Haoyi Village: ‘There were more blue skies 10 years ago’
HAOYI, Shanxi — The electricity goes out almost every day in tiny Haoyi village. It’s the sad irony of China’s economic boom: The province that fuels much of the country’s growth and modernization often can’t afford to fuel itself.
Haoyi village, with 4,000 shy and skeptical inhabitants, is an odd, isolated place surrounded by corn fields and coal mines. It is located an hour north of Linfen in southern Shanxi, a gritty, blue-collar province famous for coal, power generation, metal refining and other heavy industries. Called the “Coal Warehouse of China,” Shanxi is responsible for as much as one-third of China’s annual coal output, according to some reports.
Yet, Shanxi remains one of the poorest provinces in the country. In June, the average urban household had a monthly income of RMB 649 ($79), according to official government statistics. Rural Shanxi families earned an average of RMB 900 ($110) — total — for the first six months of 2004.
More than half of the men in Haoyi village work in the coal industry, but many Shanxi coal mines and coal-burning power plants are losing money. It often costs more to produce the energy than they are allowed to charge for it. The government keeps prices low, so showpiece cities like Shanghai and Beijing can afford to feed their rapid growth.
“Do you smell it?” my friend Peter (Liu Yi) asked as we walked along the dirt road that stretched from where the minibus dropped us off to the village, which is set behind the main two-lane road and in front of a jagged set of tall, brown hills that looked more like really big piles of dirt.
It was impossible not to smell it. The stench of burning coal is hard to ignore. It lingers — heavily — making any place under its gray cloud stink like one big road repaving project that never gets completed. Haoyi’s villagers live with the smell every day of their lives. And, eventually, it becomes the smell of normalcy.
But Peter, 24, a graduate student at Shanghai University, is never home long enough to get used to the smell. He spends most of the year in the comparably cleaner Shanghai — a scary thought — only returning to his village twice a year. When Johnson and I visited, Peter had already been in Haoyi for seven days. He remarked that he had yet to see a blue sky.
“There were more blue skies 10 years ago,” he said.
The haze that hovers over Haoyi serves at least one useful purpose — partially obscuring the depressing smokestacks that huff and puff among all the corn. Haoyi’s sky is a sad one, gray, drab and lifeless. The only color comes from the bright orange flames that spit from some of the smaller stacks. They glow through the murk, a dozen setting suns dotting the horizon.
The factory closest to Haoyi sits on the banks of the Fen He River, now a small brown trickle in a wide silt-filled trench. As a child, Peter used to swim in the river. Now, the water might come up to his ankles. If somehow it managed to rise back to its previous level, Peter still wouldn’t swim in the Fen He. Too polluted, he said. China’s economic boom has brought with it more privatization. Coal companies are popping up all along the river.
“You used to be able to bathe in the water,” Peter said. “Now, it is very inconvenient. It makes me sad.”
Human beings have inhabited Haoyi for more than 3,000 years. Originally it was called Zhang Jia Zhaung — or “Zhang Family Village” — and ancestors of Peter’s mother, 44-year-old Zhang Lin Ai, have been there since the beginning. The village changed its name about 1,000 years ago, during the Song Dynasty. A man named Zhang Hao Yi was a very popular general.
Walking through Haoyi is like stumbling upon a once-grand civilization, now crumbling to the ground. Gray brick buildings and walls, stained black and brown from coal and dirt, flank muddy dirt lanes. Many villagers live in dwellings dug into the mountainside, called yao dong, brown brick facades stuck onto walls of dirt. These were homes I would have expected to see in the American West of the 1800s, not in the 21st century, not in the country with the world’s fastest growing economy.
But there they were. And people were living in them. Families. With children. And chickens. And laundry in the front yard. Peter told me that, if I wanted to, I could have one of the abandoned yao dongs further up the mountainside for RMB 500 ($60) … a year.
“Or less,” Peter added with a slight smile. “Actually, this is a rich part of the county.”
Coal is piled up everywhere in Haoyi. Every home, every building, has its own stash. That’s what is used for cooking and heating. Nowadays, most of it is what they call “coal mud,” a bi-product of the coal-burning process that is less effective than the real thing. Because many illegal coal mines have been shut down by the government in recent years, pure coal is too expensive for the villagers. Peter’s family has a large pile of real coal outside of their home. It’s spillover from local coal trucks, and each family member hauls it back from the main road by the bucketful.
