Abstract
The fieldwork for this study was conducted in Qinggang County, Heilongjiang Province. Located in east central Heilongjiang, Qinggang is one of the grain producing counties of the province with maize as its major product if not the only one (other grains and vegetables grown there are mostly for self-consumption). Qinggang County is in the hinterland of the Songnen Plain, 120 km north of the provincial capital Harbin and 120 km east of Daqing, the city famous for its oil resources. No railway service is available in the county, though it is universal throughout China. Its transport link to the outside relies on buses and private vehicles (There are many bus services available from Harbin to other places by way of Qinggang. But when the fieldwork was conducted the only one between Harbin and Qinggang was a mini-bus service, which was extremely unreliable because of the poor condition of the vehicles. The first author took twice, and for both times the mini-buses broke down on the way).
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Notes
- 1.
There are many bus services available from Harbin to other places by way of Qinggang. But when the fieldwork was conducted in 2006, the only one between Harbin and Qinggang was a mini-bus service, which was extremely unreliable because of the poor condition of the vehicles. The first author took twice, and for both times the mini-buses broke down on the way.
- 2.
See the Eighth Seven-year Poverty Alleviation Reinforcement Plan (1994–2000), issued by the State Council in 1994, available at: http://news.sina.com.cn/2004-08-25/17534137022.shtml. Accessed 12 January 2017.
- 3.
668 yuan was set as the poverty line and 882 yuan as the low income line by State Statistics Bureau in 2004.
- 4.
It might be worth noticing that there are 103 state farms in Heilongjiang, the largest number in China, accounting for 21.5% of total cultivated land, which is cultivated by non-rural population instead of by peasants, as workers of state farms are non-rural.
- 5.
Natural village.
- 6.
Peasants have to pay off the loan on time. Otherwise it is harder to get a loan for the following year. There was a story during an interview that because one family did not pay off the loan on time, the credit association would not lease loans to the whole village the following year.
- 7.
The author once asked about the meaning of ‘someone with certain rights’, and got the answer that ‘the cadres and those who have relationships with brigade (village) leaders in terms of kinship and friendship…those who get along well with leaders’.
- 8.
One of the three major village positions, the other two being village head and party secretary.
- 9.
Local people used the term ‘four wheels’ (silunzi) to refer to any four-wheeled motor vehicles (except trucks and cars requiring a proper licence to drive). In most cases, these vehicles are more like tractors with trailers.
- 10.
The first author tried to calculate according to the information gathered from her. As bean sprouts were sold at 0.6–0.7 yuan per jin and every jin of beans (at the price of 3.5 yuan) would produce 10 jin of sprouts, she would earn 2.5–3.5 yuan for 10 jin of sprouts sold. Taking tax and diesel into consideration, she had to sell at least 70–80 jin of sprouts before she could earn money. This did not include other expenses such as lunch outside home during the sale, room heating and water boiling as temperature was needed for growing bean sprouts. Considering the room size needed to keep the growing sprouts, it would take her at least a week to produce 80–100 jin of sprouts.
- 11.
He said his ‘four-wheels’ was old enough to be sold as wasted iron.
- 12.
His phone bill for that winter reached 159 yuan due to his contacts with grain dealers.
- 13.
This refers to casual work in the village, i.e. working in a local brick factory. It will be discussed later.
- 14.
The girl was 15 when she went to work in a cloth factory.
- 15.
The temperature in winter in Harbin could reach −30 ℃. Therefore, fully-lined shoes are a necessity in winter.
- 16.
He was actually less than 14, might be 13 or even as young as 12 years old. As in rural areas of north China, people would add one year to their real age. For example, the child’s age is equal to the present year minus the year he was born plus one, regardless in which month the child was born.
- 17.
Her husband. Local women would never use ‘husband’ to address their spouses. They would rather say ‘the/that person or the/that one in my family’.
- 18.
Some remembered the number as twelve yuan per mu.
- 19.
According to the villagers, the roads wouldn’t be repaired by anyone, and nothing was done (with the help of ‘voluntary labour service’). They continued, ‘you see the road has been dug up and no one would care.’
- 20.
Local people use maize straws as fuel.
- 21.
Rural medical cooperation system started to be carried out in late 2006. For the villages visited during the fieldtrip people had not got any benefit from it.
- 22.
Rural credit cooperatives are financial institutions in rural areas which collect rural residents’ savings and lend mainly to agricultural projects and township and village enterprises. The lending decisions are highly influenced by local governments (Cousin, 2011).
- 23.
It was known from the fieldtrip that when there was election in the village, Han Chunlei’s (the village secretary) father went house by house to lobby. When he came to the girl’s home, he said to her father, ‘you vote for my son and we won’t forget you in the future.’ Later, we happened to find out, via the internet, that soon after the fieldtrip, Han Chunlei got an award for nomination as one of the ten outstanding youths of Qinggang County. According to the description, his major achievement was helping villagers increase income thus reduce poverty.
- 24.
Communes were dismantled in the early 1980s in Heilongjiang, but villagers in Zuogang would keep using the terms they once used in the planning era, such as commune and brigade. Commune was generally referred to the town government, and brigade the village.
- 25.
The father did not say anything about the commission when he was interviewed during the day. It was the girl who told the first author about it during a night-time chat in her room. She also said that, as a civil affairs assistant, the local officer would take commission for all the money he applied for on behalf of villagers. If a villager received more than 1000 yuan, he would take 500 yuan; if the total amount was less than 1000 yuan, he would take 100 yuan. The next morning, the author confirmed this with her father.
- 26.
It was considered extremely unwise to lease land with crops as investment had already made for seeds and labour.
References
Atinc, T. M. (1997). Sharing rising incomes: disparities in China (Vol. 5). World Bank Publications.
Cousin, V. (2011). Banking in China. Springer.
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Gao, Y., Fennell, S. (2018). The Perspective of Peasants. In: China’s Rural–Urban Inequality in the Countryside. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8273-3_5
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