Beyond the Wall Lies a Different China

Just before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, a group of students were walking down a colorful side street in the Dasharlar neighborhood of China’s capital. In the rear of the group were straggling fourth graders in matching outfits—red handkerchiefs, windbreakers, and bright yellow hats. Every young student has to wear these yellow hats in Beijing so cars can pick them out easily. Further ahead were the oldest of the group — two sixth grade girls. They were taller but didn’t wear the yellow hats or matching windbreakers. They stood out in a different way. In a couple of years, they would have to leave Beijing altogether. Because their parents are wai di ren, meaning outsiders, they are not allowed continue their education in Beijing.

Most Americans have an image of China that mirrors what the young fourth graders will grow up in — urban living in a polluted environment. But what did those six grade girls experience when they moved outside of Beijing into the rural areas of China? That was the question Michael Meyer, author of the new book In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China tried to answer at a recent New America event. Meyer taught English to both the fourth grade and sixth grade girls, and had become close with all of their families. The desire to document change in the rural areas — where the girls would travel to — became the focus of this book.

What Meyer found outside the big cities was an agrarian population grappling with modernity.

Roughly half of Chinese people actually live in these rural areas, away from mega-cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Meyer moved 600 miles northeast of  Beijing to a small town whose name translates to “Wasteland.” The town is best known for the sticky rice it produces, and lies beyond the Great Wall. It is part of the “other China” — the one which Westerners rarely remember or acknowledge.

With an aging farming population and increased pollution, regions like Wasteland are tasked with producing more agricultural output with less land and resources. “Efficiency” and “high yield” dominated Meyer’s description of agricultural reforms in this part of China. Many in these farming communities are being told to consolidate their production and allow for agro-businesses to manage collective farming.

But some Chinese farmers are unwilling to give up their assigned plots of land to agro- businesses. This is not done out of a sense of nostalgia. On the contrary, many who grew up in these rural parts are dissuaded from farming — they see their future in modern cities.

San jiu, one farmer who Meyer met during his time in Wasteland, declined the offer to turn his plot over to the agro-business, speculating that the price of rice would increase more than projected. It did, and Sanjiu was better off financially for rejecting the deal. But these agro-businesses seem to have broad political support from Beijing. In 2007, when then-President Hu Jintao visited the town of Wasteland, he did not tour farmlands—he went instead to the source of innovation: the local agro-business.

How long will farmers like Sanjiu remain firm against modern agricultural techniques? Modernity and transformation effect more  than just the agricultural industry. The question of how long rural regions can retain past traditions is an increasingly urgent concern, and a central one to the identities of residents who live outside cities.

For example, Meyer noted that the language of the Manchu dynasty has all but disappeared. The Manchu ruled China from 1644 to 1912, and enlarged it to include Xinjiang, Tibet, and even Taiwan. But today there only three native speakers of Manchu. Most moved into cities like Beijing and left their native tongue behind. This move toward urban life is a trend that many other rural citizens of China are following. “China is on a big move to get a lot of the people into cities,” said New America Fellow Mei Fong. It begs the question: if a people as prominent as the Manchu were can be lost to emigration and modernization, how many other cultures are being swept away as well?

But for some in China, this modernization cannot come soon enough. Fong noted that the Chinese education system, supposedly a meritocracy, really has a number of arbitrary factors. If you track children, there is an enormous chasm in the opportunity between those in the rural and urban areas, Meyer noted. “Even if (rural students) score really high on entrance exams, their quotas are so much different from those areas like Beijing or Shanghai,” he said.

Those sixth grade girls — the ones that Meyer taught English to and were forced to move outside the city — would benefit from a more merit-based system. Meyer kept in touch with them, and is now writing recommendation letters for to universities in China on their behalf. While all of the students Meyer taught who stayed in Beijing went on to well-respected national universities, the ones who had to move out, like the two girls, were not as lucky. They are applying to paid or second-tier colleges in the countryside well below their potential. The girls will have to make do living outside the big cities of China.