zaiShanghai

My cousin's cousin was get­ting mar­ried, so the whole fam­ily went to Ningdu to cel­e­brate. For me this meant a National Holiday trip last fall deep into the Jiangxi Province coun­try­side. The pop­u­la­tion of the prefecture-level city of Ganzhou reaches upwards of 9 mil­lion, and the city is com­posed of a num­ber of divi­sions, includ­ing one dis­trict (区), two county-level cities (市), and 15 coun­ties (县), one of which is Ningdu. Outside of the denser cities and towns, the region con­sists of strange inter­mit­tent patches of rural and urban­ized areas. I hadn't been to rural China yet, and all along the way I had plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to reflect on the rapid–but uneven–development that is trans­form­ing the coun­try and its peo­ple.

On my way to Ganzhou, I sat across from two men who con­versed with each other about the dif­fi­culty of mak­ing a liv­ing. One was an elec­tri­cal engi­neer, his over­head bag filled with light bulbs and elec­tri­cal parts. The other man could be clas­si­fied as one of the "流动人口," or "float­ing pop­u­la­tion," refer­ring to the mil­lions of migrant work­ers who leave their home­towns to find bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties in China's boom­ing cities.

The migrant did not look much older than me, per­haps in his early to mid-twenties, but he talked about his baby daugh­ter and bemoaned the finan­cial bur­den that rais­ing chil­dren presents. The engi­neer expressed sur­prise that he already had chil­dren, but in agree­ment, he talked about how he had been unable to sleep well at night because of finan­cial wor­ries. He con­ceded with a sigh that he would just have to trudge on, day by day.

The migrant had high cheek­bones and a tanned com­plex­ion, with sinews of mus­cle clearly vis­i­ble in his arms despite his thin frame. He got on the train at Shanghai at the same time as I did, and was plan­ning to take a bus from Ganzhou to his home­town to see his fam­ily. He said that the rail sys­tem doesn't extend to his town, though recent years have seen huge devel­op­ments in train travel in China.

Later, dur­ing a three-hour car ride to my aunt and uncle's house to Ningdu, Iwatched rows of shop­ping malls illu­mi­nated with neon lights trans­form into dilap­i­dated and vacant hous­ing with no win­dows installed. Amid auto­mo­biles and copi­ous num­bers of elec­tric scoot­ers, cat­tle were led by a rope rein along the road­side. Scruffy, tanned chil­dren wear­ing rub­ber san­dals walked home from school in clus­ters, and old women were bent under large bushels of veg­eta­bles slung over their backs.

The young bride-to-be is an English teacher, but I didn't get to hear her speak English dur­ing our stay. When we were intro­duced, she seemed anx­ious to get away from me, unwill­ing even to respond to my "Ni hao." I was later told that she was ner­vous because I'm American. Perhaps she did not want to be pres­sured to use her English on a native speaker. All of our sub­se­quent con­ver­sa­tions were in Mandarin.

My fam­ily and I were put up in Ningdu Hotel, which was com­fort­able enough—although the entire build­ing smelled strongly of cig­a­rette smoke, and my shower was miss­ing a door. We didn't see the actual wed­ding cer­e­mony, but we attended the recep­tion lunch. The restau­rant was entirely draped in red (an aus­pi­cious color in Chinese cul­ture) and very lively, with fire­works adding to the cacoph­ony mid­way through the meal. Fireworks serve to scare the bride's ances­tral ghosts away before she joins the groom's fam­ily, which has its own fam­ily ghosts, to pre­vent con­flict between the two. Ningdu is known for its meat­balls and fish balls, and we were treated to two large bowls of each dur­ing the lunch.

While shop­ping around Ningdu in the evening, I pur­chased a wrist bag from a lady ven­dor, and we struck up a con­ver­sa­tion. She seemed awestruck when I described my back­ground grow­ing up in the U.S. and my majors at NYU. She seemed con­vinced that my future prospects were des­tined to be very bright (some­thing I wish I could be equally con­fi­dent in) and asked me some minor com­par­a­tive ques­tions about our two coun­tries, such as what time American high school stu­dents go to class. She was intrigued by my "global" major and men­tioned that she knew many Chinese nation­als went over­seas to study abroad, but not that for­eign stu­dents came to China.  Our con­ver­sa­tion ended when I saw her col­league had brought her food; I urged her to eat her din­ner before it went cold.

Ganzhou is beau­ti­ful. We climbed a peak right out­side of Ningdu, and the view from the top was impres­sive. Apparently the hill was used by the Kuomintang, per­haps dur­ing the Chinese Civil War. We saw two KMT mil­i­tary bunkers. The ascent started off with stairs, which reminded me vaguely of my expe­ri­ence climb­ing the Great Wall a month ear­lier. Eventually though, in order to con­tinue the climb, we had to climb a sec­tion that was nearly ver­ti­cal. Carved steps and grooved hand­holds had been cut into the stone, and in some places, metal bars had been installed for sup­port. Much of the climb was in between two rock cliffs, so the inside was nar­row and dark. Progress was slow, since peo­ple can only ascend one at a time, and move­ment some­times got con­gested. There were no har­nesses and no super­vi­sors. The climb was thrilling and fun, and I'd love to do it again some­time.

