Two Chinese Villages, Two Views of Rural Poverty

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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.

Stories here are often told in piecemeal fashion, with a wariness reserved for strangers, and not everyone is forthcoming. But walk into some of the homes, and the picture Ma Jinghai described becomes clearer.

Just south of Sale's only main intersection, near a fetid pool that children swim in and donkeys drink from, is a lonely-looking house with a dirt courtyard.

Inside, Ma Hasan, 34, said he was the poorest man in the village. Then he bragged that his wife was from Shaanxi province and college-educated.

"I cheated her here. I told her there's a very fun place . . . and we can have a lot of fun there," he said. That was six years ago, and for all he knows, he said, her parents might think she's dead.

"I have no problem meeting them," he said, "but what if they come and see this village and tell her she cannot stay in such a poor village? What will I do? I'm afraid to lose her."

His wife, once known as Liu Ting and now called Haliman, looks different from the rest of the villagers. She is Han Chinese, with plump cheeks and a nervous demeanor. She emerged for a visitor and waved but said nothing. Ma said his wife's journey to Sale began in a cheap restaurant in a Lanzhou market.

"She was working in a nearby shopping center as a salesperson," Ma said. "Three of my friends who were also friends of hers told me they wanted to hook me up with her. . . . They asked me how do I feel about this girl, do I want to marry her. I said yes. And then they asked her, and she said no."

So Ma promised a good time instead. Then his friends forced her into a car with them and Ma and drove the three hours back to Sale. "She resisted my advances at first for a week, and then it was done," he said.

Another villager, Ma Jun, 23, played down the number of women brought to Sale against their will. "We only have 10 girls who were cheated here," he said.

Ma Jun's family negotiated his wife's dowry down to $2,500, but that was still a steep price. Last year, working with a road repair crew, he earned only $625.

Her family gave the couple a new washing machine, one of only a few in the village. There were firecrackers, and 100 guests came out to celebrate.

At the wedding, a rare occasion in Sale, half the village came to watch the couple eat.

Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.