Under the Heavy Sun: the Working Women of Bijie’s Villages

Posted on 2016-08-09 by wrchina

Photos by ERIC Li YuanlongTranslator by Sandra Lam

Even in late September,’s temperature could rise to more than 35 Celsius. Walking under the sun made one feel as if hair on fire. Sweat leaks out of one’s body like out of a leaking pipe.

A city dweller might have dreamed of staying indoors with modern air conditioning, far away from manual labor in the fields. However, villagers, especially those from the poorer families could not avoid the job. Women, as well as men, from grandmothers with sixty or seventy years to young newlyweds, had to till the soil or carry heavy loads through the mountains.

On the 20^th and 21^st of September, I travelled through Haizijie, Heguantun and Zhuchang districts of Bijie. I took many pictures of women doing hard labor in the rural areas. The purpose of these photos is not to elicit instant “respect” of these women, because for them, mere respect is far from enough.

Dusk on the mountainside, this Miao woman in traditional dress leads two horses. A baby sleeps on her back, probably her grandson. She’s hurrying home. Feeding the family and their livestock are both her responsibilities.

This Miao woman is using a tool unique to this region of Guizhou Hill Country to separate the bean crop. After sowing, tending and harvest, to feed her family tofu, she would still have many more steps to go. The soy needs to be ground into powder, boiled into a milk and coagulant added.

She walks in broad and rapid strides. What urgent housework awaits her that she is walking so fast while carrying so much?

In the old days, women were prohibited in building repair because they brought bad luck with them. After “liberation”, they work like men in the building trade, even carrying heavy bricks up the scaffolds.

There are no machines, only handheld tools. Work here has not changed substantially from six or seven decades ago.

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Six road maintenance workers with temporary employment, only one man among them.

Perhaps her sons and daughters have all migrated to better jobs, this old woman has become the main workforce for her fields. From dawn to dusk, who knows how many thousand pounds of corn she would have to carry.

I do not know where they were from, where they were going, whether they were from the same family or only neighbors. But I do know that this was their daily work. City residents could think of retirement. Villagers who could walk would always have to work.

This style of large basket is usually associated with men. To get by, she has no choice but to carry them also. Perhaps there is some truth in the blustery propaganda that “women could carry half the sky”.

A grandmother of over seventy could not go into the fields anymore. She nonetheless works by stringing hot pepper. The bright red strands look more like works of art from an experienced hand.

When I was sent here during the Cultural Revolution, she was still a baby on her mother’s back. Now she’s a mother, and carries packages weighing over 120 pounds every day with heavy steps. Her parents are still poor. She could but shoulder the heavy burden of a family’s livelihood.

This elderly woman is alone. Her husband is long gone. None of her three children care about her.

Living in an old wooden house, “I’ll only eat as much as I can carry.

When I die, just bury me in my home.” She has no hope or illusions in anybody.
Tap water is the best reward during this brief break during back-breaking work in the brick factory.

Her hair looked as disheveled as the straw she is carrying. But the most difficult face. Those were a pair of eyes that have given up all hope in life.

Sweat, heat, sun. This Miao woman and her husband carry tons bricks every day. Her parents were carrying bricks to the truck, the baby sleeps under the bridge, oblivious to the flies on her face and behind. She is staying quiet amidst her parents’ back breaking work.

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The men do the “technical” work of shaping the bricks. Women have to carry the raw material and formed bricks, by far the heavier half of manual labor.

Her canvass shoes are soaked. The field was muddy. To wealthy urbanites, “rest” means a cold drink and air conditioning. She takes a rest by leaning on her rake for several moments.

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Guanyin Bridge: Baby Girl Sees the World

Posted on 2014-10-01 by wrchina

Author：WRIC Volunteer Li, Yuanlong Translator: WRIC Volunteer Harry Zhang

On the afternoon of October 28，2012, I rode my motorcycle to Bijie city’s Guanyin bridge to offer to register and photograph a group of mountain village girls.

There are two things worth mentioning. The first comparison is upsetting. This is an Miao clan composed village, almost no one has a home, and they are all poor. Several recipients had baby girls and are receiving aid under the guidance of the local villagers. I registered and photographed a total of five girls and three pregnant women. Although I had told that same group of mountain village girls about the support plan, only three baby girls and three pregnant women had came.

Why did the registration had two less baby girls?

In my original registration of this, there is a baby called Yang Zhong Yun. When she was a newborn, I had registered and taken a photo of her. Shun Kou Wen cried: is it a girl? Surprisingly, the answer was yes, this baby is a girl. Everyone rushes to help the baby’s mother. Huang Yan intercede: We know that you are registered with the baby, however, the situation is too special for the Huang family, I hope you can assist her child with applying for a little subsidy.