I tried to smile a lot as we first walked through the village on our way to the Liu family home. I tried to smile, because most people seemed scared. People peered out of doorways and windows. But when I got close, they would disappear. Those on the street would slowly backpedal. Children would run away. Some just cried.
There were no playful “Hello”s, no clumsy chuckles, no stupefied smiles. This was the strangest reception I had ever experienced in China. A woman shouted something to Peter.
“She said you are the first foreigner in the village,” Peter said. “Don’t worry. They are just shy. Like me.”
Back in Shanghai, whenever I call Peter he is reading, or he has just finished reading, or he is about to read. Peter was my Chinese tutor for a short time back in 2002 and 2003. He is studying for his master’s degree in History. His emphasis is Religious History, specifically the relationship between God and government. He doesn’t get out much, and I’m not sure if he wants to. I have dragged him to bars a couple times in Shanghai. He always seemed out of place, quiet and uncomfortable.
Of course, back then I had just moved to China. I didn’t realize the money spent on each beer we drank would be considered a nice daily salary in the small village Peter grew up in. I understand Peter so much better now.
Peter’s family lives in part of what once was a dignified estate, owned by a local doctor. After the Communist Liberation in 1949, the government seized the land and everything on it. Now, the one-story home is split up into several dwellings. Peter’s family occupies what used to be the doctor’s barn, three odd, arched rooms with brick walls and stone floors — and the peculiar feeling of living in a tunnel. The place has character to spare.
Within eyesight of the home is the village’s tiny Christian church, a white-tile building topped with a large rusty metal cross. Peter’s mom is a regular there. In fact, after Peter marries, she has plans to become a preacher. Religion is a topic Peter and his mother butt heads on. The more he studies religion, Peter said, the less likely he is ever to be religious. But Peter’s mother still tries to recruit him into the fold, as she does with many people in the village, as she did with Johnson. She talked to him for hours one night about God, and why he should let Him into his heart. She cited several instances when villagers who prayed regularly survived serious traffic accidents.
“It’s not about how much you know about the Bible,” she told Johnson. “It’s whether you let God into your heart. I don’t understand much about the Bible, but I can still accept God in my heart and He will bless me.”
There is another section to the Liu family home, built just four years ago, and it is the antithesis to its rounded neighbor. It is all angles, square and boxy, with four large rooms: a kitchen with coal-powered burners, a living/dining room with a small black-and-white television that receives one channel, a storage room with huge bin full of wheat grain and Peter’s bedroom, with a lone poster hanging on the wall, of Bruce Lee.
I knew nothing of Peter’s interest in kung fu before this trip. I knew little about his quirky sense of humor, either. At random times during my two-plus days in the village Peter would suddenly break into a kung fu pose, turn to me serious and straight-faced and say, “Tiger” or “Crane” or “Snake,” depending on the move.
Johnson and I shared Peter’s bed, and Peter slept on a cot in the dining room. We woke up early, if not to the sounds of cutting and cooking in the nearby kitchen, then to Peter’s ear-splitting wake-up call: “Dan! Johnson! Time for breakfast!” Breakfast, usually some kind of noodles, is important in the countryside, Peter explained to me. Villagers usually start working in the fields at sun-up, and then return home at around 8 a.m. for a meal. They eat a lot, because they need fuel for all the fieldwork. “But Peter, we’re not doing any farming,” I protested after one early-morning call. Peter didn’t seem to care.
One day after breakfast, Peter’s parents decided to take the day off. Peter said it was in honor of their special guests. Family friends visited, as well, to chat — and to check out the white man they had heard rumors about. One woman, a friend of Peter’s mother, kept looking at me and laughing. “I am so surprised to see a foreigner,” she said. “The only foreigners I have seen were on TV.”
I can’t be sure exactly how much jasmine tea I drank that morning — I think it was a lot — because Peter’s dad, Liu Chang You, 46, never let my glass get below two-thirds full. After every three sips or so, he’d pick up the pot and pour. Mr. Liu’s hands were thick and strong, with black outlines around each nail.
Peter’s home, like all the others in the village, has sporadic electricity. And more than a couple times during our stay, we had to bring out the candles. Water comes from a well down the road. Washing of faces, hands and all other body parts is done using washcloths and water basins found in a few rooms of the house. I never felt completely clean in Haoyi.
