Stories from Rural China

Hey!

I miss you guys and can't wait to see you again.

This is a very long email so feel free to choose to read
whichever paragraphs you'd like. They're just stories I've experienced
that were significant in some way.

So I have returned after visiting two remote villages around here. I
have to say that the days went by incredibly slowly at first because
there's just so many details and obstacles one had to struggle with
and as a result, will remember.

I'm back in the small city, which I realized today was much bigger
than I thought. I was once again overwhelmed by the plentifulness of
all the goods here compared to the three little junk shops in the
villages where we stayed, where everything from fly swatters, bras,
and bottles of orange juice were discolored from age and covered with
a thick layer of dust from the lack of circulation of customers. It
was almost a culture shock this time to come back to the city. Three
of us girls got off the bus and just stood around dazed by all the
food, shops, people, and cars buzzing around us.

Our bus was even more crowded than last time. It has 25 seats total,
and is a small van. When it stopped for us to get on, the door barely
opened and people were almost falling out of it. The woman told me
there were no other buses coming and I stared in disbelief as I
squeezed into the litterbox of people. There were large heavy bags of
grains, dvd players, and tomatoes in the isle on which piled some
sitting people on which piled some standing people, on which I would
pile onto. Somehow, the three of us and our large bookbags disappeared
into the crevases of this bundle of bodies. We stood the whole way
down the winding bumpy road. Falling wasn't a problem – there was no
room to fall. The bus stopped suddenly twice. The first time was due
to a few large rocks that had fallen from the side of the mountain
onto the road. Some men got off and moved them and we drove on. The
second time, there was heavy traffic all of sudden. We were stopped
for inspection and everyone standing in the isle was told to squat and
duck down to hide. There were over 50 in the van and if the inspectors
saw more than the 25 it was supposed to hold, we would get fined. I
don't understand how we made it with the sea of bodies.

Since I last wrote, I met the people from the real rural areas. Many
live on distant hills that require a 2 hour treck to get to from the
center of the village. Children have to travel by foot to get to the
village center to go to elementary school; then take a 1 hour bus ride
to get to middle school, then another 1 hour ride on another bus from
there to get to high school in the small city. It's a big deal to make
it to high school, not to mention college. Most people I've
interviewed never completed elementary school. I met one girl who
graduated from college and I was really excited for her. I understood
after that how much people must envy those with education and how
lucky they feel for them. She was the first out of the over 50 I've
interviewed who made it to college. She studied math and is 23 years
old, like us. She will be teaching high school starting in the fall.
She looked at me and I looked at her with such fondness and mutual
admiration; I for her ability and fortune to rise out of the dirt
houses where her parents still live, and she possibly for my being
from where she has only heard about and suddenly there in her old home
in the mountains. We were so reluctant to part, despite only
exchanging a few words.

Hepatitis and TB are very common here. I met one man with hep B who
lived on a mountain. He was in his forty's. He was unmarried and had a
1.5 year old daughter (which was unusual), and lived with his parents.
He could no longer work because he's too weak and by the slow and
distant manner in which he spoke, it was no surprise. I asked what he
was most worried about with his illness, he said he doesn't know what
will happen to his daughter if he can't work, since his parents are
getting old. His dad was out working in the fields as we spoke. People
work until their bodies give out around here. I looked at his daughter
and imagined what would happen to her if her dad were gone. His
daughter was very pale and pretty. It was a blessing to see such pale
and tender skin after seeing the leather-like skin of the peasants,
browned and toughened by the sun in the fields. I understood then why
Chinese people treasured pale skin so much. I asked him what his
daughter's name was and he said she doesn't have one. I was shocked. I
asked what he called her, and he said 'girl.' 'Why don't you give him
a name?' he asked me in a somewhat desperate tone. I was speechless.
The fact that such a beautiful girl didn't have a name for so long
made life seem so arbitrary, so plain and generic. And to ask a
stranger to give her a name made it seem even more meaningless. Was
this what life was like here? Just another shot at survival? The man
asked me again to give his daughter a name when I stepped out the
door, and I realized he actually meant it. I told him his daughter
liked to smile a lot and if he runs out of ideas, he can call her 'le
le' which meant 'laughter.' It's my cousin's name. He wrote it out
with his finger on his hand and nodded, and we said goodbye. I don't
know what the little girl will be called when she grows up. I don't
know if I'll ever find out. I hoped for me that I could leave my mark
by having her named after my cousin, but I hoped for her that she
wouldn't be named in such a reckless manner by a complete stranger.

