I believe that everyone, especially who has ever travelled to China, thinks that it’s hard to describe this country in a few sentences. Yes, China is a big country, which is believed to be developing fast as a new-rise star in the far-east (or at least one billion Chinese believe so).
We can read news about Asia on BBC, Reuters, Yahoo, almost everywhere in the mass media. I personally have seen how a lot of people discussing international political issues or even debating about the future of China, or India, Korean on Facebook, Twitter, even though all the information they had were extracted selectively from others perspective, from the news online, in some random videos or articles. Here lies the fact that limitation of recognition restricts us of finding the truth behind all these flooding information. Some may say that’s just some platitude.
But today here we are, trying to break it.
Life for most residents in China is anything but what you saw in Beijing or Shanghai. We all know that according to the official report of the Sixth Census of China, the population is 1370536875, among which rural population is 674149546, which makes 50.32% of the whole population (by 2010/11/01). I am from the rural part of Henan Province, so what I am going to describe will be life in my home, not in Beijing.
Henan locates in the central China, about 600 miles south of Beijing. My home Shangqiu is a prefecture-level city of Henan, and it is an ancient city famous of the Sui Ren Shi(燧人氏), who was believed to have invented the way of making fire by drilling wood, and ancient Shangqiu is the origin of HUAXIA civilization(华夏文明) according to the history book. The fall of this civilization happened subsequently, and such falling is totally not rare in the long history of China.
Let’s see what the past 20 years, which I experienced myself, brings to my home. Color television was still a rare thing in rural areas until I was 7 years old (2000), and cellphone could cost one two months’ salary in 2000, almost 1,000 yuan. Computers appear in our bedrooms almost after 2009. The system of nine-year compulsory education(九年义务教育) is being implemented. And the tuition-free access to public education is finally achieved around 2010. We had to pay 98yuan each semester in 1997-2003. Now attending elementary and junior school is free, kids could have “Nutritional Lunch” (营养午餐) at school, which is really beneficial to kids in remote mountain areas and the poor family.
To be honest, there was not enough proper treatment for the ill, pregnant women, the old and even the children, because the lack of trained professional doctors in rural hospitals. As far as I could recall, there were many “barefoot doctors”(赤脚医生), who run unlicensed clinics that more like today’s private hospital. Things are different now. However, we can’t ignore the near past or try to cover these facts from the whole world.
Poverty existed in my country, even in a mild sense, twenty years ago, and we are still fighting it nowadays in a lot of remote mountain areas of Hunan(湖南), Sichuan(四川) and Guangxi(广西) Provinces.
Here I am not trying to reveal some ugly “facts” of my country, which maybe the most attractive news title on mass media, what I am trying to say is we have to pay attention to what we can discover from these details, not only poverty but the progress gov made in the past years as well.
Here is another interesting thing of the gov. In consider of President XI has been fighting corruption, a gigantic and vigorous reform is being operated, people are saying that it’s harder to be an officer. We all hate rent-seeking and corruption, but many graduates (my friends and classmates) are still eager to be selected and enter the gov by passing the national standardized examination. So this is weird. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the stability and good welfare that attracts them. As I said, we still have a long way to go.
Thank you for reading.
Wish you the best.
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