Gifts
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Both Ends of the Long Road
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
It is a long road between southwestern China’s myriad green hillocks and the congested outskirts of the country’s teeming cities. But it’s along these thoroughfares — village paths that give way to local roads, leading to national highways or congested railway stations — that millions of migrant workers travel to chase China’s economic dream.
At least 150 million Chinese have taken to these roads as migrants. Perhaps they grow tired of backbreaking subsistence farming that fills their bellies, but puts little money in their pockets. Or maybe they envision catching a better life for themselves and their families in thriving, ultra-modern cities like Beijing or Shanghai. The speculative answer is likely in between the two, but the reality is that thousands more join their ranks every day.
Rural villages are emptying. Thirty years ago, China’s urban population was 234 million. Within the next two years, that number is expected to reach 650 million — half of the country’s total population, the world’s largest at 1.3 billion. That shift, among the biggest in history, has enormous cultural, economic and environmental implications.
The loss of rural residents, especially youth, to cities depletes local economies of the manpower needed to keep markets going. The death of markets results in more people leaving the countryside for urban centers. And migrants’ local customs and identities are usually swallowed whole by huge cities.
China’s rural landscape faces further poverty and the wilting of culture, while its already-hulking cities struggle to cope with the social issues and environmental impacts from millions of migrants.
Mercy Corps is helping Chinese families on both ends of the long road.
In hundreds of rural villages — like Xinfa, a tiny hamlet nestled among Guizhou Province’s knolls and forests — we’re partnering with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA). The resulting program, Rural Community Development for Poverty Alleviation, is helping create viable income opportunities to keep families from drifting away from their homes and local economies.
Since 2001, we’ve helped more than 60,000 Chinese citizens with small loans and business training. They’re turning those opportunities into stores and cottage industries that revitalize villages — and, in many cases, offer jobs to keep even more villagers from joining the burgeoning wave of migrants.
But millions of families have already left rural China’s fields and farms for the bustle of China’s mega-cities. They go in search of plenty, but often find themselves with even less than they had at home. Thousands end up in places like Daxing District, a poor section of Beijing where multiple families squeeze into tiny, often-crumbling buildings in the shadow of smokestacks.
China’s thriving economy doesn’t mean opportunities for everyone: the country’s system of hukou, or household registration, controls who gets jobs, who is entitled to benefits and who is able to attend public school. Hukou identifies families as residents of where they’re from, not where they move. As a result, a family who moves from a rural area to Beijing may not receive the health insurance or free education they are entitled to in their home village.
And, since these families aren’t on the official record in cities, they are often subject to challenging working conditions for the jobs they can find: shifts that average 11 or 12 hours a day, seven-day workweeks and below-minimum-wage pay are commonplace. Thousands of workers even sleep on the floors of factories where they work.
In a migrant economy children suffer most; they are usually unable to attend school and sometimes are forced into factory work themselves. It’s estimated that 300,000 school-aged children in Beijing aren’t receiving an education. What, then, are their opportunities for a better future?
Mercy Corps is addressing that question through an innovative alliance with the Dandelion School, Beijing’s only middle school for the children of migrant workers. Begun in 2005 and privately funded, the Dandelion School’s 31 teachers currently serve almost 400 students. Students here start with the basics — courses like mathematics, science, history and English — but also begin learning the skills to immediately contribute to China’s skyrocketing economy.
Mercy Corps’ School to Work project identifies vocational training and apprenticeships for students, giving them the chance to compete in Beijing’s labor market or start small businesses for themselves. It’s a competitive advantage that, just three years ago, these young men and women simply didn’t have.
There are at least 150 million different stories about why Chinese citizens decided to migrate, who came with them, which road they took and what they found at their destination. I have heard just a few, each sobering and inspiring in their own way.
Here are some words and insights from those we’re serving — and some who are helping — along that long road.
China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Perfect Harmony Family
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps The sign that hangs above the doorway of Guo Guifen’s hewn-stone house reads, in ornate Chinese characters, “Perfect Harmony Family.” It signifies an award given to her household by the people of Xinnong, her village in southwestern China’s Guizhou Province, for being the most respected family of the year — the family that has meant the most to the village’s survival and well-being.
Guo, 42, is noticeably proud of the distinction. It means a sense of belonging and respect in this traditional place, situated among terraced rice paddies, wheat fields and oblong hills. Belonging anywhere is a relatively new thing for her: for the last several years, Guo and her family wandered from place to place throughout this region, settling where they could find enough work to make ends meet. They were caught up in the cycle of movement and hardscrabble short-term employment that defines China’s migrant labor workforce, 150 million strong and growing.
But today, with some help from Mercy Corps and its local partner China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), she’s finally found a place to call her own — and brought her family back together in one place for the first time in more than a decade.
