Zhu cun lu: Zhongguo beifang xiangcun kaocha baogao by Du Jianhui (review)

Since Deng Xiaoping initiated his reforms, Chinese rural society has experienced dramatic changes. The rural responsibility system enforced in the early 1980s brought dynamism to rural production, the rural economy, and rural society. The ensuing rural transformation accelerated the coming of national economic prosperity. However, the overall quick growth has drawn the countryside into the national trajectory of industrialization and urbanization. Consequently, the rural issue, particularly the low living standard of peasants, has been an excruciating headache for the Chinese nation. Nevertheless, few authors have gone to live among the peasants to write a comprehensive book relaying relevant information. Du Jianhui has published his personal observation of a village, offering all-inclusive coverage, rendering an insightful analysis, and providing a thought-provoking reflection.

Targeting the rural issue, Du went to live with a peasant family in 2003 in Chuwa Village, Yiyang County, Henan Province. This village is a cluster of twenty-two small settlements on hilly ranges with a total population of 2,480. Du meticulously observed the local conditions, recorded what he saw, and published a comprehensive book, which went through three editions between 2009 and 2011. Challenging the official view of a totally positive rural transformation, Du presents a picture of an unbalanced national development. While he noticed positive social advances, he exposes a number of daunting challenges. From his findings, the reader understands that “the peasants are really indigent, the countryside is really destitute, and the agriculture is really precarious” (p. 6).

Written in fluent language and with intuitive ideas, Du’s book presents a panorama of Chuwa Village. In twenty-four chapters, he provides an encyclopedic illustration by covering almost every aspect of contemporary rural life. Although it is not a scholastic monograph, this book contains insightful perspectives, provides eye-catching facts, and offers stimulating thoughts. By reading it, the reader learns more about rural society, comprehends the rural–urban gap, and overhears rural stories. Indeed, the value of this book is its authentic firsthand observation, its reflective examination of rural society, and its beseeching plea for attention to this neglected side of Chinese life.

As Du elucidates, the current rural progress does not mirror China’s impressive march toward modernization. Rather, he exposes the imbalanced national growth that has created a huge discrepancy between urban affluence and rural adversity, as rural incomes are roughly one-fourth to one-half of those in the cities. Sadder still, rural income has continued to drop in recent years. By citing the Latin American experience as an alarm, Du indicates that a similar situation might occur in China. As modernization progresses, a large number of poor people can emerge, as happened in Latin America. In fact, China’s rural–urban disparity deprives rural residents of basic needs, common opportunities, and regular funds. Many families in Chuwa did not have a chance to eat meat except during traditional festivals. Du urges the Chinese to alleviate this rural–urban discrepancy in order to reach long-term sustainable national development by offering more help to the rural residents.

In addition to the meager economic situation, rural education poses a serious issue. In Chuwa, there is an elementary school, but it is not well staffed as it has only two teachers who graduated from middle school in the 1960s. The two have to handle a large number of students and they must teach everything. Their salary equates to half that of their urban counterparts. The two were not trained with appropriate pedagogy and did not visit urban schools to learn new teaching skills. In the past four decades, Chuwa only sent two students to college. Du argues that today’s education is tomorrow’s economy; such deplorable rural education leads him to worry about long-term sustainable national growth.

In the past three decades, the rural folks who served as cheap...