China-rain, how could you declare that 1.3 billion Chinese people were living very well? You have no right to do so. Without staying in several remote countrysides for scores of days, no body dares to say he truly understands China.

I was born at a remote farmland in Jiangxi Province. My hometown was traditionally rich enough due to the abundant natural resources. However, the current situation there is very sad.

Firstly, almost all the young labors try to find temporary hard labor far from their homes.

Can you understand what long time of toil is? It is simply extreme exploitation. The salary is so little that your income of a single day may be more than theirs of a whole year. Their situation is even worse than that because they often cannot get their salary by the end of a year. In our culture, all people should go home to unite with their family at the end of a year. Having not received one's salary, how could he return to his parents, his wife and his kids? Can you understand his sadness? Please don't tell me it's because they are poorly educated. It is our nation that should be responsible for their poor education. I have three brothers living in this way. They do years of toil here and there and have no idea of where to go next year. Right after the Spring Festival, they will join the people flowing out of their hometown and spreading aimlessly into every corner of this country. They are looked down by most of city citizens and are even treated like wild animals.

Several years ago, I had a very sad experience at the Wuchang Railway Station when returning back to Beijing after Spring Festival. Tremendous amount of young farmers were standing in long lines in the plaza to wait for boarding trains to some other cities to find jobs. All of a sudden, one man in uniform whipped a farmer at his head just because, to me, he was not standing properly in the line. You can see how arrogant and savage the policeman was! I am sure he even never minded if it was possible that the whipped and his fellows would pour their anger on him. To him, farmers were the targets to bully and oppress. In practice, certain people living in city like him have never counted farmers as human beings. At the scene, I cannot help thinking of my brothers. If the policeman could whip farmers here, my brothers might be beaten somewhere else. I hate I was so short and weak. What I did was shouting at the evil among the people.

Another story. In 1996, one of my young brothers took train to Beijing to accompany my mother back home. He transferred at the above train station and made a call of less then five minutes to my Beijing home at a public telephone studio. However, he was forced to pay RMB 50, although RMB 5 was enough!

See, farmers cannot get rid of both discrimination and oppression wherever they go. I have experienced many of such kind of sad stories, and what I heard are even more. Have you never heard some of them? Then, what is your attitude? Are you ready to make joke at either their weakness and poverty or their birth in the villages?

Those like you who grown up in city and are spoiled by the improper love of your parents and grandparents, and especially those who themselves and/or whose parents are corrupt officials, should be grateful to farmers since it is farmers who provide you with food and clothes. Instead, you neither know what thanksgiving means nor have gratitude. (If you don't feel guilty, please answer my questions: who pays your salary? why have you shown up here and there on the Internet all day long for months? If you truly love China as you claimed, you must stop right now to do something helpful for the needy people. Say a lot and do nothing. Who do you think you are? Are you a hero, defeating your enemies by strict logic and outstanding eloquence? You are wrong! You are originally so poor a guy that you waste not only your time but also the social resources.)

Secondly, let me tell something about my parents. At 68 and 65 separately, they are not too old. However, people in city at their age have old-age pension, although it might be far from enough. In fact, the government has responsibility to support them for the rest of their life simply because they have worked years for the nation and everyone will become old. Then, how about my parents and their fellows? What offerings from the government are they enjoying? None! In the past scores of years from 1949, our government carried out national policy, which on purpose increased the price of industrial products and decreased that of farm products, to accumulate national wealth. Many people in city nowadays agree that farmers have sacrificed a lot. Now, after losing ability to work, they obtain no support from the government. Instead, the government charges them tax for their existence! My parents have to pay each over RMB 160 annually.

Is it fair and reasonable? It is ridiculous!

Of course, I needn't mention how about if the old farmers get sick. What then they need to do is tolerate the normal sickness and wait for death with serious one. To farmers in China, what on earth are their human rights? Do they have human rights? That is why I keep talking to people in city that, besides clothes are made from chemical fiber (as we can see, this does not mean good progress), some families may own radio, TV and somewhat, the life-style of most farmers are basically the same as their ancestors of 500 or even 1000 years ago. When I have to mention this, my heart suffers a lot. Can you understand what I said? Are you ready as before to rebut ignorantly and declare irrationally that my words are simply false and against our nation? If you want to rebut, please stay in some countryside for several days. You are certainly supposed to work with the farmers under baking sunshine in the wild field instead of enjoying the pastoral landscape. Otherwise, you are not qualified to talk to me, representing farmers.

