The ongoing development of China's countryside has led to fast-paced changes and positive improvements in the lives of residents of a small village in the country's northeast.
by Jas Kirt (UCLA 2015)
UCLA International Institute, March 5, 2015 — Freelance writer Michael Meyer discussed his new book “In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China” (Bloomsbury 2015) at a recent talk hosted by the Center for Chinese Studies. The book follows rapid changes produced by economic development and urbanization in a small village named “Wasteland” located in Northeastern China. Meyer’s account highlights the narratives of major actors living and working in the rural village.
Personal connection
Meyer has a strong personal connection to the village of Wasteland because his wife grew up there. “[She could] still remember where she would sit when her grandmother would plant rice seedlings,” he said. Like many rural young people, she eventually moved to Beijing and ended up pursuing a graduate education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Overall, the speaker found the level of education in Wasteland was higher than that of some Beijing neighborhoods, including the neighborhood where he had previously taught English. Wasteland is atypical of Chinese villages in more than just this regard, however.
A town transformed
“Wasteland” was given its unflattering name to deter migrants from stopping there, explained Meyer. The land in this area is extremely fertile, which allows farmers to be more productive and cultivate more valuable crops. The land in the village is owned by the state, but each family has a 30-year leasehold on a plot of roughly 1.5 hectares.
While the average Chinese farmer makes about US$ 1,500 per year, the farmers in Wasteland make 50 percent more than this amount, primarily because they grow sticky rice. Known as a “boutique crop,” the rice is used in popular foods such as sushi. Thus, said Meyer, Wasteland at harvest looks “nothing like a wasteland” and families generally enjoy positive economic gains from their plots.
During his initial stay, Meyer found houses in the village dilapidated due to the villagers’ belief that the buildings would soon be destroyed. At the time, Wasteland had only one narrow unpaved road that led nowhere.
The East Fortune Rice Company, a local enterprise, soon expanded into the village, invited by the government to participate in a public-private partnership to improve the road. The company widened the road, installed lights and began putting up advertisements. It also began sewing together family plots of land, which it leased from local farmers for 10-year terms.
The mechanization of farming permitted by these acquisitions, together with the construction of new urban apartment complexes, moved farmers off their family plots and contributed to the process of quasi-urbanization of the countryside in the area.
Personal narratives
While most villagers welcomed the changes that accompanied urbanization, some were critical. Auntie Yee, who had grown up in Manchukuo (the puppet state ruled by Japan from 1932 through 1945), participated in the Communist Party and played an active role in the previous village administration, was livid at the improvement of Wasteland’s single road. Her anger stemmed from the fact that the road had been built by a private company, rather than by the state.
Sanjo, a rice farmer in his early 70s who had lived in the village his entire life, did not object to the changes. The farmer had experienced the many political and economic ups and downs of communist China and realized that the “entire [young ] generation had no idea how to farm.”
Sanjo also recognized the enormous pressure on China’s food supply and therefore understood the need for mechanization. And he did not find fault with the East Fortune Rice Company because it was a local enterprise and not a multinational corporation. Sanjo did not want to lease his plot of land to the company just yet, however, even though over half the farmers in the village had already done so, because the price of rice had doubled in the last two years.
A model for rural development?
While Meyer initially sought to paint a portrait of rural life in China, his book inevitably turned into another story about rapid change in China (a previous book dealt with urban change in Beijing). By the end of his stay in Wasteland, Meyer said the entrance to the village had become “essentially a billboard for Eastern Fortune Rice.”
Today, the village consists of a widened and connected road, new urban dwellings for residents, agricultural fields that have been prepared for mechanized production, a hot spring resort for city residents on weekend vacation and a model organic farm.
In order to slow migration to existing cities, observed Meyer, the Chinese government supports village governments and companies throughout the country to follow similar policies to “bring the city to the countryside.” Wasteland has become a model for this type of development and urbanization, even cited in the media.
Although the village transformed very quickly, Meyer firmly believed that most villagers consider the changes positive. They feel that they no longer live on a dead-end road, he explained, and are now connected to the rest of Northeastern China.