Just got back from our trip to a rural village. Was a pretty busy couple of days, actually - Thursday morning we had our final exams, then got on a bus and headed out to a town about an hour or so northwest of Beijing. I think they are trying to turn it into a winter tourist destination - they had a bunch of ice sculptures, and even had an alpine ski hill, of sorts - not even Oak Hill size - more like Proctor Academy. It looked like the perfect place to learn to ski though - and that's exactly what the busloads of other tourists at the hotel seemed to be doing. The hotel was actually pretty nice - got to watch all 12 channels of CCTV (oddly enough CCTV4 came in on channel 5, CCTV5 came in on channel 6, and so on). My favorite was CCTV8 - it had "人人都爱雷蒙德" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" dubbed into Chinese. Hearing Raymond's dad speak flawless Mandarin is beyond strange. There was also beer and bowling, followed by our graduation ceremony, which in a word, was TOO LONG. We didn't get to sleep until after midnight, which was too late - I think I'm going to try and get to bed as early as I can tonight!
This morning we left the hotel around 10:00 and headed out to a rural village. Despite the fact that the mountains you see in the east from the village are the same mountains you see in the west from Beijing, you feel like you're worlds apart. Modernization came much later to the rural areas, but it's arriving very, very quickly. They didn't have telephones until twelve years ago, but now the entrance to the village is marked by a cell phone tower, which was just installed this year. Not everyone has a cell phone yet, but they do have satellite television - 28 channels, as opposed to the seven or eight they had before. Before the economic reforms, a family of four was considered well-off if they had an income of RMB 70-80 a year (about $6.00, if I'm doing the math correctly). The woman in whose house we had lunch today said her husband now makes RMB 4000-5000 a year, in addition to her salary as a Party official. It's not huge sums of money, but compared to before, it's a HUGE difference. The grandfather of the family told us that they used to have to subsist on corncobs and carrot stalks (not the carrots themselves - the carrots were taken away). His grandson was quick to interrupt him, "Yes, but nowadays we can eat whatever we want, whenever we want." There are still huge steps to be taken - no one in the village has a computer, but the grandson has been online. The family we visited doesn't have a car, but they want one - all told, there are ten cars in the village, all used in agricultural work. It was just a fascinating look into rural life - just the very fact that they have a glimpse into the world outside through the television, and can call family members living in other areas on the phone, is a revolutionary change from the past. As an aside - does anyone know of a television show from the 80's with the word "Coconut" in the title?
that is all for now. I'm moving into a hotel tomorrow, where I'm going to stay for the break between classes (before I move back into the dorm in Harbin). Hopefully will get to go see the Forbidden City on Sunday - stay tuned!
