Home » Opinion » Opinion Columns
In striving for urban amenities peasants lose touch with roots
By Wan Lixin |
March 28, 2013, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IN an article in memory of Mao Zedong (March 25, Xinmin Eveing News), there is a description of Mao's character.
"In Mao's daily life, his rustic frugality sometimes bordered on niggardliness. He clung pertinaciously to things he had used." He preferred to wear cotton clothes and cloth shoes, and one of his pajamas had 73 patches on it.
One of the defining marks of Chinese peasants is their honesty and down-to-earth attitude, shaped by the land they cultivate. They disdain affections, ostentation, or any fancy articles meant to impress.
In a big city like Shanghai, these peasants used to be readily identifiable, for many used to carry their simple bedding and belongings in plastic sacks that used to contain fertilizer.
One of the greatest changes I have observed this year is that many of them no longer use such makeshift bags, but have switched to standard bags with trolleys. They have learned, probably at a cost, that in a city of strangers, appearances are often more important than substance.
Peasants used to take a great pride in their self-sufficiency and independence. I still think one of the greatest problems confronting urban life is its crippling dependence on outside resources, be it energy, water, food, or whatever else. That makes a city vulnerable.
When country people begin to aspire to urban amenities, sometimes they are giving up something more valuable than they can realize.
A couple of years ago I visited one of my cousins in his newly built two-story home in a village in north Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province.
It was sweltering in this spacious living room, for the windows, while huge, contained enormous, sealed panes that cannot be opened for ventilation, as in some office high-rises.
When I asked why not windows that can let in fresh air, the cousin explained: "Oh, we can use air-conditioners, anytime." That village is in a coastal area where the need for air-conditioning is fictional, even in high summer ? given proper ventilation.
Constant reminders that their lives are wanting in comparison with their urban cousins would make them restless.
Recently, the news that a coastal railway will pass through the area is fueling such a building spree that many brands of cigarettes ? regarded as staple for construction workers ? are in short supply.
Cookie-cutter buildings
One unit of these cookie-cutter buildings would cost 250,000 yuan (US$40,000), an astronomical sum even for most townspeople, but a peasant's respectability hinges greatly on the height and size of his house. These new buildings will make the already-drab village scene even more homogeneous.
If these buildings were equipped with running water and modern plumbing, it would also force a paradigm shift, for contrary to general belief that peasants have very low standards of sanitation, they used to live a truly green life.
To say Chinese treat their environment as "a trashcan" ("Dead pigs in river reflect ?world is my trahcan' mentality", March 21, 2013, Shanghai Daily) is unfair, for strictly speaking, prior to the industrial age, there was no trash to speak of.
Until very recently, a Chinese peasant consumed very little, wasted little, and whatever they tossed away was quickly recycled by nature. Even the human waste, or night soil, was used as fertilizer. When I was living in a village many years ago, I never realized there was a rubbish problem, because there wasn't.
As their upgraded lifestyle converts them into good consumers who discard all kinds of usable or useless items, are they ready to manage their solid waste problem? Adding to that problem is the garbage imposed on them by neighboring cities, or faraway civilized countries. Some parts of villages in Lianyungang City are among the many favored destinations for imported plastic waste.
CCTV aired an investigative report in December 2011 showing that some villagers in Ganyu County in Lianyungang were making profit by processing imported plastic waste into food bags and toys, giving off bad smells and toxic smoke and polluting local water.
I heard from a colleague that when a urban resident leased a small tract of land from a peasant in Shanghai to grow organic vegetables for his family, he also asked to buy their human waste.
But when villagers begin to use flush toilets, where will their waste end up?
I had little idea how Shanghai or Beijing deals with the waste of its tens of millions of residents. It ends up in a pipe, and we give no second thought to whether it ends up in the Huangpu River, the Yangtze River, or the sea ? or whether it's treated. This ignorance empowers urbanites to feel somewhat condescending when it comes to their village cousins, just as some foreigners once referred sarcastically to the Chinese method of raising crops.
Smells, graves and rice
In his "Letters of a Shanghai Griffin" about a century ago, Jay Denby observed that the Chinese farmers' time is "spent mainly in the vocation of agriculture, the chief productions therefrom being smells, graves, and rice, in the order named."
He explained that "the farmer who succeeds in making his land smell more abominably than his neighbor's is looked upon with respect, admiration, and envy by the surrounding population."
It is difficult to imagine how Chinese peasants once cared about fertilizing their allotted land.
In days of old, it was quite common to see a peasant picking up a pile of cow dung on his road for manure.