Guo’s family — which includes her husband, a daughter and a son — have spent most of the last fourteen years away from this place, her husband’s ancestral village. Much of the time was spent earning money in the provincial capital, Guiyang, several hours from here over mountainous terrain and winding roads. In Guiyang, all four family members had separate jobs to contribute to the family income: Guo’s husband worked as a welder in various automotive shops, while the others found small piecemeal work wherever and whenever they could.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps During the most uncertain times, they rarely saw each other and sometimes even lived in separate places. The children only occasionally attended school.
A couple of times each year — usually for planting and harvest seasons — at least part of Guo’s family would return to Xinnong to work the fields. This farming temporarily returned them to their roots, but never paid enough to allow them to stay here for the long term. Eventually, they always had to return to Guiyang or somewhere similar.
Then, four years ago, Guo had an idea that she thought might just allow them to stay in their village for good.
“I noticed that people had to travel to surrounding villages to buy wheat noodles. There weren’t any sold in the market here,” she explained. “And we were already growing a lot of wheat around here, so why not make our own noodles?” After discussing it with her family, Guo decided that a flourmill would be a great investment; it would be the only one in the immediate area, and surely the start of a good business. They pooled their meager savings together, but it wasn’t quite enough to buy the necessary equipment.
However — call it destiny or luck — around the same time, a loan officer from CFPA happened to come to Xinnong for a visit. He talked to local families on market day, telling them about the possibility of taking out low-rate loans to start small businesses. The loan officer then made appointments to visit the houses of those who expressed interest — including Guo.
Within weeks, she took out enough money to purchase a heavy-duty grain mill and, soon after that, began milling wheat and making noodles in her home.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps Today, Guo offers her homemade dry noodles once a week in the local market — usually selling at least 500 pounds of stock each market day, which nets her about 800 RMB (US $115) of profit per month. That makes it easy for her to make her monthly CFPA loan repayment of 200 RMB (US $28).
Since her business is so successful she’s been able to buy more wheat from village farmers as well, helping their fortunes and maybe even keeping a few from becoming migrants themselves.
Guo always has her eyes on other ways to secure her family’s livelihood: she’s used her profits and two additional loans to buy livestock for their farm. She currently has 60 chickens and six pigs.
But her most important priority right now is putting her son through school. Now 17, he’s finishing up ninth grade — significantly behind in his studies, but determined to finish.
“After ninth grade, education isn’t free,” Guo said. “I want my son to be able to continue.”
Now that they’re settled back into her husband’s ancestral home — to stay — it is much easier to make those kind of permanent plans and dare to consider long-term dreams. As she makes another batch of noodles for this week’s market you know that, in the back of her mind, Guo Guifen is dreaming of being the Perfect Harmony family again next year.
China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Planting Day
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps For many families throughout the world, the spring days when family gardens are planted are a cherished annual tradition. As seeds are sown, loved ones take time to talk, laugh and share thoughts. With any luck, the food grown in the family plot will nourish them later that year. The day a garden established is one of happiness and hope.
Unfortunately, the tradition is threatened — even disappearing — in many rural areas of China. About 150 million people, approximately 12 percent of China’s population, are migrating to larger cities for the opportunity to grab hold of the country’s unfolding economic dream. That dream is most often elusive, but still empties rural villages and disrupts centuries-old ways of life.
But Yang Jianrong is staying home in his tiny hillside village of Xinfa, thanks in part to a loan he received through a Mercy Corps partner.
Mercy Corps, through the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), is working with families to find solutions that keep them from drifting away from their homes and local economies. The Rural Community Development for Poverty Alleviation initiative in the Liuzhi region of Guizhou Province — where Xinfa is located — is helping create viable income opportunities for more than 8,000 people.
Yang, 31, lives with his wife and three-year-old son in the tiny village of Xinfa. He received his first loan through CFPA in 2003, which he put toward the purchase of a motorcycle.
“People were always needing things carried between villages, so I started out carrying materials,” he said. “Then people started asking me for rides, and thought that would be another good way to make money to support my family.”
Over the last few years, Yang’s business has continued to grow. He has since taken out and repaid four loans to finance the expansion his motorcycle service.
“It’s been easy to get and pay back loans with CFPA,” he said. “Getting a lump sum at the beginning of the loan has really help me get things started faster.” Yang’s successful business is keeping him with his family in Xinfa. He’s used profits from his business, which serves the entire township, to purchase livestock including two cows, a sow and ten piglets. He’s committed to staying here, in his ancestral home, and helping rebuild the local economy.
And, today is a symbolic step as well as a practical one: he’s planting a spring garden with his young family. With son Chaochao running circles around them, Yang and his wife Li scale the rocky hill to the plot of land where they’ll grow their household crops. It’s a beautiful place, with wild strawberries lacing the slopes and a view of Guizhou’s limestone mountains unfolding like a dream below them.