I've heard of many stories of mental illness since I last wrote.
Everyone in the villages knows of all the people with mental illness
in their village. The village minister told me that there were 7 in
the village I visited last. One died, four recovered with some
relapses once in a while, and 2 are still ill. All of the cases lasted
over 10 years. Most cases seem to be due to marital problems. The
marriages were all arranged until 10 years ago. They all sounded like
they began with anxiety or depression. One case many people mentioned
was a woman who always suspected her husband was cheating on her while
he was away in the city working, which I'm sure happens quite often
with so many migrant workers. She went crazy after a while under such
anxiety and paranoia. The first two years, people said she would go to
her mother's grave in a nearby village and cry for days on end. Later,
she would not eat for days and then eat raw meats and vegetables and
everything in sight. She's fine when her husband is not within sight
and can talk to people normally, but when her husband would walk by,
she would lose all energy and become withdrawn. It's been over 10
years and as far as the village minister knew, she never went for any
treatment until the past few months. She went to a mental hospital for
3 months and returned with no sign of improvement. I found this odd
since her husband was a doctor. I asked why her husband decided to
treat her all of sudden, but the village minister didn't know.

Another man went crazy after he his wife left him over 10 years ago.
He runs around at night all over the village and takes things from
stores and takes food off of people's tables without inhibition. Other
stories involve people cursing and hurting other people and ruining
crops for no reason. I've never heard of depression like this in the
states, but then again, I've never encountered depression that has
been left untreated for over 10 years. With so many severe cases in
one village, it's hard to imagine how many milder cases there are that
are still developing untreated. I can't imagine how bad depression
would have to be for it to manifest like this.

I've been impressed by the sensitivity of people to mental illness
around here. They all recognize the cases as depression, as
psychological problems, and they believe it's a serious form of
illness. It's not as I expected, that they don't take mental illness
seriously or that they don't understand how one's mood and
psychological well being can also turn ill. They also believe that
mental illness is treatable, so it's not that they don't have hope for
these people. They also recognize the importance of family and friends
in offering support to bring the mentally ill back to health. Their
limitation doesn't seem to be knowledge, but rather money and the
inability to change their situation. They can't afford psychiatrists
nor the medications available. They also have little choice but to
live at home and go on doing the farming that they do. In the states,
people could move away for a while, get a new job, get a divorce, etc.
But here, these changes are nearly impossible. There have been 5
divorces in that village. Before each one is official, the village
officials and all the friends and families try to help the couple make
amends but after the actual divorce, friends keep their distance from
the recent divorcees, in particular the women. One of the questions on
our suvey is 'does the mentally ill person face so much difficulty at
home that they can't live at home?' People answer: 'the difficulty is
great, but where would they live if not at home?' People here don't
choose their jobs. They work so they can eat. It's astonishing to me
every time when I ask for their yearly income and they respond "what
income?" They grow things and eat them, and if they stop growing
things, they wouldn't have anything to eat. I'm still getting over
this concept.

I somehow imagined peasants to be contently working, whistling and
singing as they work, and laughing and spirited and having a great
time. But I have heard little singing and whistling and there's no
time for idle talk and play. They work from 5am till the sun goes down
and in the winter they look for firewood or go to the city to work
construction or other odd jobs. They're constantly working. There's no
sense of the weekend or a vacation. They eat potatoes, noodles, and a
god-aweful tastine sour vegetable until they're bellies are full
because they know they have a lot of labor ahead of them. I imagined
them to be thirsty for knowledge, until I spoke with a man who told me
otherwise. I asked him what illnesses he would like to learn about
most, and he answered 'why would I want to learn about anything until
I get sick with it?' I got angry at first at his apathy, but then I
realized that this was probably the best information I've gotten all
afternoon. 'That's how we think here in the rural places,' he said,
'we don't care to learn things. We just want to get better after we
get sick.' I thought about it and I thought, of course they wouldn't.
I wouldn't either if I had to work so hard just to make it through
another year.

There's a lot of obstacles for all of here to achieve what we'd like
to do with the RMHC. People don't know how this health insurance
works, they don't know they have a say in how it runs, there's no one
outside of the one health official who is running and education people
about it around here, and there's no money to hire any others. It
looks so much bleaker than the beautifully structured power point flow
charts I saw back at my professor's seminar on this program.

