‘I struggled 18 years just to drink a cup of coffee with you’

Peasants have been a hot topic lately in China. An article that appeared earlier this month in New Weekly took a long look at China’s largest group of citizens and their place in modern society. The piece offers a fascinating glimpse into the language that defines them, the pop culture and the folklore that can stigmatize or celebrate them, as it builds to a passionate conclusion: “In our hearts, we all are the offspring of peasants, we are all a species spawned from the earth of China.” The original article is in five parts. Here is the first section…

都是农民！30年来城市与农民的纠葛
All are Peasants! 30 Years Since the Mixing of City and Peasantry

1949 — 112 in every 1,000 Chinese people lived in cities.

1978 — 180 in every 1,000.

2008 — 456 in every 1,000.

Today, 606 million Chinese people live in 655 cities and 20,000 towns; basically these are the progeny of the peasantry, they are the offspring of China’s industrialization and urbanization processes.

Today, 720 million Chinese people live in the countryside – among them, every year 226 million of the countryside’s labor force enter rural and small town enterprises and enter cities to obtain employment, turning into migrant workers.

The “three farming” problem [1] hangs in doubt; Chinese cities and peasantry are tangled up as one body, but with sides clearly drawn – Chinese society’s surface is city, and underneath it is the peasantry, but the peasantry in the cities lack equal treatment. In some cities, the government and people’s vested interest as city people, reaffirmed by making “class origin theory” a precondition of residency, stands in the way of migrant workers identifying themselves as such, thus depriving them of their opportunity. They discriminate against peasants, but forget that the peasantry is the root of Chinese society.

The group most worthy of tribute and commendation during the 30 years of opening up, the ignored pride of China, is that of the peasant workers. Without their rough hands, the so-called sudden rise of a great nation, the so-called China miracle, the so-called world factory, and so-called urbanization, could never have come into existence.

We who live in cities, we must thank and help peasants and migrant workers – they are where we come from, and are our brothers to whom we have been indebted for many years.

Peasants and city folk’s thirty year entanglement

What people are peasants?

Modernization will cut China’s traditional society into two halves: one half is the bright focus, the other is downcast with no light; one half progresses with each day, the other half is stagnant. If you are not lucky to be born into one half, I am sorry, you drew the lower lot. To be born as a peasant, you must spend more effort than city people to be able to live an honorable life.

The mixture of two worlds goes along with the magnificent theme of Chinese urbanization. In spite of the other world, this world is also predicted to stop once it has begun.

Smash the city-country duality, awaken Chinese peasants’ immense potential, economists please consider it, it should increase China’s GDP how many hundreds of percent?

Looking back on the 30 years of opening up, it seems to be missing one important theme: gratitude. Today, we again take up this theme, thanking peasants, especially thanking the two million migrant workers. Without their rough hands, the so-called sudden rise of a great nation, the so-called China miracle, the so-called world factory, would not have been able to come into existence.

Except for society’s entrepreneurs who feel their responsibility, aside from the wealth of enterprising officials and conscientious intellectuals, the largest group to contribute to the 30 years of opening up is peasant workers. They are the number one meritorious reformers; they ought to receive good treatment. Presently, the economic crisis is moving deeper; again they become the first casualties.

Any setting straight of the balance between peasants and city people, is a problem confronted by all previous Chinese leaders and also every city person. Give a gift back to the peasantry, city people must transfer their advantage; it is not based on a temporary conscientious discovery, it is designed in the system. Conceptually disentangle the dead knot of the title “peasant,” even more necessary is the force of bravery and long-lost traditional morality.

How did “peasant” become an adjective?

Behind the stigmatization of the peasantry, there is the establishment of some kind of identity superiority complex

According to guard Li Yinqiao’s memory, after entering the city Mao Zedong still had a liking for red braised meat, and so unable to avoid provoking Jiang Qing’s nagging, said it is just the custom of the peasantry. One time when he was annoyed by the nagging, Mao Zedong said in a loud voice: “What’s wrong with the peasantry? I am a peasant!”

Jiang Qing’s nagging was not wrong on the grounds of health, the incorrectness was with the association of the petty bourgeoisie with the peasantry. It isn’t too hard to find an example of one’s breeding in the old picture of Mao’s wife scratching her head on the beach, an expensive trip for a red “revolutionary pathbreaker.”

Petty bourgeoisie sentimentality regards the peasantry as provincial. “Real peasant!” is an oft said sneer of the petty bourgeoisie. “Peasant” becomes an adjective. Actually, petty bourgeoisie is also an adjective: “you are just petty bourgeoisie!”

Sociologists call this stigmatization, namely one group emphasizing human inferiorities to achieve some kind of superiority complex over another group. Stigmatization reflects a kind of unilateral power to create nomenclature. Even if it’s in Zhao Benshan, Xiao Gangfen’s style of humor real peasants are still the “silent majority,” actually that humor is all still the joke of city people.

In the media of city people, it is not difficult to find that stigmatization of workers has become normal, it seems this is the nature of the peasantry. As a result whenever a crime occurs, city people first associate it with workers who just entered the city.

A migrant workers’ song promoted by local governments for “care” and “education” says: petty farmers mentality must drop off, saying rude things makes people unable to accept; decorations are in the owner’s home, unclean hands and feet will offend… urinating everywhere is not permitted, shave your beard cut your hair everyday wash your feet; do not watch pornographic movies and read tabloids, study to enhance cultural qualities… (Migrant Brothers’ Three Main Rules and Eight Points of Attention).

