Thursday, December 06, 2007
Lament for the Past
"Ay yah" she sighed as our school bus passed into Suzhou's industrial park. "You know there is a saying that when the Suzhou harvest is bountiful, all China can eat rice. But now look at Suzhou! Just factories. What will China eat now?".
She was right of course - you only have to look at the old Chinese character for "Su" - The character for rice and the character for fish together under the grass radical. A crystal clear image a rice paddy - the rice stalks poking out above the water and the fish swimming underneath. Suzhou was indeed famed as the food basket of China. But it has all gone now. The industrious peasants have been herded into housing estates and offered menial labour jobs cleaning the roads of dirt fallen from construction trucks, planting the thousands of full-grown trees which line the new estate roads, making the colourful brick footpaths and weeding the hectares of green lawn which temporarility cover development sites. When they run out of work for them they simply tear down something and do it all over again.
"Well" I opined glibly. "Thats the price of progress! You cant be a fully modern country until everyone is working in a factory, and office or a shop. "Do we have to follow America?" she asked rhetorically? "It's not following America" I said, "Its just the way of a modern economy since the industrial revolution. Only when peasants come out of the fields and leave them to modern agricultural industry managers that you can generate wealth efficiently" I said labouring over the standard economic rationist platitudes.
"You know Alfred, in my town, the mayor has refused all attempts to set up industry. He won't permit any industrialization!" I was surprised of course and asked naively " So where does the money come from?". "Oh there isn't any" she replied "Our town is very poor. We are known as the place of ten thousand fields". This was said with no regret at all. Indeed a degree of satisfaction permiated it. My colleague is a party member, one who is still proud to hold that honour. Strange to think that Mao's ideal of rural socialism still lives on amongst the younger generatation here in modern China. People who believe it is better to be poor and happy than rich and discontent. Something I can't relate to at all. But then I'm an economic rationalist.
"Ay yah" she sighed as our school bus passed into Suzhou's industrial park. "You know there is a saying that when the Suzhou harvest is bountiful, all China can eat rice. But now look at Suzhou! Just factories. What will China eat now?".
She was right of course - you only have to look at the old Chinese character for "Su" - The character for rice and the character for fish together under the grass radical. A crystal clear image a rice paddy - the rice stalks poking out above the water and the fish swimming underneath. Suzhou was indeed famed as the food basket of China. But it has all gone now. The industrious peasants have been herded into housing estates and offered menial labour jobs cleaning the roads of dirt fallen from construction trucks, planting the thousands of full-grown trees which line the new estate roads, making the colourful brick footpaths and weeding the hectares of green lawn which temporarility cover development sites. When they run out of work for them they simply tear down something and do it all over again.
"Well" I opined glibly. "Thats the price of progress! You cant be a fully modern country until everyone is working in a factory, and office or a shop. "Do we have to follow America?" she asked rhetorically? "It's not following America" I said, "Its just the way of a modern economy since the industrial revolution. Only when peasants come out of the fields and leave them to modern agricultural industry managers that you can generate wealth efficiently" I said labouring over the standard economic rationist platitudes.
"You know Alfred, in my town, the mayor has refused all attempts to set up industry. He won't permit any industrialization!" I was surprised of course and asked naively " So where does the money come from?". "Oh there isn't any" she replied "Our town is very poor. We are known as the place of ten thousand fields". This was said with no regret at all. Indeed a degree of satisfaction permiated it. My colleague is a party member, one who is still proud to hold that honour. Strange to think that Mao's ideal of rural socialism still lives on amongst the younger generatation here in modern China. People who believe it is better to be poor and happy than rich and discontent. Something I can't relate to at all. But then I'm an economic rationalist.
