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The trip to the village was very exciting as well as emotional. First, the modern communication enabled me to get in touch with some of the peasants by phone even before my trip when I was still in Beijing. Long distance phone communication seems most common nowadays, but it was unimaginable some thirty years ago in a remote village in China. By talking on the phone with the head of the village, I already learned a lot about the latest changes in the village, and the whereabouts of some of my peasant friends. Many of the older generations in the village have passed away. Also, the transportation and high way systems in China have improved tremendously. Our first trip from Beijing to the village 35 years took about two days. After an over-night train, we had a very long bumpy truck ride on dirt road. But now due to the modern transportation system and newly constructed highways; I can get to the village from Beijing by plane and rental car within just a few hours. While this is most convenient for my travel, the almost instant homecoming to the village seemed too abrupt mentally. I felt overwhelmed by the reality of the village that was coming back so suddenly to me after my memory of the people and the village had gradually faded in my mind over the years. The village has subsided in my mind to become a remote dreamland, but now it appeared in front of me after just a few hours traveling. Of course I was overjoyed to finally meet many of the people in the village I used to know very well some thirty years ago. The way the people in the village welcomed me was truly heart warming. The two heads of the village (both elected officials by the villagers) do not really know me at all as they were just about six to seven years old boys when we were in the village. However, from whatever memories they still have about us, and probably from the collective memories of the older generation in the village, they know what happened thirty five years ago. They seem to have inherited from their parents the kindness toward us, a bunch of teenagers from the big capital city Beijing many years ago. During my phone conversation before my trip, they offered to drive to the airport (three hours drive from the village) to pick me up (one of them has a car). The night I arrived, they welcomed me with a fancy feast, with fresh fish just caught from the Songhua River (a major river in Northeast China) a few miles north of the village, and different kinds of meat from the market in the closest town some twenty miles away. We exchanged old stories and talked about the drastic changes of the village over many drinks. That evening and next morning, they showed me around the village to visit many of the families. All people I met could recognize me and remember my name almost immediately, even though over thirty years have passed since my two-and-a-half years stay in the village. I was most moved when meeting one particular peasant who did not know me well when I was in the village. He is now in his old age and suffers some mental disease. When he saw me, he seemed puzzled for a few seconds. But then he suddenly uttered my name slowly but clearly (my name is not a popular one easy to remember or pronounce), while I felt so embarrassed that I needed to be reminded by others of his name. Somehow I feel what happened over thirty years ago has been a life-changing experience to the villagers as well as to us. The stories of a few young people from some remote big city called Beijing who stayed in this small village for a few years have become part of the legend of the village, and have sunk into the collective memory of the villagers, to be remembered by several generations. Several villagers put aside their daily work to accompany me during my visit. They took me to see the Songhua River and the farmland on the shore, where it used to be vast natural grassland. Upon my request, we also stopped by the village graveyard to pay respect to some of those who passed away. To this day I still appreciate their kindness and their many helps to us. The morning I was about to leave the village, I was asked if I wanted to have anything special for breakfast. I mentioned some pot-sticker bun made of corn flour, which was in almost every meal of the day during our days in the village, and I have not had it ever since I left the village. To my surprise, few people in the younger generation know how to do it any more, as food made of corn flour has been all replaced by rice or wheat products. With some difficulty, my host family finally found some corn flour and someone who could still make the corn flour bun. We had again a feast-like breakfast before I left the village. In addition to the emotional reunion and visiting many of my peasant friends in the village who have gone through major physical changes (a lot of wrinkles and white hair, and some sickness), I also observed some important and interesting changes in the village over the last thirty years, mostly due to the major social reforms of the country over the last 20 years. First, all farming lands that were collectively owned by the village are now completely privatized. Now each family has its own land to farm. Consequently, the productivities as well as the yields are increased while the labor intensity is reduced. Happily surprised, I find the most time consuming and tiring work of weeding during my time (we used to work 15 hours a day weeding in the field for two months) is no longer at all as hard as before. Second, the types of crops planted are quite different from before. Now rice is planted over most of the fields, with only enough corns planted to feed the animals. Traditionally corn has been the main food in Northeast China for hundreds of years, but now almost all families have rice and wheat products for their regular meals everyday. Third, the farming is modernized. Tractors have replaced horses in almost all farming needs in the fields. Tractors are also widely used to for irrigation (to pump water from the wells in the field) and transportation. Although only a few families own cars or trucks, most families have motorcycles. They ride motorcycles to farming fields far away from the village; they also ride them to markets in the city on well-paved country roads. The horse-powered carts widely used in the old days are nowhere to be seen now. Also natural gas and cool have been