The toilet — no doubt Johnson’s favorite part of home — is outside, a hole in the ground, with two wooden planks on either side for feet. The hole was filled with what you would expect, but also rain water and hundreds of little white maggots squirming about. It was all surrounded by a low brick wall, and looked very similar to the living quarters of a goat that occupied the stall next door.
“I’m not using the bathroom for two days,” Johnson proclaimed upon his inspection of the facilities. “How can people live like this?”
Johnson asked the question while Peter was standing next to him. Peter just smiled, and likely thought to himself, “Ah, the Shanghainese.” Among many Chinese, Shanghai natives have a reputation for being a bit pampered. Johnson has spent all of his 28 years in Shanghai, but I wouldn’t call him pampered. He grew up in modest accommodations, for Shanghai at least. His family always had a shower, but not hot water. He’s no stranger to squat toilets — like many Chinese, he actually prefers them in many situations — but this one was too much. He couldn’t stand the thought of all those little creatures — and God knows what else — swimming around beneath him. He couldn’t stand the stench. And mentioned it every time we walked past it.
So he held it. For almost three days.
I had little choice in the matter. I ate something, somewhere, that did not make my stomach very happy. In fact, it made it downright angry. This was a recurring theme for the next several days, and I now have much of the research complete for my first book: “Squat Toilets for Whiteys: Your Guide to Maintaining Balance and Avoiding Backsplash.”
There was very little privacy when using the toilet outside of Peter’s home. For one, the wall was not built for a man my size, making it only to about the middle of my thigh. So, if I only had to go No. 1, the neighborhood kids — who began to monitor my every move, mysteriously emerging from their homes every time I emerged from Peter’s — would get a peep show. I tried, as best I could, to angle myself so only the goat could see.
But on more than one squatting occasion, I would stand up to find a little girl standing about 20 feet away, staring at me. I would wave. She would wave back. And then run away.
(More on Johnson: While pampered is not a word I would use to describe Johnson, protective is definitely a word I would use to describe his family. His parents were not pleased with his decision to join me for a portion of this trip. I don’t think he ever officially got their blessing. In fact, one of their arguments when trying to discourage his departure was this: “Johnson, there is a good chance you will die on this trip.” Johnson receives daily text messages on his phone from his family. And if he doesn’t respond immediately, there are more messages, and they grow increasingly frantic. Interestingly, Johnson’s younger brother expresses just as much concern as his parents. He ends every message with, “Have a good rest. And be safe.”)
Peter’s parents’ combined income is about RMB 2000 ($240) per month, which puts them right on the cusp of being considered “rich” in Haoyi. There are some families with newer homes, bigger homes (often the former residences of warlords from pre-Liberation days), satellite dishes and air conditioning — of little use when there is no electricity — but there are no other families with one child in graduate school and another in college.
Eighteen years ago, Peter’s parents used to work together on a government-owned farm. Now, they are entrepreneurs of sorts. Peter’s father sells household items out of the back of a tractor that he drives from village to village every day. Peter’s mother sells clothing from a booth in a nearby town. She brings in the most money.
And much of the money goes toward educating their three children. Peter’s 19-year-old sister, Liu Ying (Lucy), is a sophomore English major at Xinzhou Teachers College in north Shanxi. Liu Xiao Ying (Shannon), 14, Peter’s other sister, is in the process of studying for the all-important high school entrance exams. She limited herself to 15 days of summer vacation, so she could take preparation courses that last a grueling 15 hours a day.
Shannon would like to get into the same high school her brother and sister attended, No. 1 Middle School in Hongtong, a town 15 kilometers away. Tuition is RMB 2,000 ($240) a year.
Peter estimated that about one percent of Haoyi residents continue school after the age of 15. They usually get a job in a local farm or coal factory. That’s what Peter’s parents did.
“That’s why our parents want us to study more,” Peter said. “Their parents couldn’t afford school. My parents have an unhappy life here. All their hope is in us. They want us to get out.”
But as progressive as Peter’s parents seem when it comes to education, they can be rather old-fashioned — frustratingly so for Peter — when it comes to other topics. Take Peter’s love life, for example.
At 24, Peter is already rather old to be single by Haoyi standards. In the countryside, most people get married by the age of 20. Wait much longer than that, and all the available village girls are taken. “And if I can’t find a wife now,” Peter explained, “that means I am a bad guy or I am poor.”
But Peter does have a girlfriend. He’s been seeing her for four years. They met while they were both studying at Shanxi Teachers University in Linfen. And if Peter had to guess right now, they will probably eventually get married. But she is old — the same age as Peter — and she is not from Haoyi. She was raised all the way up in the northern part of the province. These things do not sit well with Peter’s parents.
