From Haoyi Village to the New York Daily News
My friend Liu Yi, who I profiled during the Shanxi Province leg of my 2004 trip through China, was featured in an article entitled “America, meet your rivals” in the August 9, 2005 edition of the New York Daily News. Here is Yi’s part of the story:
Liu Yi, 25Studying to be a professor
In Liu Yi’s hometown of Haoyi in central China, virtually all teenagers go to work in factories, construction, coal mines or the family farm. So there’s not much point in dreaming of becoming a college professor.
In fact, since the 1949 Communist takeover of the country, only 100 people from Haoyi have gone to college, Liu said.
But Liu said his parents insisted he stick with his studies. He traveled 1,000 miles west (sic) to the relative luxury of Shanghai University (although undergrad dorm rooms don’t have heat, hot water or air conditioning).
With a newly awarded master’s degree in history, Liu will now pursue a Ph.D., which should eventually land him a job as a professor. He’ll likely earn $4,500 a year.
Liu celebrated his degree with beers and a feast at a restaurant crowded with students. The six-course meal for four, including spicy greenfish soup and fried tofu with sweet and sour sauce, came to a mere $17.
Liu took 30 seconds to search for the right words, in English, to describe what life might have been like if his family hadn’t sacrificed for his education.
“If not, you are a farmer in the countryside. You get a very bad life. I can’t enjoy that,” he said, adding with a chuckle, “I’m not a good farmer.”
The story is part of a five-day series by Daily News Deputy National Editor Scott Wenger, to whom I intoduced Yi while Wenger was in Shanghai last month. I also helped Wenger hook up with a translator — my friend Johnson Zhang — and if any of you have stumbled upon this page in search information on how to find a professional Shanghai-based English-speaking translator (I think they use the term “fixer” in the biz), contact me and I can put you in touch with Johnson. Many people who meet him, foreigner and Chinese, assume Johnson is American. His English is that good … and he’s never stepped foot outside of China.
By the way, the “founder of the Shanghai Diaries Web site” was quoted in the New York Daily News on Sunday and Monday. What a windbag!
08.11.2005, 5:07 PM · Diary, Shanxi · Comments (1)
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.
08.27.2004, 1:05 AM · Shanxi, Stories, The Trip · Comments (15)
