2019s residents. Near another farmers\u2019 house, a smile and wave I gave to a girl elicited a hostile response from an old lady (presumably the girl\u2019s grandmother), who waved us away and almost chased us off her street. Zhao and her friend, sitting on a log near the village square, later threw some light on that obvious expression of fear in the other grandma\u2019s eyes. Rumors around the villages tell that last year, two kids from Jize town, only few kilometers away, were kidnapped and never found. Zhao isn\u2019t sure whether this story is true, but admits she feels uneasy ever since Li Jie came back, and wouldn\u2019t let the girl out of her sight.<\/a><\/p>\n Strangers coming to Xi Ying are few and they usually try to sell something, or interfere with someone\u2019s business, which makes the locals\u2019 distrustful attitude seem only natural. Digging a glasses case out of my bag, I was immediately told by an old woman she has cataracts anyway, and therefore has no need for glasses. I was actually just cleaning my own, but others who visited Jize and Xi Ying at the same time were selling something: a family of five Tibetans who came all the way from Lhasa to sell cheap plastic toys in Hebei. They stay in Handan city and make the rounds in smaller villages or town, cashing in on grandparents’ tendency to dote on their grandchildren.<\/p>\n It is said one should read the writing on the wall. In Xi Ying, there are many things written on many walls, but nothing particularly revealing if one wants to learn where this community is heading. <\/a>The writings tell of Hebei rural life though. They are all advertisements: For wedding photos, wedding music bands, cars for rent to use at weddings, matchmakers as well as other service providers: handymen offering solar heaters installment, roof fixers, well diggers \u2013 the last seem to be popular. Zhao says the water supply to fields and even households is dwindling because the official supply system is in bad repair and the river is polluted. Several wells were recently dug in the village, paid for from the farmers’ own pockets.<\/p>\n <\/a>Other services deal with the need to carry crops from the fields to the regional weigh station: The few man who did not leave for work in Beijing mainly earn money this way. Bigger companies advertise as well: the town\u2019s hospital invites residents to come for a check and boasts a new \u201cAmerican company GE\u201d CT scanner it recently purchased. HP urges potential costumers to take advantage of the government\u2019s 13% subsidy (offered last year to boost consumption in rural areas and stave off the financial crisis).<\/p>\n Xi Ying will be the last stop on this trip, and nothing in it is out of the ordinary. There is poverty \u2013 tolerable in some cases, wretched in others. There are many hardships and some hopes, people moving ahead, others lagging behind and still others who are being left by the roadside, a very dusty and polluted roadside if you happen to live on the North plain.<\/p>\n