Thirdly, it is another story of my family. In the countryside, while no physical examination is required for marrying couples, vaccination of the kids asks for expensive cost. I don't want to blame citizens in city. In practice, I myself took things like these for granted after leaving my birthplace for some 20 years. Therefore, I didn't realize that I had to remind one of my young brothers to do physical examination before he married and to have his son vaccinated after he was born. Consequently, my brother married without physical examination, and like most other young parents in near villages, they did not let their child accept vaccination because of the expensive price.

According to what I know, free vaccination is the common wealth of all kids in the world. In addition, our government has been accepting financial support for it from the World Health Organization (WHO). Then, why does it become so expensive that parents are not able to afford when it comes to rural areas in China? I know you are ready to say "NO". Please realize that to condemn others easily for so-called political motivation is a big problem for your health. It's mental suffering, more serious than any physical injury. Please don't doubt what I said. Let's all examine our conscience!

As a result, in 1998, the young spouses found that their child suddenly got serious sick immediately before he was one-year old. Because the local hospitals failed to cure him, they brought him to Beijing without delay. (Please notice that that they went to Beijing was not because they had enough money, but because they took me as their spiritual and financial support.) Once the detailed examinations were finished, my God, it turned out to be that my sister-in-law was found to carry hepatitis B (HB) virus from her birth and passed it to her innocent child. What a poor pair of mother and child? What a broken family? I cried many times in my heart.

Is it the mistake of individuals? No, it was caused totally by the administration and all its malfeasant and corrupt officials. Each child does not belong to the individual family. He belongs to the society. Therefore, his pain is not simply of him. It's also of the society, briefly, of all of us!

I once had an idea to report this case to the central government, the Ministry of Health and the local government. But I finally gave up because I didn't think that the government has no idea of the health situation in the rural areas. However, I cannot keep calm by my conscience. Indeed, being among the very few doctors coming from peasant families, I am considered to be so-called elite by all my old neighbors. If I give up any effort to represent them to call for attention and help, who will do them favor? As weak as I am, I am grateful to them and have a loving heart toward them. Although impossible to publish newspaper for the farmers, I can open a website in the near future to exhibit their hard life, their sufferings and their worries, and stand behind them in the struggle for their welfare. May all friends from the peasant families and all other righteous friends go together to fight out a bright future for the farmers!

Fourthly, it's still a sad story of my family. You may wonder why so many unfortunate things have happened to my family. I cannot give you the very reasons. But I do know that both my parents are honest and trustworthy peasants. They have made their whole life in the limited lands and done nothing deliberately harmful to others.

In 1988, my third young brother committed suicide at home. He finished his three years of apprentice as a carpenter after high school. Unfortunately, there were so many carpenters in rural areas that, without close relation with officials in the local administration, my father could find few jobs for him. More sadly, my brother was very bad at talking and making friends. In those days, it was far from as popular as today that the young farmers went out to find jobs in the cities. His situation must have been very sorrowful after year and year without professional work. Thus, I encouraged him to learn how to communicate with others and make more friends. I had never thought that he would end his life. When receiving the sad news that he left us forever, I was being a volunteer working in a remote rural county to help improve the education system of the local government. What he suffered, what my old parents suffered because of his death, and what I suffered as the eldest brother because of my inability to help him, all of these, can you understand? Was he more stupid than you? Didn't he know how to love his life as well as you do?

After all, it is just because he was born in a peasant family and therefore he was doomed to be a farmer, which in China simply means suffering. It is because one's fortune depends on social relations in this abnormally unfair society, and they were what he lacked. It is simply because he was overcome by despair.