Since Yang Zhong Yun’s birth, more people are worried, he hasn’t said a word. Yang Zhong Yun’s head seemed large, thin skinny, and looked very distressing. Huang Yan teared up as she opened the parcel of Yang Zhong Yun’s quilt. It allowed me to see how his body emaciated, and how disabled his hands and feet were. However, I really did not have the courage to see his disabled body, I had stopped them. I said,”you know, Chinese girls assistance program is only funding poor, rural baby girls and Yang Zhong Yun is a boy who is not eligible for funding. All I can do is to share your story and ask others for help”.

After I finished registering and taking a photograph of Ms. Wang’s child, I asked for Ms. Wang’s telephone number. Her uncle came in and look at me weirdly and then spoke to Ms. Wang in a different dialect. Because it began to seem as if they were beginning to suspect foul play, I showed them my business card along with a copy of the rural girl’s paper that stated her Chinese assistance planning purposes. After I also verbally explained to him the purpose in registering the child, I asked him again for Ms. Wang’s telephone number. At first Ms. Wang hesitated, but then she said that she did not have a telephone. I then declined to help them. All they had to do was tell me their phone number, but it seems that her uncle had said something to Ms. Wang that made her change her mind. Since she cannot trust me, there is no purpose in trying to register her child and to help them.

So, I said: “If you have concerns, forget about it, don’t force yourself to cooperate. Then again, next month or when you can believe me, I will help you out.”

Peng Qinglan’s Road Home ( Part 3 )

Posted on 2010-12-01 by wrchina

WRIC’s Yao Cheng All photos by WRIC November 31，2010

Peng Qinglan’s Putian house was located in a village on the edge of the city. Of her adopted parents and seven siblings, most traveled to other cities for work. When I visited only a brother and a sister-in-law were present. Families of this size were quite common in this village. People here did not have a tradition of heavy emphasis on children’s education. None of the five daughters in the Peng family finished elementary school. Two of the sons only went to eighth grade. Only one graduated middle school. It was local opinion that kids only needed to be able to read and count some money to get by. Without much education, they were almost all working in labor-intensive industries such as masonry and commercial fishing. Such work required large numbers of male laborers. It was understandable that families would often want seven, eight, up to a dozen children.

Sons who were born in the family were “supplemented” by boys who were trafficked and bought. All of them would need to get married in adulthood. So more girls would have to be bought as well. One human tragedy followed another.

Villagers told me that almost every house had children who “came” this way (a common euphemism). Peng told me that one of her three sisters was also a kidnapped girl and hoped that one day we would be able to find her original family as well. If every family in this medium-sized village of 300 household had one trafficked child, a town comprising ten villages would have 3000 such children. Putian County had 53 townships. It would not be too much exaggeration to estimate that the total number of trafficked children would number in six digits in this county alone.

Pengqing Lan memories of home and the river still in front of home, which is just got even smaller.

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WRIC had already helped a woman who was sold into the same village less than a year ago. Xiao Guangyan lived nearby. Because of our prior work with Ms. Xiao, we already had some contacts in the village friendly towards us. But it was easy to see that many other families were avoiding us at all costs. They were afraid that the children they bought would be gone once they found their real parents.

Xiao Guangyan invited me to her house at noon. Peng Qinglan came as well, along with many friends and relatives of both families. Both women came from Guizhou province. They not only wanted to thank us for fulfilling their wish to reunite with their families but also hoped that we would do the same for many of their friends. During the meal of seafood dishes, they told me that many villagers with similar experiences wanted to search for their families after Xiao and Peng’s successes. Many however were reluctant both for not knowing how to do this and for fear of irritating their current families. They hoped that Huijiawang would start by helping clandestinely.

When we were helping Xiao and Peng I never thought that far. Now we were faced not with one or two people looking for their family, but the missing children who ended up in this village and town, to the tens or hundreds of thousands in Putian, to Fujian and Guangdong, the two rich coastal provinces where the problem was particularly widespread. It was a sobering thought.

Comparatively, life in Putian was richer than the Guizhou hill country. But it didn’t mean a happy life for trafficked children who were sold here. They seldom could make their own decisions about marriage when grown up. Girls who were bought as child brides of course had no choice at all.

During the day I spent in the village I tried to strike up conversations with as many people as possible. I passed our cards to everyone, hoping many more people would find WRIC through the cards, to know more about Huijiawang, to be helped by us one day and to become a volunteer as well.

Peng Qinglan and her husband was very happy that she have decided to begin her search for her birth parents.