I think we will finish our project far ahead of schedule. The three of
us Americans are all homesick and listen to rap and country to ease
our pain, not much different from what soldiers must have done when
they were away at war. We dream of McD sundaes, steak, driving on long
stretches of high ways with wind in our hair, sitting on a real couch,
going to see movies…Those of you in the states, think about what
you're doing right now and we'd probably be envious. It's not a matter
of money or material things. It's a matter of home.

Until next time,

Beverly

Ni Hao from China...

ni hao,

greetings! from rural China. sorry no pictures, but i promise they're
coming soon. i will try to describe as vividly as possible.

my first week in China i was in Beijing going to meetings with
professors and my college friends in fancy hotels and huge shopping
malls in beijing. that week i also interviewed a mother of a man who
has schizophrenia. she broke down as she spoke to me when she
mentioned the question she always asked herself: ' when will there be
help for people like my son and for families like us?' she really
feels that people suffering from mental illness are at the bottom of
society, with no way of competiting for jobs and a future and no
support from society. it's disappointing because the situation was as
bad as i expected.

i did hit up quite a few bars and clubs in beijing with my cousin and
his buddies on the summer Chinese language program at Beijing
University. apparently, they party a great deal. the clubs we went to
were populated greatly by foreign students and the rest were children
of wealthy politicians, businessmen, etc. i could tell by the audi's,
jaguars, and bmw's parked out in the lot. beijing's a fun city to
party all day and night in. hot pot is available 24 hours. the karaoke
place was the shit. it looked like a 5 star hotel fully equipped with
fountains in the lobby, an all you can eat buffet, and servants in
tuxedos who arrive literally at the push of a button.

after Beijing, I went to Xi An for a few days of training and the past
week and a half I've been living in a small town in the middle of
China called Tie Chang or metal factory. I'm in the county capital
today, which is the bigger city closest to Tie Chang. We took a day
trip here to take a shower...the first shower in about a week. we
rented out a hotel room for 2 hours and took showers. i made sure to
clean everything since i know i won't be doing anything remotely clost
to this for a while. it felt great to be clean. we also ordered some
meat dishes, which we could not find in the town. we've been eating
mainly noodles and rice for the past few weeks. after being in the
rural town, which had two small restaurants, one paved block, and a
few snack stores, this tiny city (with 3 or 4 major streets) seemed so
high tech and bustling. i was amazed to see paved sidewalks and people
in high heels. i can imagine what the villagers must feel when they
first step into this city.

It's been pretty nice living...well, the toilets here are like slits
in cement that you stoop over...basically permanent port-a potties.
it's actually more sanitary since nothing ever touches a toilet seat.
you just kind of hover. there's a communal sink in the corner of the
yard where they boil water with coal in the mornings. everyone has
these basins to hold water and we wash our hands, faces, and hair in
the basins or right under the faucet. we took our first "bath" the
other day. it was a joint effort. two girls held up a sheet to block
the view while the third one poured water on herself with the basin
and water from the faucet. it was quite an adventure. not having
running water down the hall makes getting ready for bed quite
complicated. after fetching a basin of water, one needs to do
everything in just the right order to minimize the number of times you
need to fetch water again.

quite often, we'd find strange looking bugs in our room. the first
night our room could have been a moth exhibit, with all different
sorts of moths of different colors and shapes. there are also giant
centipedes, beetles, and spiders of all sorts. last night we found a
giant moth...it had a wingspan of about the width of my hand and quite
a fat body. we failed to lure it out of the room so we just slept with
it. coexisting is something i've learned to accept with these
critters.

otherwise, the view is gorgeous here. we're surrounded by mountains,
often with mist hovering in the slopes, not much different than the
chinese painting i had in my room. i've taken many pictures that i
will put up when i get back. there's a river that runs by the complex
we're staying in that makes a constant rushing sound we often mistaken
for the sound of rain hitting the pavement. it's quite soothing and
every morning it makes me feel that life is good. many of the mountain
slopes are terraced and thickly growing with corn, and other fields of
crops. once in a while you'll see the farmers bent over tirelessly
working on the slopes. i can't imagine one family working so much land
on their own on such steep hills, and yet they've been doing this for
hundreds or thousands of years.

in America, i always imagine the people you find somewhere to have
setted the land not so long ago, and imagine what it was like for
them to break new grounds there. i would imagine people arriving from
all different places, there to do different things, and eventually
moving elsewhere when they grow up. but here, people were born here,
families were never really from anywhere else but here, and they fail
to see themselves being able to go much further than the county
capital. i asked the girl who works at the health office what she
would want to do if she could do anything she wanted. she said to find
a good job in the county capital like her brother who drives a taxi
there. i realize how much broader i've been taught to imagine. i see
so much more as possible than they do here.