I was in the same room when Peter and his mother had one of their all-too-often-for-Peter’s-tastes talks on the topic. It was long and loud and Peter’s face turned bright red. He just couldn’t get through to her: Why can’t they just be happy because he is happy?
“Do they have someone else picked out for you to marry?” I asked.
“Yes!” Peter screamed, his face getting red again. “You can see her! She’s from my village!”
In the end though, Peter said this is ultimately his decision. And his parents will eventually respect it. Then, there are more country traditions to deal with. Peter must pay a dowry of RMB 20,000 ($2,400) to his future in-laws, who will then use the money to buy the couple a television, a washing machine, a fan, some bed quilts and maybe even a motorcycle.
“It means I bought my wife from another family,” Peter said.
Peter’s family would be responsible for making or buying furniture for the newlyweds. The parents of the groom pay for the couple’s house … if they choose to stay in the village. After that, according to the countryside code, Peter stops being his parents’ responsibility. And they start being his.
“In the village, you have two duties,” Peter said. “Support your parents until their death. And see that your children get married. If you can do these two things well, you are a successful man.”
Peter said he likely will never move back to Haoyi. He’d love to settle down in Linfen and teach history at his old college. He thinks the RMB 2,000 monthly salary he would earn would allow for a comfortable life. Teachers can buy apartments on campus for RMB 40,000 ($5,000). And he’d be happy to be back in Shanxi.
“I like it here,” he said. “All my friends are here. I don’t like other provinces, because I know little about them.”
We spent a little time in Linfen when we first arrived in Shanxi. Linfen is a city of 300,000 people or 700,000 people, depending on whom you ask. (“That happens in China,” Johnson explained. “We don’t have statistics.”) It looked like any other small Chinese city — gray and gloomy — but at least appeared to be trying hard set itself apart from the pack, misguided as its efforts might be.
There is a very old and relatively famous temple in Linfen, Yao Miao Temple. Over the past several years, the city government has spent much time and money trying to surround the temple with as much touristy kitsch as possible in an effort to attract more visitors to the area. It’s not a bad idea, when you think about it. If there is one thing Chinese tourists love, it is kitsch (and maybe brightly colored hats).
But the area now known as Yao Miao Square is like some sort of Bizarro world. There is a slightly smaller scale replica of Beijing’s Tiananmen, complete with bumper cars in what would be Tiananmen Square. There is also a huge topographical map of China that comes with an 8-inch wide Great Wall. I walked the course of this trip on the map — and it seemed long even then.
There is a carnival-type atmosphere at the square, but no customers. Vendors slept under umbrellas. The softball toss and the bust-a-balloon-with-a-dart game remained untouched.
There are even more attractions under construction, including a scaffolding-enshrined creation that looks designed to be the tallest temple in the world.
I pointed to the temple, to Tiananmen, to the giant topographical map, and asked, “Why?”
“To make money,” Peter said. “See, now you don’t need to go to Beijing, Dan. Here it is.”
Click here for photos.
One shirt says so much: In the countryside, you don’t change your clothes much. People wear the same things day after day. That’s what I did. Lucy and Shannon had matching T-shirts that I saw so often I felt obligated to share with you. Here is what the shirts said (all of this text somehow fit on the front):
INTERNATIONAL BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
IS THIS WAR? IS THIS CALL UP? I DON’T WANNA BE A SOLDIER
I DON’T WANNA DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE
WE HOPE ETERNAL WORLD PEACE
Don’t we all.
By the way, aren’t some of those lines from a song by The Clash?
15 Comments
Dan, you’ve really outdone yourself today with this post. Absolutely excellent. Really, I’ve never seen such great travelogue about China in quite some time. You should be able to find a publisher after you return to Shanghai, or perhaps back to the States. Best of luck, and keep those outstanding posts coming. I check every day and have passed along your blog to other friends living in Shanghai.
Carl Parkes
San Francisco
why did I have tears in my eyes while I was reading the article???????????????
Hi Dan,
I enjoyed your report — sensitively written, and thought-provoking.
May you feel God’s presence with you throughout your journey.
Bernie
Totally agree with Carl - you really must find a publisher, though I concede that in reality there’s few papers or magazines that would be interested in anything that’s not about George W or J-Lo.
