We stopped in a very nice village outside Datong
on our way to the Yungang Grottoes to get a glimpse of what small town life
might be like. Our guide did qualify the
stop by saying that this was a place where people stayed by choice and had a
nice life, implying that might not be true across China.
According to the 2010
census, 51.3 percent of China's population lives in rural areas. This is down
from 63.9 percent in the 2000 census, which used a different counting system, and
over 95 percent in the 1920s. There are around 800 million rural peasants and
migrant workers--roughly 500 million farmers and 300 million to 400 million
excess unskilled rural laborers. It is almost certainly lower now. I fist went to China in 2014 and it continues
to urbanize.
A typical village farmer
grow rice, corn, chilies and vegetables on a half acre of land, and maybe keeps
some chickens and pigs. Farmers produce enough to eat but not much to sell.
There are inadequate basic public services such as education, health and
applications of new technologies. Typical rural families live in simple wooden
houses, use outhouses and cook in shacks over open hearths. Note everything
about this photo, from the housing to the manual removal of corn from the cob,
to the way that corn is stored.
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