“Blind influx” is a term which was earliest used in the 1953 National Government Affairs’ publication Prescription against Peasants’ Blind Influx into Cities. Initially, “blind influx” was an abbreviated verb form of the noun “blind stream from outside,” indicating those peasants blindly pouring into cities. And following society’s trends, the meaning of this term has been added to by many colorful moral judgments (some scholars have pointed out, the pronunciation of “blind influx” reversed is “hooligan”), allowing for the rationalization of brutal arrests of the “blind influx.” [2] Sun Zhigang’s tragedy finally led to the abolition of the Prescription.

From “blind influx” to “peasant worker,” within these words is incorporated a stigmatizing tendency, as well as a kind of demotion: peasants should not have the rights and treatment of city people, and in order to establish some kind of moral superiority complex, peasants are cultural retards.

Nanjing academics established study groups on the media image of migrant workers, from statistics on Yangzi Evening News it was discovered: in 2001 the image of migrant workers occupied 10% of their reports, 66.7% of which were negative. Embodying filth, spitting everywhere, stealing, misbehaving, barbarianism and other forms of stigmatization, as well as speaking rudely, unclean hands and feet, urinating everywhere, watching pornographic movies and tabloids

The media and internet forums belong to city people, they make a powerful semiotic field, denouncing and demonizing some people, flattering and canonizing some other people. Today, whichever city people dare admit, “what is the matter with peasants! I am a peasant!” require bravery and the ability to examine their own morality.

Does disdaining the peasantry make them “foreign?”

The story of native and foreign, busy “changing” in order to enter the city.

In 1949, China’s urban population made up 10% of the total, nine in every ten were peasants; in 1980, China’s urban population did not pass 19%, four in every five were peasants, this kind of low growth was related to “go and work in the countryside or mountain areas” and other ideas contrary to the policy of urbanization. In 2008, China’s urban population achieved 45% of the total (international average is 50%).

In this way, the majority of today’s city people have come from the countryside during the past 60 years. The majority of people in cities wearing bright clothes, their predecessors were all peasants.

The interesting thing is that most of them do not recognize or purposefully forget this ancestry. This causes people to remember the story of “changes” in the early days of liberation. What was the first problem of individualism cadres entering cities wanted to address? It was “change,” country girls becoming city girls. A Passionate Life is the television version, the real life version’s Shi Guanrong should have a country wife. Most cadres did not date, their parents already arranged marriage in the countryside. This country girl does not wear makeup, is not highly cultured, but can have children to honor her parents. She cannot seem like the city girl type and is easily cynical toward her impoverished marital situation.

The story of “changing” endlessly repeats throughout history, the difference is only in the protagonist and version. Modern university students say “first year is native, second year is foreign, third year one does not know father and mother;” after opening up, youth educated in the countryside have a ballad, Small Virtue.

The girl in Small Virtue is beautiful and kind, with a thick and long braid, but she is not the match of other girls, she is flirtatious but cannot become the object of attention, “modernization” is dangerous. This “modernized” beautiful person still desires what is called “fashionable.” It is not only cadres, educated youth, college students, but every city person flirts with “fashionable girls,” everything breaks down. Those who represent “fashion” are the first to move forward, and then all advance with the times. And advancing with the times is not wrong, only one cannot forget who one is. Real life city people, they do not have much obligation and conscious guilt in the style of the singer Li Chunbo. This is not a meaningless argument.

Modernization will cut China’s traditional society into two halves: one half is the bright focus, the other is downcast with no light; one half progresses with each day, the other half is stagnant. If you are not lucky to be born into one half, I am sorry, you drew the lower lot. To be born as a peasant, you must spend more effort than city people to be able to live an honorable life. People in the world of country villages must expend double or more than double the effort to be able to surpass the graceful life of city people. The internet article I struggled 18 years just to drink a cup of coffee with you expresses the bitterness of peasant children. The chances for peasant children to achieve success like aerospace elite Zhai Zhigang are too few. The peasant woman who exclaims “mistresses are preferable, do not marry poor people,” is an accurate portrait. [3] Modernization enabled the media to construct an excessively strong language space, everything “foreign” could arbitrarily ravage everything “native.”

A Western saying goes, three generations produce nobility. Before three generations all are peasants, three generations is enough to produce a city person: pocketed pants, goggles, dyed hair, a cockeyed expression, it really is a new person. But in our hearts, we all are the offspring of peasants, we are all a species spawned from the earth of China.

Chinese society is in itself rural; Fei Xiaotong’s thesis from 80 years ago is still applicable today, it can still be applied to a society interlaced with native and foreign. When we hesitate to discard “native,” when we open our hearts to accept “foreign,” we examine our conscience and our manner of thinking is that behavior and customs are not that person, that guileless and intelligent peasant. Do you think that if you change your vest I do not know you?

ORIGINAL STORY:
都是农民！30年来城市与农民的纠葛

NOTES:
[1] The “three farming” problem refers to problems related to agriculture, the countryside, and the peasantry. In Chinese, these terms all begin with the character 农, indicating a relation to farming. China sees these three areas as essential to their national character, economic progress, social stabilization, and national might.

[2] 盲流 is “blind influx,” while 流氓 is “hooligan.”

[3] http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/1421865.shtml. An example of the many populist articles on the Chinese Internet that express the hardships and virtue of Chinese peasants.