Two Chinese Villages, Two Views of Rural Poverty

Photos
China's Great Divider of the Sexes: Poverty
In the rural Chinese villages of Dacitan and Sale, poverty forces men and women to live separate lives.

Wearing mismatched silver earrings, a black velvet head covering and a shy smile, the 31-year-old mother of three said she rises each day at 6 a.m., cleans the floor and furniture, then cooks breakfast. Afterward, she weeds the wheat fields, then returns to cook lunch and feed the chickens. After more field work, she comes home at 6 p.m. to prepare dinner. After that, she and the children sit on a large hard bed, which also serves as the dining table, and she tells them stories or watches TV.

Her husband, Ma Yagubai, was among the men to arrive home recently. He had spent six months searching the Qinghai mountains for caterpillar fungus, a medicinal herb that is said to strengthen both lungs and sexual prowess and that is sold in pharmacies and airport gift shops for $200 an ounce.

He set down his belongings in the courtyard: a blanket, a sack of clothes and two empty cans of cooking oil. In a month, he said, he would be off again, this time to work at a construction site elsewhere in Gansu. Rural residents in the province make, on average, $247 a year. Last year, Ma Yagubai made only $250, so he didn't come home at all.

"It's not so difficult for me," he said. "This is my life."

His wife expressed a similar sense of indifference: "I don't miss him, I don't miss him at all," she said.

As Ma Yagubai spoke to visitors, his wife moved to the blackened shed that serves as a kitchen for her dirt-floor home. In seconds, she broke branches to stoke a fire, added oil to a large pot, sliced vegetables and potatoes, and gave her 5-year-old son a package of dried ramen noodles to chew on. She winced as she burned a finger in her haste. The next moment, she hoisted firewood onto her back to move it out of a light drizzle, then washed rice bowls with a swipe of her hand and a dash of boiled water before shooing chickens out of the courtyard for exercise.

Lunch was served in minutes -- steamed bread and a slightly spicy bowl of shredded cabbage and potatoes. It's the same for every meal. Her children "don't ask for anything else because that's all they know," she said. When she finally paused, she declined to join her family for the meal.

"Men eat first, women eat second," she said.

There is a Chinese proverb that applies to Ma Haijizhe: "Women hold up half the sky." But she has not heard of it. She has never attended school.

"It doesn't matter if I'm here or not," she said.

Her neighbor, Chen Maiya, is just as resigned to the status quo in the village. And, like Ma Haijizhe, she shows deference to the men.

"Although women do most of the work, it is the men who are in charge and who give the orders when they are here," she said. "If women were in charge, I don't know what would happen. Besides, it's impossible."