Nevertheless, worth a try, and you certainly put my own travelogues to shame. I realise now that the students I teach at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics really are the wealthy elite - I’m pretty sure none of them hail from places like this.
Phil
Hi,Dan
I am one of your students at Shanghai University.
I think it is wrong for my country to get the economic boom at the cost of destroying the environment.
I also hope that you can publish your articles when you come back.
Some scenes occured to me when I finished reading.
I went to yunnan during the winter vacation.
When I got off the bus near Lugou Lake, a very beautiful lake near Lijiang, several boys and girls surrounded me and begged money.
I heard that they got up early and spent 2 or 3 hours coming here.
Some of them carried the bread, an apple, or melon seeds.
They wanted you to buy them for feeding sea-gull.
A little girl told me she just wanted to make money for her tuition.
I think the villagers also love their hometown and don’t want it to be invaded, but they have to survive.
So they are holding their tears when they hurt their hometown.
Lion I don’t understand what you said.
Some people live a comfortable life in China while others are struggling for survival.
It is horrible to imagine if nearly 13 hundred million people want to make a fortune, what will happen?
Maybe we should slow down our steps.
The huge gap between the rich and poor is becoming a serious issue in China’s development plan. Hopefully the government would take some actions soon.
The disparity between the haves and have nots in China is indeed a growing problem, but I believe that China is working to correct some of this. However, I think that corruption is an even bigger problem, and one that the central authority may have a more dificult time correcting. Without a free press to objectively publicize corruption, local officials have free ability to do whatever they want. And the red envelope continues to be standard practice for evading the rules regarding pollution, wages, land, living conditions, etc.
Dan, please fix this while you’re touring the country, OK?
Thanks for updating and completing the blog. It is an excellent picture of the tradition that is China.
Why did I have tears in my eyes when I read this blog? Especially when I read that you can totally understand Peter’s behaviors when Peter with you went to drink beer or took part in kinds of parties in Shanghai, I was with tearful eyes. My wife was puzzled by my unearthliness.
Something touches my nerve after I finished reading. In fact I knew the condition you wrote in the blog very very much, to some extend it was what I experienced during my childhood as well as my youth causing I came from a tiny village like Haoyi in Hubei Province. Your blog brings me back to my childhood. Through no good toys, nor beautiful clothes, nor good creature comfort, my parents gave me a happy childhood in the sun. But now when I returned to the tiny village from big city Shanghai, sometimes from Europe, I do have a lot of bad feelings. Is it my village? Why no any progresses on the life quality and basic living conditions for the peasants? The youth all go out to dig gold in the big cities like Shenzheng, Shanghai, Wuhan, in the village, only the old and children stay behind. What a woefully situation for peasants like my Mama and sisters and brothers! They have no any social guarantee; they are still fighting for the basic survival. This could be the situation of the fastest developing country? I have no idea. I cannot deny it still needs many many years to develop and improve the condition for peasants.
By comparison of lives between townsmen especially Shanghais, Pekings and peasants, what a different life they lead! Lots of friends have a splendent life in Shanghai, but they cannot understand why there are so many poor peasants in Shanghai, sometimes they dislike them even want to punish them. Why do many townsmen think scorn of peasants?
Lots of my relatives are coal miner in a small town in Hubei province, you cannot image what they earn per month by their physical force even their lives. Just an example, my elder brother and his wife cannot afford two children to go to high school. The worst thing is that they have very bad physical condition because of long-term over physical-capability-hard-work under badly environment. I could not help myself crying each time when I visited them.
What can I do for them? I can only help some of my relatives to afford their children to go to school. But it is very limited. What and where can I expect to do sth for my poor peasants?
I always remind me of being a peasant’s son from a tiny poor village. This, sometimes, made me uncomfortable like Peter together with you in the Party. It is not good, I know, one needs to enjoy the life through it is hard sometimes. But it is very difficult to overcome the kind of embarrass for such persons like me and Peter who came from a poor village and do know many relatives still lead a different and difficult life there. Many people cannot understand, but Dan can, so I was moved.
O.K. Now I am in Germany and had been staying in Shanghai for more than 3 years. Hopefully I can return to Shanghai next year, hope to read your more blogs like this report. // Eric Chian
I am going to the town of Hongtong in two weeks, First time in China, any advice????? Thank you.
I am translating a Japanese book partially set in Linfen and a nearby village very like the one you describe. Thanks so much for the description which so vividly captures the feeling of life there.
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