Thank you for the fascinating read, Richard! I lived in China for a few years and travelled a lot there, but as a foreigner with no independent transport, little money, and limited Chinese, going out into rural areas was very challenging for me. That's why it's always fascinating to me to read about rural communities, so thank you for writing about your trip! It's always interesting to see how rural culture differs from urban culture, like how there are still large tombs out in the countryside, which as I understand aren't allowed at all in Chinese cities.
I'd be curious to know whether the push the last few years to end rural poverty affected Baoying at all--are all those apartment complexes new?
I'm not sure, though the buildings look very new for sure, Baoyin isn't THAT poor despite the northern part of JiangSu often being the butt end of a lot of geographic jokes in China (as it is way poorer than the parts of Jiangsu that's around and south of the Yangtsi River.) as it is only a few hours from a bunch of major cities, a big agricultural zone, and now has a bunch of highways and even a high speed rail station.
Yeah the tombs are only in the countryside now, as Reed Village at least have some wealthy residents (or those with wealthy relatives.) it wasn't that hard to preserve a cemetery for them I guess, some other poorer places I see in Henan it looks like they just bury the dead in the corner of the fields and mark it with a mound. (though cremation seem to be mandatory now anyway.)
Poverty alleviation is more of a thing in areas that's either more remote, in the mountains, or both usually, I traveled a decent amount in rural Guizhou and Yunnan, there the evidence of those policies were much more obvious even before the more publicized push in recent years. It's been clear that they are trying to build / expand towns and gather in the villagers, with mixed results at least from what I seen on China's own social media. (it's nice to have new houses and live in towns for the kids, but if you need to still farm that makes for a big problem. It is common in places like Qinghai and Tibet / Inner Mongolia where the parents just park their kids in the town and still go out and live in the tents and graze their herds. A comparable version of this is that all the barges on the Grand Canals are often operated by a couple who effectively also do the same, i.e they live on the boat and park their kids with relatives.)
One thing that non-Chinese (and increasingly, even a lot of younger chinese) don't get is that in rural China, in the south the family clans are super strong and closely tied, the further north you go the less that is a thing. at least from my observations the stronger the clans it tends to bold better for the rural towns and villages to remain functional and even vibrant. (granted there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here.)
There's also the funny stories of say I went to visit one of the famous terrace rice field villages of minority groups in the south west, they have made it off well due to tourism, and the argument becomes they want to replace their old wooden house with more modern western houses, but if they do that it'll hurt the tourism, so they build those houses on the backside of the hill and the likes
Thank you so much for this detailed and thoughtful response, Richard! It's fascinating to hear about how the 'big trends' play out on the ground--I had no idea the extended family groups had impacted the poverty allieviation scheme! My guess is that would be even more intense in the areas where ethnic minorities got exempted from the one child policy...anyway, fascinating to hear!
And thank you for the funny tourism story--things like that seem to be playing out all over the world, it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds in future...
This was a lovely read and very interesting.
Wonderful that you were able to meet your uncle before the sunset arrived.
Thank you very much for sharing your story.
This was a lovely read and very interesting.
Wonderful that you were able to meet your uncle before the sunset arrived.
Thank you very much for sharing your story.
This was a terrific read! Thank you.
Thank you for the fascinating read, Richard! I lived in China for a few years and travelled a lot there, but as a foreigner with no independent transport, little money, and limited Chinese, going out into rural areas was very challenging for me. That's why it's always fascinating to me to read about rural communities, so thank you for writing about your trip! It's always interesting to see how rural culture differs from urban culture, like how there are still large tombs out in the countryside, which as I understand aren't allowed at all in Chinese cities.
I'd be curious to know whether the push the last few years to end rural poverty affected Baoying at all--are all those apartment complexes new?
I'm not sure, though the buildings look very new for sure, Baoyin isn't THAT poor despite the northern part of JiangSu often being the butt end of a lot of geographic jokes in China (as it is way poorer than the parts of Jiangsu that's around and south of the Yangtsi River.) as it is only a few hours from a bunch of major cities, a big agricultural zone, and now has a bunch of highways and even a high speed rail station.
Yeah the tombs are only in the countryside now, as Reed Village at least have some wealthy residents (or those with wealthy relatives.) it wasn't that hard to preserve a cemetery for them I guess, some other poorer places I see in Henan it looks like they just bury the dead in the corner of the fields and mark it with a mound. (though cremation seem to be mandatory now anyway.)
Poverty alleviation is more of a thing in areas that's either more remote, in the mountains, or both usually, I traveled a decent amount in rural Guizhou and Yunnan, there the evidence of those policies were much more obvious even before the more publicized push in recent years. It's been clear that they are trying to build / expand towns and gather in the villagers, with mixed results at least from what I seen on China's own social media. (it's nice to have new houses and live in towns for the kids, but if you need to still farm that makes for a big problem. It is common in places like Qinghai and Tibet / Inner Mongolia where the parents just park their kids in the town and still go out and live in the tents and graze their herds. A comparable version of this is that all the barges on the Grand Canals are often operated by a couple who effectively also do the same, i.e they live on the boat and park their kids with relatives.)
One thing that non-Chinese (and increasingly, even a lot of younger chinese) don't get is that in rural China, in the south the family clans are super strong and closely tied, the further north you go the less that is a thing. at least from my observations the stronger the clans it tends to bold better for the rural towns and villages to remain functional and even vibrant. (granted there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here.)
There's also the funny stories of say I went to visit one of the famous terrace rice field villages of minority groups in the south west, they have made it off well due to tourism, and the argument becomes they want to replace their old wooden house with more modern western houses, but if they do that it'll hurt the tourism, so they build those houses on the backside of the hill and the likes
Thank you so much for this detailed and thoughtful response, Richard! It's fascinating to hear about how the 'big trends' play out on the ground--I had no idea the extended family groups had impacted the poverty allieviation scheme! My guess is that would be even more intense in the areas where ethnic minorities got exempted from the one child policy...anyway, fascinating to hear!
And thank you for the funny tourism story--things like that seem to be playing out all over the world, it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds in future...