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Published: February 24th 2008
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China's Peasant Revolution is still being waged. Only now it's being waged to empower the country folk to swarm into cities and sell pirated DVD's and knock-off Gucci bags. But while it's very easy to sit in America and be critical of China's political repression and unsavory appeal, the truth is I have yet to figure out a better way of lifting a predominantly destitute, peasant population with a 5,000 year tradition of blindly following 1 voice out of the kind of rampant poverty created by the incompetent Qing Dynasty and subsequent farce of a republic. Even today, the vast majority of people you come into contact in China are poor
nong min 农民' - countryside folk - doomed to a life of wallowing in their own shit if they stay at home or wading through other people's in the cities. They are everywhere. They cook your food and wait on your table, they drive your buses and taxis and there are far, far too many of them posing as 'staff' (i.e. loitering around with nothing to do) in every single store.
The Chinese countryside is vast and open, but with the nation's newfound jump start, millions are flooding into
the cities and here these 'Urban Peasants' are as recognizable as
laowai and that's even before they open their mouths and give themselves away with their incomprehensible countryside dialect and horrible Mandarin. I've figured out the reason why every other ad on TV is for skin whitening cream, since nobody wants to be confused with a sun-burnt peasant working like a dog in the countryside. When I first arrived, I assumed that a lot of my learning would come from sitting in noodle houses chatting with the workers until you realize they are mostly just uncultured, cattle, fresh off the farm. And with China's increasing prosperity, these countryside folk are becoming an increasing nuisance on the urban well-to-do. Since I am always asked where I am from, I started jokingly responding 'Xinjiang' (China's NW province filled with lighter skinned Central Asians - think Borat), until Helen reminded me, 'nobody likes people from Xinjiang. They just come into the cities to steal and stir up trouble.'
But enough criticism. It's often these 'Urban Peasants' that provide the greatest source of entertainment for foreigners living in China. It's their wide-eyed lack of subtlety and enthusiasm over encountering the civilized world that
make running off into the countryside a strangely appealing travel option. And it wasn't until coming to Chengdu and hanging out more with Dave Goodman (see summer's Chengdu entry) that I fully appreciated a
laowai's potential for completely fucking with these people. While most foreigners get self-conscious amidst the cat-calls of 'HA-LLO!' heard wherever you go, he turns their weirdness right back in their faces and announces his presence from the moment he walks out of his apartment. If these people thought foreigners were strange before, they're now think we're downright crazy! These countryside folk are completely, mentally unprepared for a big, white foreigner spitting Sichuan dialect raving at them to hurry the fuck up and not cheat the poor, helpless foreigner.
Every foreigner has a hilarious story about their encounters with peasantry. The good ones you tell all your friends, the better ones become expat legends (like the peasant who took a shower in an airplane bathroom) and the best ones make the international newswire (for the best laugh of your life google search 'migrant worker bites panda'). For me, little can top my train trip to Suzhou, sitting next to 3 construction workers getting shitfaced by playing
'Pass the Bottle of Baijiu' for an hour straight while scarfing down bag o' duck feet (keep in mind this was noon on a Tuesday). Those guys would have topped my list even before one of them pointed at Melisse's ass and gave me a BIG thumbs up and an "OK!!!!" See, cause the true
nong min have no qualms about it. They smoke in elevators, cross the road without looking and sit there with those weird, feudal-looking arm sleeves elbow deep in garbage and keep a big, toothless grin on their withering face. They are so much better than the
nouveau not-destitute who think they're badass now that they're not starving anymore and let everyone know it by growing out their pinky nail a disgusting inch long and wearing the same 3-piece suit everyday while driving buses, scrubbing toilets or digging ditches.
And man, what service! Talk about a place to get pampered! The best thing about cheap, plentiful labor is that everything is at your fingertips. Where else can a guy who's unemployed get a someone to hand deliver crates of beer or a maid to clean his apartment. That's right, I have a maid. I also
get full-body massages for $3/hr. Waiters hover over your table like hawks from the minute you sit down and if one dares to wander away from your beck and call, belowing out
fuwuyuan!!! across the restaurant will have 4 of them racing to your table like there's a fire. The only problem with this labor surplus is that nobody actually wants to be the one to do the work. I've learned never to begin a question with "can you...?' cause the answer is always 'come back tomorrow'. It's amazing that in a country of 800 million peasants, Filipinos can flood into the cities and snatch up the best service jobs. But I guess that's the price you pay for a policy of full-employment. Everyone has a job, they just don't necessarily have to work.
To understand China is to understand its people and its history. Its government is an easy target of criticism from westerners, but these people aren't stupid. They know what they're doing. How is it that China can be the hottest economy in the world right now, yet still be miles below the standard of living of the west? Because basically, there's a shit ton of
people here, most of whom have been starving for 5000 years. They don't care about whether or not wikipedia is censored, they just care about whether or not the government is helping to put food on their table. For all the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, there are those who argue that the cadres had truly lost touch with the people they were supposed to be helping and China was slipping into a level of corruption that would have train-wrecked the country. Mao's Cultural Revolution was to remind the peasants that this was still their Party, this was their country and if the local officials were leaving the people to starve while settling into a corrupt, bourgeoisie lifestyle to take action. They needed to be sent back to the countryside for 're-education.' It got out of hand for sure, but who's to say a China that is taken down the other path is better off? It takes baby steps to drag a country out of poverty and all this economic boom you hear about isn't about building rockets to the moon, it's still all about putting food in stomachs and roofs over heads. If you read 'The China Model' article you should understand that doing this takes some central control and the ability to foster some sort of national unity and pride to keep people focused. As China got nailed by a series of snow storms this winter that decimated half the country right before Spring Festival, there were daily updates of President Hu Jintao encouraging the workers to clear the damage for their comrades. As train cancellations forced migrant workers to live in train station bathrooms for days, the rallying cry was always 'help fix the damage so your countrymen can still enjoy the Spring Festival' (which is incredibly important for the year's outlook). And this rallying cry works. Our Chinese friend 'Anderson' is the Man Behind the Man in the CCP's Propaganda Dept. He has such a deep understanding of the unique circumstances China has found itself in, for better or worse and still has faith in the Party. He is far more educated than most people and understands the government's shortcomings, but at the end of the day, he believes they are doing all they can to lift the peasantry out of starvation. And if that's by providing jobs selling DVD's, fake handbags and their bodies, so be it. It's a living....
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