Entrance tick­ets to the park where the peak was located cost 60 yuan per per­son. After we descended the moun­tain, a friend told us that the peo­ple behind us in line—who spoke Ningdu dialect—only paid 30 yuan. When he was a child, the friend said, the local chil­dren were allowed to climb the moun­tains around his town for free. There is def­i­nitely man­i­fest pref­er­en­tial treat­ment towards peo­ple who share sim­i­lar back­grounds.

My aunt and uncle's home in Ganzhou is located within a res­i­den­tial com­plex that is acces­si­ble from a small alley­way entrance from a com­mer­cial street. The build­ings are stark and con­crete, with no paint or dec­o­ra­tive adorn­ments. Electric wires stretch across the walls and from build­ing to build­ing, giv­ing the eerie impres­sion of veins and capillaries—an indus­trial cir­cu­la­tory sys­tem. Rusty barred win­dows cre­ate the effect of a prison, but even they serve a prac­ti­cal pur­pose: fam­i­lies hang their laun­dry out to dry on them. Multicolored pieces of bro­ken glass were embed­ded into the tops of the con­crete fences, with the pointed sides up.

Inside, the home feels warm and com­fort­able. No mod­ern ameni­ties are lack­ing; there is run­ning water, elec­tric­ity, a microwave, a stove, and air con­di­tion­ing (although while we were there, the weather was fair enough that it was not nec­es­sary to use it).  On the shelf sit stat­ues of Buddha and Guanyin, on the tele­vi­sion is a cal­en­dar with pic­tures of my cousin's daugh­ter (their grand­daugh­ter), and the walls are dec­o­rated with framed pic­tures and Chinese char­ac­ters promis­ing hap­pi­ness and pros­per­ity.

We spent the time play­ing mahjong, chat­ting, and bond­ing. I made dumplings with my cousin's wife (嫂子) and another rel­a­tive. I had an authen­tic "农村" (coun­try­side) breakfast—noodles with mini-meatballs and fried egg for four peo­ple and one por­tion to go with a 油条 (fried dough stick) cost 18 yuan, approx­i­mately $3. Before I left Ganzhou, I had a large bowl of won­ton soup in a nearby restau­rant for 3 yuan, or about $.50. Shanghai prices have never felt so expen­sive.

On my train ride back, I found myself sur­rounded by a num­ber of col­lege grad­u­ates and one girl, who was attend­ing col­lege in Ganzhou and was two years younger than me. They were sur­prised when I revealed myself to be an American, and we com­pared the two coun­tries' school sys­tems. One of the trav­el­ers was born in Gansu in 1989 and grad­u­ated in 2009. I'm still per­plexed as to how he was one year older than me but grad­u­ated six years ear­lier. He asked me how many stu­dents, on aver­age, were in a class in my high school. I told him about 20 or so, at which he chuck­led. He said that the aver­age in China was almost three times that amount; a nor­mal high school class­room would con­sist of about 50 stu­dents.

The girl who sat across from me was from Fujian Province. She is study­ing at Gannan Normal University (赣南师范学院) in Ganzhou and aspires to become an ele­men­tary school teacher. She wanted to land a job in Shanghai after grad­u­a­tion. At one point dur­ing the ride, she asked me if I had voted before. I nat­u­rally said yes, to which she responded with an awed look and envi­ous sigh. Oh, right. They don't elect their lead­ers in China. I nearly for­got. The man who sat next to her had already grad­u­ated, also from a nor­mal (师范) uni­ver­sity, and had recently found a job teach­ing in a mid­dle school. The man who sat beside me was also from Fujian. He grad­u­ated in 2006 and is work­ing in the con­struc­tion field. When asked about my career plans, I told them I wanted to work in diplo­macy, pos­si­bly with the United Nations. My response was met with uproar­i­ous laugh­ter. Taken aback, I asked why they were so amused, and the girl explained, in between gig­gles, that most Chinese would never dare to be so ambi­tious. "We work to put rice on the table," said the man beside me.

My ide­al­ism was anom­alous among my travel com­pan­ions, who think in terms of prag­ma­tism and util­ity. And yet we were all approx­i­mately the same age, sup­pos­edly still too young to be dis­il­lu­sioned and jaded by the bit­ter­ness of the world. There seemed to be a cul­tural divide between us, cre­ated by eco­nom­ics and his­tory. I come from a soci­ety that never suf­fered through a Cultural Revolution, famines in a suf­fo­cat­ing Maoist state, or impe­ri­al­ist avarice. I hail from a coun­try founded in the ideals of the American Dream, where we like to believe that any­thing can be accom­plished if you dream big enough. Perhaps mine is noth­ing more than a pipe dream. Perhaps I'm des­tin­ing myself for future dis­en­chant­ment. But I don't feel like I'm more ide­al­is­tic than the Chinese gov­ern­ment, who is attempt­ing an eco­nomic mir­a­cle and under­tak­ing some of the biggest and most expen­sive projects in the world. In today's soci­ety, what can you deem "real­is­tic" any­way?