China faces dilemma as villages disappear
Print Edition
Every time Feng Jicai, an acclaimed Chinese writer in his 70s, walks through a Chinese village, he becomes deeply concerned.
Skilled at portraying characters in rural China, Feng knows that hundred-year, or even thousand-year-old villages, are slowly disappearing.
In sharp contrast to the thriving megacities packed with high-rises, China, once an agricultural country with a civilization going back 5,000 years, is losing its villages.
These old villages, which witnessed the heyday of ancient Chinese culture, feeling the sorrows and falls of many dynasties, are part and parcel of Chinese history.
But modern lifestyles are squeezing their existence. Young villagers are leaving for the bigger world, where they can achieve bigger dreams than in their village homeland.
Feeling the pinch, Chinese authorities initiated an archive-building and survey program in 2012 to catalogue ancient Chinese villages, led by Feng, who is also a counselor to the State Council, China鈥檚 Cabinet.
Over 4,150 villages have been listed as national traditional villages, and 223 of them have been catalogued for preservation. The progress is encouraging, but Feng dares not slow down.
鈥淎bout 80 to 100 villages are disappearing in China every day. From 2000 to 2010, a total of 900,000 villages disappeared,鈥 Feng said. 鈥淧reserving villages preserves our country. It shows our respect for culture.鈥
But even for those under protection, the situation is not satisfactory.
鈥淥ver-development has become a cliche in the stories of reviving traditional villages,鈥 Feng said. 鈥淪ome villages move away local residents and hand land to tourism companies to build home-stays. They even make up fake folktales to attract tourists.鈥
The same faces
鈥淭hese villages often end up with the same faces, and if the situation continues, we might lose them again,鈥 Feng said.
The makeup of village populations also causes difficulties.
Earlier this year, a group of researchers went to Dapin Village in north China鈥檚 Shanxi Province. The 1,500-year-old village only had 16 residents, mostly women and the elderly.
鈥淎 village is a community. If the residents cannot make their living, it is natural for the youth to leave and the villages to become empty,鈥 Feng said.
鈥淎s urbanization accelerates, conflicts between traditional villages and modern life grow, causing the collapse of traditional culture. This is a dilemma,鈥 said Pu Jiao, deputy director of the center for traditional village protection and research.
It will be almost impossible to revive the villages without local people, as Feng knows only too well.
鈥淲e must work out a way to find locals a stable source of income, upgrade facilities, and offer educational and medical support to arouse their cultural consciousness,鈥 Feng said.
鈥淭he recent 鈥榯oilet revolution鈥 is a good step.鈥
In the meantime, efforts to promote village culture continue. In November, a virtual museum was established to use video, three-dimensional images and other multi-media to record villages with distinct regional or ethnic features.
Visitors can access the museum online to check traditions, buildings and even lifestyles of the villages, and hopefully play a role in keeping them alive.
鈥淭here is no fixed pattern in the conservation of villages. We should accumulate all manners of resources and broaden the mindset of local officials,鈥 Feng said.
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