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| mountains in Yunnan Province |
A young man, 29, whom I will call Mo,
told us the story of his life. He grew
up, and lives today, in the mountains of Yunnan Province. Everyone in his mountain village is a farmer
and all are very poor. Conditions for
them improved after Deng Xiao Ping opened the economy to “private” enterprise.
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| river and farms, Yunnan Province |
Before Deng, everyone worked the fields
by hand and gave all their produce to the government. They were allowed to grow a small plot of
vegetables for their families, but everyone was always hungry. Their diet consisted of a corn porridge with
a few vegetables in it. They never had
meat and very little protein. To
supplement their diet, the mountain farmers ate bugs—scorpions, roaches,
beetles, worms, anything they could catch that could be fried and
digested. In towns and cities today,
there are still long rows of food stalls selling all kinds of critters.
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| mother pig with babies crossing village path |
Mo grew up smaller than the rest of the village boys. He wasn’t strong or tall enough to play
sports like his friends could. Once he
asked his mother why he was so small.
She told him she thought it was because she was always hungry when she
was pregnant with him and had no protein.
When he was born, she could produce no milk for him, so she fed him rice
gruel, also minimally nutritious. If she
had time, she would strap him to her back and walk from village to village
looking for a nursing mother who was willing to nurse Mo with her extra milk.
The village children did not have shoes. They walked barefoot 2 hours each way from
their village to the nearest school in all weather. Mo told us that they all feared the winter
because their fingers and toes split open and bled from the dryness and cold. They walked barefoot even in the snow. He said no one had any money at all since the
government took whatever they produced, so only adults had shoes,
and these were made of grass.
Mo remembers going out very early in the morning with his
grandmother, around 5 a.m., when the grass on the mountainsides was lush, searching
for a particular type of grass that could be used to make shoes. They gathered the grass, which was then
twisted and woven into very poor quality shoes that lasted for only a few months.
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| painting of weaving grass shoes, Long Museum, Shanghai |
When Mo was 8 or 9, the government sent teachers from the cities
to teach in the village schools. His
local teacher told the students that the school would lose face if they did not
have shoes, so they could no longer attend school if they didn’t wear shoes. When Mo told his mother, she found some old
shoe soles and wrapped them with grass and rags to make shoes for him and his
sister. The shoes were very
uncomfortable to children who had always gone barefoot, so the kids would walk
to school barefoot, carrying their shoes, and put them on just outside the
school. Every 40 minutes, teachers took
a 10 minute break. During that break,
the students would take off their painful shoes and rest their feet until the
teachers returned.
When he was going to school, parents had to pay school fees
for their children. Education was very
expensive at the primary, middle and high school levels and the university was
out of reach for virtually all the farm families. Mo’s sister dropped out of school after
middle school because their parents had no money to continue her education. Today, primary and middle school education is
free, so all the children go at least through middle school.
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| yaks in a mountain meadow |
Mo took the university exams and was accepted to a
university. It cost far more money than
his family could afford, so he and his parents thought about it for over a
month before they decided he would attend the university, far from his
home. His family had a horse, which was
a near necessity for a farm family. They
used the horse to transport their produce to market and to help in the fields. Nevertheless, Mo’s father decided to sell
their horse to pay Mo’s university tuition.
That didn’t produce enough money to pay the fees, so his parents worked
very hard in the fields to make the extra money required to send him to the
university. He believes this hard work
is the main factor in their failing health, even though they are only 58 and 54
years old.
Mo majored in Chinese literature and taught himself English
by watching American movies and reading English novels. His English is quite good, but he says the
little bit of English he learned in school was taught by teachers who couldn’t
speak the language, so he has lots of trouble with pronunciation. We thought he did pretty well.
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| fried insects--still a delicacy |
After graduating, Mo returned to his village to support his
parents. His sister had married and
moved away, so he became their sole support.
He told us that everyone wants boys because boys are responsible for
taking care of their parents. There is
no social safety net—no free health care and no pensions, particularly for
farmers who never had any money to save.
Health care for them is very expensive.
After 1979 and Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms, farmers were given
3 plots of land to farm for their families, about 200 square meters each. Instead of giving all they produced to the
government, they were allowed to keep 2/3 of it. Families began to have enough food to eat, to
keep a few chickens and a couple of pigs, and to sell what they didn’t
need. In Mo’s village, families needed
just about all they grew because the mountain soil is not very fertile and the
seeds they saved for the next year were not of the best quality.
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| horses in mountain rainstorm |
Mo said no one over 50 in his village has any teeth. There is still no dental care and no dental
education in rural areas (and not much anywhere in China). His father has 3 teeth and is in very bad
health, so only his mother can work in their small plot where they grow
vegetables. His father stays home, too
ill to work—at 58. Mo didn’t start
brushing his teeth until he was in high school, but he has most of his teeth
because he tries to take care of them now.
When I asked him about seeing a dentist, he almost didn’t know what I
meant. He has never seen a dentist.
The ability to speak English opened up job opportunities for
Mo. He works in his uncle’s hotel at the
reception desk, where English is sometimes required, and is a local tour guide
when he has free time. Most of his
village friends do not have good jobs because they don’t speak English. He has a girlfriend and would like to marry
her, but her parents, like the parents of most girls in modern China, want him
to have an apartment, a car and a good job before they approve the
marriage. Mo has an electric motor bike
and rents a small room in the city so he can get to work. He is not able to save much money because he
spends almost all he makes taking care of his parents.
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| corn drying over doorway |
If Mo’s father weren’t so ill, he could
save money. But, trips to the doctor and
medications are very expensive. One
local doctor told them his father needed to go to Shanghai to a specialist for
surgery, but they can’t afford to do that.
So, Mo’s savings are going to go to providing that specialized care for
his father when he has saved enough money for the trip and the surgery.
Mo has never been out of Yunnan province. He said he hates the mountains and wants to
see the ocean, which he has never seen.
His dream is to visit the United States and go to Yellowstone National
Park. At 29, he is older than most young
men who are getting married. But, as
long as his parents are alive, they will have to come first. As he says, they sacrificed everything to
send him to the university. Now it is
his turn to take care of them.
Here, Silk Road merchants from India
brought Buddhism 1600 years ago. Between
the 4th and the 14th centuries AD, wealthy Buddhist
families hired workers to carve out caves in the cliffs outside Dunhuang, some
with huge Buddhas, hoping these sponsorships would aid their entry into
paradise. Artists then painted the
insides of the caves gorgeously, using lapis lazuli for bright and soft blues,
turquoise for green and cinnabar for red
colors. They covered the walls and
ceilings of the caves with intricate Buddhas, apsaras, scenes from paradise,
animals, people and lotus flowers. 
These caves rival the magnificent
pharaonic tombs of upper Egypt, also brilliantly covered with paintings of the
pharaohs and, in some, the daily lives of the workers who dug the tombs. It is hard to describe the beauty and
intricacy of the Mogao Cave paintings, so I will simply suggest that if you
decide to visit China, you include Dunhuang and its incredible painted caves. Because you are not allowed to take photos inside the caves, the photographs in this blog are from books and post cards I bought in Dunhuang.
One Buddhist monk from the 4th
century had a vision of creating these monuments to Buddha. He found a cliff and started chiseling out
caves from the hard rock. Over the next
thousand years, workers dug over 1000 caves, 735 of which are in beautiful
condition today. The colors are original,
though some of the statues of Buddha are reproductions from the 19th
century (in quality, far below the graceful standard of the earlier
Buddhas). The caves vary in size, but
can easily hold 25 people, the maximum number allowed inside a cave at one time.