Fifthly, let me give you one more story of my family. It was about early 1994 when my father bought rice seeds in Hubei. My parents worked hard for almost half a year and invested money on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other utilities. All the final harvest was nothing but sorrow. It turned out to be that the seed center sold the wrong seeds to him and other twenty families. My parents did not want to bother me with such a thing until two years later. My father and the others went to the seed center many times to ask for repayment, and each time they always got lies and prevarications. Finally, the seed center simply disappeared. When querying the local government, they were simply given a lie that the men involved had been put into jail. (Without plaintiff, where comes from the accused? I am sure the local government had some close benefit relationship with the seed center. It's a very popular phenomenon in nowadays China.) Consequently, they paid more time and even did not win any apology, not to mention any money!

How do you think of this event? Are you prepared to make a frivolous joke at the farmers? Did they deserve because they had no knowledge of law and thus the law could not protect them? Listen to me. I have a friend studying law for years at some university. He complained frequently that 95% of the law in China is made to serve the citizens in city! For farmers, there has never been any kind of peasant association since1949. The CCP government has blocked up all channels for farmers to express their wills.

Sixthly, let me show you the issue of compulsory education. We should acknowledge that it's rather popular for young kids to discontinue their studies at fourth or fifth grade in many rural areas national wide. In early this year, the bombing of Fanglin Elementary School in Jiangxi may be a critical signal of the coming educational crisis in the rural areas. Two years ago, parents had to pay tuition and miscellaneous fees at about RMB 300 annually for each pupil in my hometown. For citizens living in Beijing and other metropolises, this may be a very little amount since they may receive hundreds or thousands of RMB as extra bonus for each holiday, like New Year's Day, Labor Day, and National Day et al. However, how about farmers at my hometown? Take my neighbor as an example. He was born in 1962. All the cash income in a whole year is about RMB 700! Set aside amount for necessary product materials, what left is very little. In such an awkward situation, it would be a miracle if he could afford the tuition for his children.

For rural families in a little bit better financial situation, it becomes more and more difficult to support their children in their education in high school, without saying in college. Because it becomes more and more difficult to seek a job for college graduates from families without strong social relationships to government officials, many rural families tend to painfully have their children give up education at their early age. There are other families. If they can choose to send their children to either high school or middle-rank normal school, of which both are equivalent and the latter guarantees that the graduates are qualified to be teachers in rural areas and small towns, the parents prefer the later in normal just because it will save time and money. Consequently, all the factors reduce greatly the competition for children in city to enter colleges, which benefits unfairly those in city but naturally wastes the talent resources of the society.

However, ridiculously, the ratio of young kids' attending school in the rural areas is still very high in this awkward situation and fully satisfies the standard set by the central government. It's about in 1993 when one of my cousins aborted her study in middle school at 14-years old. But, her name was still on the enrollment list of her school one year after she went to Shenzhen to earn her living. It's so unbelievable. Why? It is said that the local officials forced parents of students like her to have their children enrolled in certain school at half price so as to maintain an ideal enrollment level, which, otherwise, would cause trouble for the officials' survival and promotion. As for whether the students attended school or not, it really didn't matter to the officials. As a result, my cousin's mother spent the money to buy her a virtual status of a full-time student, and she of course became a qualified graduate eventually.

Finally, let me talk about myself. I should say that, as an individual, I had been lucky enough. It sounds that I was just born at the right time, not so early and not so late. Immediately after Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, my father warned me in a letter that I should stop opposing Zedong Mao and Xiaoping Deng. Instead, I should be grateful to both dictators. In his practical opinion, I would have been a farmer leading a sorrowful life without either Mao's so-called Great Cultural Revolution or Deng's Open and Reform. It is true that, if Mao's decades had carried out present policy, my family would not have been able to afford even my elementary education, which is so popular in current rural areas. It's also true that, if Deng had not restored the college entrance exams in 1977, I would not have had opportunity to win my right to go to university. However, does college study mean happiness for boys and girls from the poor rural areas? No, it does not desperately! Just think a while of the career of those college classmates of yours, and you will agree with me.