widely available for both heating and cooking. People no longer harvest tall grass from the grassland (no longer in existence) for fuel, as in the old days. Fourth, the families in the village are polarized in terms of their income and living standards. Some families with more labors have much more income than those with few labors and the living standard of the better-off families have improved significantly compared to when we were in the village, while the situations of the poorer families are still not too much better than before. The health care has improved little. I see a few people suffering from some common treatable diseases. In any case, one major change is seen in every family, i.e. a color TV. All peasants see the same TV programs as what the rest of the country sees, and most of them are well informed of not only what happens in the country, but also in the world. I spent quite sometime discussing with the two heads of the village the 9.11 attacks, the Iraq war, and the political systems in China and in the US, which were obviously of great interest to them. Fifth, a few of the peasants I knew well have moved to the nearest town, the small capital town of the county thirty years ago but a middle-sized city now. I visited three such families in this city who moved here from the village during the last ten years. One close peasant friend of mine has built a two-story building in the city and is living on rents from three restaurants on the bottom floor. Another one became a construction worker and is just retired. She lives in a comfortable apartment flat, as modern and decorated as many such apartment flats in Beijing. The city is still under rapid development and construction sites are seen everywhere, while more peasants in the village are thinking of retired life in the city. The trend of urbanization is obvious and irresistible here as well as in the rest of China. Last but not least, I am very happy to see the major improvement in education in the countryside of China. In the old days, few farming families could afford to send their children to high school. But now education is much more popularized that some families in the village have more than one college graduates. In particular, I remember vividly my visit to a peasant friend one evening. Their housing condition didn’t seem to have improved much compared to the time when I was in the village. However, to my surprise, I found during our conversation that all three daughters in the family have had college education. One of the daughters studied Physics at a well-known university in central China and became a university professor! I am very touched by the father who, for many years, has worked hard and lived simply just to save up enough money to provide education to all his daughters, while some others may want to keep their children working in the field to help with the family. The successful story of the three daughters also showed convincingly that, given the opportunity, a peasant’s daughter could do as well intellectually as people from any other family background. I feel very proud of the father as well as his daughters, and I am happy to see peasants confined to their farming lands for many generations now start to seek other opportunities made available by the profound social changes taking place in China. I just hope the pace of such social changes can be more rapid, and they will take place in other aspects of the society, such as the political system, as well as in the economic system. Most essentially, I hope eventually all such changes will bring further democratization of the country. During my trip to Northeast China, I also visited an oil field, where I worked for quite some years after my farming life in the village. The reunion with many of my close colleagues on the oil field was also emotional and heart warming. Back to Beijing, I made a lot of effort trying to get in touch with those schoolmates of mine who went to the village with me thirty-five years ago. This task turned out to be much harder than visiting the village. Although most of my fellow students have been now back in Beijing for many years, I have lost almost all contacts with them since I left China. After countless phone calls I eventually reached most of the people who went to the village with me, and with careful arrangement, we finally got together to have a reunion. Some of us have not seen each other for over thirty years ever since we left the village. Of course we each had a life story to tell. Our life just started when we boarded the same train that took us to the countryside, but now we are all in our fifties. After life in the village, some had the opportunity to continue their college education; but others never had such luck. In general, many people of this generation who were sent to the countryside as teenagers forever lost their opportunity for further education, and consequently most of them did not do well in life, compared to the younger generation with better education, necessary in the rapid developing market economy in China today. Also, due to the wide spread problem of over population, the government has the general policy of encouraging (sometimes even involuntarily) early retirement to make positions available for the younger generation who need the job. Four people at the reunion have already taken this early retirement, while they are still perfectly healthy and able to continue their work. While feeling bad for these schoolmates of mine, I am glad to see that they do not seem depressed, instead, they all more or less have taken interests in new fields, whether a hobby or some part-time job. As the sacrifice of some tragic politics in modern history of China, many in my generation suffered and forever lost their opportunities in life. Many dreams and ambitions were destroyed. However, out of this generation, there are still some people have achieved various successes in reaching their life goals. There always seem to be bad times as well as good ones in each individual life, as well as in history. But whether or not one can succeed in life depends on one’s determination and effort, as well as one’s luck. I just hope the younger generations, in both America and China, can learn our lessons and appreciate the opportunities they enjoy (instead of taking them for granted), without suffering what we experienced in our youth. |
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