there are seven of us students here: me, this girl from stanford, a
harvard undergrad, two med students from taiwan, and two grad students
from Xi An (big city in China). the grad students come to the rural
villages quite often for research on the rural mutual health care
program there and they know the area pretty well. they are like our
chaperones. the two med students from taiwan know are my age but know
so much more medicine than we do. they go right into medical school
from high school. one of them is pretty obsessive compulsive and
carries his own chopsticks, bags of medication, and his own syringe.
they're quite amusing.

the local dialect is a bit difficult to understand, but if i ask them
to repeat things, i'm usually able to figure it out. the word for
'child' is the equivalent of 'doll' and they use it no matter how old
the child is. i like how they can call a 40 year old son, 'my doll.'

people here are extremely friendly. the village chief has our fellow
students over for a huge feast almost every day. (amusing note: he
apparently also gets drunk at noon everyday and comes home to sleep it
off). when we arrive, people would by reflex start bringing out stools
for us to sit on and ask if we've eaten. a 13 year old boy i met who
was the son of the owners of the restaurant we eat at gave me a
picture he drew. he said it was the best one he's done. i asked if he
wanted to be an artist when he grew up. he said no. he wanted to
change some things in this village. i asked what things. he said all
the things that are behind the times. he said he wrote to yao ming
many times but he doesn't think the letters ever reached him. people
here are pretty into the NBA.

the children here are so mature for their ages. 10 year olds would
tend the shop and 5 year olds would serve as waitresses at
restaurants. the kids raise the younger kids. the look in their eyes
are even different. they look at things with the same scrutiny and
understanding as adults, not so much of the wonder and innocence i'm
used to seeing in schoolchildren. even toddlers seems to stroll around
on the streets like old men sometimes.

people move slower here and they sit in the same place everyday.
things are so regular. it's hard for me to imagine staying in such a
place for all of your life, not to mention all of your family's life,
generation after generation.

in terms of the health conditions, so many things go untreated here
because people have no money. there was a woman i met whose husband
has been bedridden for years but they gave up on treating him because
they ran out of money. during our interview with her, we heard a weak
moaning in the back room, which i assumed to be her husband. when they
can afford it, people here get IVs and injections when they get a bad
cold because they're so desperate to get well soon so they can go on
working in the fields. time is precious to them. some women who work
at a paper folding business work from 7am till 10pm with two 30min
breaks for meals during the day. their job is to fold yellow paper in
3 and tie a stack together with red string. the paper is for people to
burn in their worship at the temples.

as expected, they don't know much about mental illness here. they
assume mental illness to be "going crazy" or something like psychosis
is what they describe. surprisingly, however, most beleive they can be
brought back to normal with treatment, which is good. they seem to
have a great deal of faith in medical technology, but their faith in
the care that they themselves are able to obtain with their income is
another story. they're big fans of drugs. if they can afford it,
they'll buy drugs for everything, even the smallest cold. i was sick a
few days ago and the health official kept telling me to go and get an
IV. i really feared going to the town hospital knowing what little
training the doctors had.

most houses here are made of dirt and wood. the floor is dirt, the
walls are dirt, and the ceiling is dirt, with some wood crossbridging
wood planks. some of them are quite large but even the big ones are of
similar material. they sit mainly on small stools of hard wood that
hurts my butt after many interviews in a row. it's usually very dim
and i don't think there's many electric lights in these houses.
there's always the smell of mold or damp wood. no matter how poor the
household, there is always a decorative floral design made of stone at
the center of the top of the roof and the edges of the top rim is
always sloping upwards. there is always words of poetry written on
each side of the door, traditionally specifically written to protect
the house from harm and bring it good luck. these things are a given.
they seem to give the area such character and shed light on the
livelihood of the people despite their difficult and quiet lives.

for the next few days, the 7 of us and the health official will be
going to the most remote village in the township. we'll be living at
the village chief's house and sleeping 3 to a bed. no cell phone
reception there, no phone lines that call out internationally, no
stores to buy bottled water or other things, 1 hour drive from the
safety of our town. i'm not sure what it'll be like.

i wish i could send some pictures, but it's hard to do that at the
internet cafe.

i might be able to write again in a few weeks. but i do have email
access at the town via a phone line. it's quite amazing actually.
write back and let me know how you're doing!

bev