Each time I visited my hometown in recent years, I could not help thinking about the fortune of the children there. In normal, they are doomed to lead a very difficult life if they fail to go to university. Even if they can finish higher education, their life ahead is still hard. Why? It's simply because they are about to compete unfairly with those coming from the city. Perhaps, many years later after they own a job, their economic condition is still far below their colleagues of their age. They continue to suffer financial pressures since, in addition to supporting their own family, they have to take the extra responsibility to support both his parents and siblings. They dare not, or exactly, they are not allowed, to take any risk of dramatic changes in their life. In fact, they must abandon any ambitious plan even if it is of great help to their career. For example, are there college classmates of you going abroad for further study? How many of them coming from rural areas? Do you think those from the peasant families are not as smart as you? (If you agree that they are singled out from a much larger population, and they must have been very talent in accordance to the poor educational conditions they had to face before, then, I have to tell you that, generally, they have quite a few great personalities you have not, such as, honesty, tolerance, persistence, loyalty and so on.)

In the first four years of my marriage, I got no stable place to live. We even lived in the office for quite a long time. Can you imagine the scene? I am not kidding. We moved in each night after colleagues finished their night shift and moved out in the early morning of next day to restore the office to an office. Comparatively, you will never have such experience. If you and your parents are working in the same city, anyway, you will have a place to live. If not, you may rent an apartment because of your economic condition. Indeed, I did not feel free from financial pressure until I had worked for some fourteen years and had been an associate professor for about five years. In other words, I used fourteen years to fulfill the achievement you enjoyed right after you graduated from university! It's your right to deride me as incompetent at this. However, I will never beg for your sympathy. Instead, I am proud of myself because my career had been so outstanding among my colleagues. Briefly, I really hope that everyone should not talk to others arrogantly in the way a teacher taught his students in ancient China. We say only what we really know. We should not cynically pretend to be a master wherever we go, and should not utter the falsehood shamelessly as if others are all idiots.

At last, I would like to declare that I have put all my conscience and dignity on the above words of mine in the hope that, without firsthand experience of the hard life in rural areas, no body has the right to speak in the name of the farmers, over 80% of our population. There is a famous saying in America that everyone has a right to his opinion, but he has no right to be wrong in his facts. I know that so many folks calling themselves patriots will angrily put on me a hat, "worshipping and having blind faith in the States". However, I would like to tell you that, within fifteen years of my teaching career, I had taught thousands of students and post-graduate students, and trained over five thousands of advanced IT specialists for our nation. I was once invited to do research work in former Federal Germany, but finally I voluntarily gave up since the remote rural areas in Shandong needed me to teach the students there. I believe that a citizen to a nation is just like a child to his parents. Therefore, the more education you accept, the more responsibilities you should take. President Kennedy's words, "Ask not what this country can do for you. Ask what you can do for this country", is my motto forever.

How about you, CHINA-RAINs? Are you the welcome rain after a long drought in north China, the damned rainstorm when flood is causing disaster to human beings, or excessive little rains like that seen in south China in April each year which does not hurt people but makes life a little bit boring?

nongmin_china@hotmail.com

On July 12, 2001

Attached is china-rain's message published at wenxuecity.com on July 10, 2001

So much you have seen and heard does not help

Do you know how many people there are in China? Do you know how many unfair things are happening each day? Do you want to attribute all these to (President) Zemin Jiang and Chinese Communist Party? If he listened to you about your stories all day long, Zemin Jiang would be able to do nothing. There were farmers who beat and killed tax collectors. Have you heard such kind of news?

Do you know how many people there are in the States? Do you know how many unfair things are happening each day? Just imagine that that poor bare-handed black man was shot forty-one bullets. How do you feel?

What is your so-called democracy? Is it that you endlessly take your individual events to make noise at the ears of the 1.3 billion Chinese people who are living very well? Who do you think you are? If you truly worry about our nation and our people, I am sure you would fail to make things better even if you were the God. Stop taking things happened in China to boast how noble you are. If you are a hero, try to expose the ugly aspects of American people. Let me tell you that there are people being killed by American policemen almost everyday. Do you believe or not? There are American policemen being killed by civilian everyday, too. Not to mention the whole nation, just take New York as an example. If you doubt my word, please conduct your own investigation.

As for present China, do you mean you are well informed? It's simply ridiculous. In practice, you even have no idea about the city where you live. Go outside and take a walk. Don't stay on the Internet 24x7 hours!

July 10, 2001

(Click to read Chinese version)