How sad that many urbanites today look down upon dung and twigs in rural life as signs of backwardness and obstacles to progress.
"In Mao's daily life, his rustic frugality sometimes bordered on niggardliness. He clung pertinaciously to things he had used." He preferred to wear cotton clothes and cloth shoes, and one of his pajamas had 73 patches on it.
One of the defining marks of Chinese peasants is their honesty and down-to-earth attitude, shaped by the land they cultivate. They disdain affections, ostentation, or any fancy articles meant to impress.
In a big city like Shanghai, these peasants used to be readily identifiable, for many used to carry their simple bedding and belongings in plastic sacks that used to contain fertilizer.
One of the greatest changes I have observed this year is that many of them no longer use such makeshift bags, but have switched to standard bags with trolleys. They have learned, probably at a cost, that in a city of strangers, appearances are often more important than substance.
Peasants used to take a great pride in their self-sufficiency and independence. I still think one of the greatest problems confronting urban life is its crippling dependence on outside resources, be it energy, water, food, or whatever else. That makes a city vulnerable.
When country people begin to aspire to urban amenities, sometimes they are giving up something more valuable than they can realize.
A couple of years ago I visited one of my cousins in his newly built two-story home in a village in north Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province.
It was sweltering in this spacious living room, for the windows, while huge, contained enormous, sealed panes that cannot be opened for ventilation, as in some office high-rises.
When I asked why not windows that can let in fresh air, the cousin explained: "Oh, we can use air-conditioners, anytime." That village is in a coastal area where the need for air-conditioning is fictional, even in high summer ? given proper ventilation.
Constant reminders that their lives are wanting in comparison with their urban cousins would make them restless.
Recently, the news that a coastal railway will pass through the area is fueling such a building spree that many brands of cigarettes ? regarded as staple for construction workers ? are in short supply.
Cookie-cutter buildings
One unit of these cookie-cutter buildings would cost 250,000 yuan (US$40,000), an astronomical sum even for most townspeople, but a peasant's respectability hinges greatly on the height and size of his house. These new buildings will make the already-drab village scene even more homogeneous.
If these buildings were equipped with running water and modern plumbing, it would also force a paradigm shift, for contrary to general belief that peasants have very low standards of sanitation, they used to live a truly green life.
To say Chinese treat their environment as "a trashcan" ("Dead pigs in river reflect ?world is my trahcan' mentality", March 21, 2013, Shanghai Daily) is unfair, for strictly speaking, prior to the industrial age, there was no trash to speak of.
Until very recently, a Chinese peasant consumed very little, wasted little, and whatever they tossed away was quickly recycled by nature. Even the human waste, or night soil, was used as fertilizer. When I was living in a village many years ago, I never realized there was a rubbish problem, because there wasn't.
As their upgraded lifestyle converts them into good consumers who discard all kinds of usable or useless items, are they ready to manage their solid waste problem? Adding to that problem is the garbage imposed on them by neighboring cities, or faraway civilized countries. Some parts of villages in Lianyungang City are among the many favored destinations for imported plastic waste.
CCTV aired an investigative report in December 2011 showing that some villagers in Ganyu County in Lianyungang were making profit by processing imported plastic waste into food bags and toys, giving off bad smells and toxic smoke and polluting local water.
I heard from a colleague that when a urban resident leased a small tract of land from a peasant in Shanghai to grow organic vegetables for his family, he also asked to buy their human waste.
But when villagers begin to use flush toilets, where will their waste end up?
I had little idea how Shanghai or Beijing deals with the waste of its tens of millions of residents. It ends up in a pipe, and we give no second thought to whether it ends up in the Huangpu River, the Yangtze River, or the sea ? or whether it's treated. This ignorance empowers urbanites to feel somewhat condescending when it comes to their village cousins, just as some foreigners once referred sarcastically to the Chinese method of raising crops.
Smells, graves and rice
In his "Letters of a Shanghai Griffin" about a century ago, Jay Denby observed that the Chinese farmers' time is "spent mainly in the vocation of agriculture, the chief productions therefrom being smells, graves, and rice, in the order named."
He explained that "the farmer who succeeds in making his land smell more abominably than his neighbor's is looked upon with respect, admiration, and envy by the surrounding population."
It is difficult to imagine how Chinese peasants once cared about fertilizing their allotted land.
In days of old, it was quite common to see a peasant picking up a pile of cow dung on his road for manure.
How sad that many urbanites today look down upon dung and twigs in rural life as signs of backwardness and obstacles to progress.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