The three of them talk, laugh and frolic as they prepare the soil. Chaochao — whose name, Yang tells us, means “super super” — entertains them with cute, playful songs. Soon, they’re dropping pepper, peanut, sunflower and soybean seeds into holes and covering them up with rich, black dirt.
The planting of the family garden is an investment in the future. With help from Mercy Corps and CFPA, families like Yang Jianrong’s will keep the tradition for years to come.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Nourishing Roots
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Thousands of China’s urban youth are left without schooling because they are the children of migrant workers. Legally, these children are not allowed to go to school because their registration, or hukou, is in their home village instead of their adopted city.
Zheng Hong, a former university professor of micropaleontology — the study of fossils no bigger than four millimeters — could no longer sit back and observe this increasingly devastating situation. In 2005 she founded the Dandelion School, the only school for middle school-aged migrant youth in Beijing, in one of the city’s poorest and most migrant-populated neighborhoods. She realized that inaction would result in a vicious cycle of poverty: the children of migrant families would become the next generation of migrant workers, and would remain at the bottom rung of the Chinese economy and society.
But Zheng Hong is a woman of action. She marshaled a small but powerful network of friends, across different nations, who reached out to businesses and foundations to make something happen. Incredibly, within a few months of her initial vision and discussions with friends, the Dandelion School opened in a renovated switchboard factory. The school’s partnership with Mercy Corps began soon afterward.
True to her meticulous background, there is even deep, well-considered significance behind the school’s name.
"Migrant families in China are often called 'floating families.' Where they float, they have no control," Zheng Hong explains. "Still, they are beautiful, durable, quiet — and everywhere. They grow roots wherever they can find land. They survive and look for a better life."
She also noted that, whenever visitors come to the school, they carry the experiences they have and spread the word to others like dandelion seeds.
Mercy Corps' Cami Martin took time to speak with the creative force behind this extraordinary school.
Mercy Corps: Can you tell us about the migrant situation in China, and why you started the school?
Zheng Hong: The migrant population has been growing over the past 20 years. The last I heard it was at 150 million. Five million of these migrants are in Beijing and 500,000 of [them] are school-age kids.
Most migrants are peasant workers and [come to Beijing] for a variety of reasons. In some cases they can no longer live off the land so they have come to the city to look for opportunities. They end up taking the lowest paying jobs such as construction, or growing vegetables and fruits and selling them on the street. It is difficult for these migrants to live [on] the low salary they make.
And, since they have moved into the city and the kids are not [official] residents, they are not allowed to go to public school. The government is trying to solve this problem, but it takes time. I could no longer watch these kids growing up without an education, so I started the Dandelion School. Until the government fixes this problem we will work with the kids so they have an opportunity to learn.
The south of Beijing is one of the most concentrated areas with migrants, so that's where we started looking for a school. We found an abandoned factory and, through fundraising, borrowing money and an American gentleman who matched the funds we raised, we were able to start construction in May 2005.
What were the next steps?
In July 2005, we were halfway done with the school and decided to run a summer camp for migrant kids to see how the school would run. With 60 kids and 15 teachers, we were able to run a successful two-week-long camp. This gave us confidence that the school would run well, so we recruited more teachers and kids and, in August 2005, it was officially opened with 120 students.
After the doors opened, students kept coming and we ended up with 180 kids. After one year, our school had doubled in size with 360 students.
What is the age range?
We have kids from 11-17 [years of age], in the 7th through 9th grades. There are 10 percent more boys than girls. Currently, we have 350 students living in the dorms we provide. Providing dorms is a necessary step for many students, because most living conditions in migrant homes are awful with not enough space or light to study. Often times, these kids won't have enough time to study because they need to help their parents around the house and with cooking.
What kinds of classes are taught at the school?
The basic subjects: writing, math, computers and science. We also provide a vocational skills class once a week. Many students don't know what is available in the working world and have no idea what kind of career they want. So, we have started bringing in people from different careers, as well as bringing the students to different work sites so they can get an idea of what they want.
What are some challenges you have faced at the school?
The first is how to keep the teachers. We have started providing teachers with professional development training, so that even though they could make more money at another school we give them a personal reason to stay. The second challenge is financial stability. Since kids are from low-income families we cannot charge them to go to school. And government support is limited since we are not a public school. We rely heavily on donations.
How is the school funded?
Fifteen percent of our funding is donated from the families, although we'd like this number to be less. We fundraise for the rest. We get a lot of money from the Dandelion Project — a group of about 50 women who wanted to do something to give back to society. We refer to them as the big dandelions, and the students at our school are the little dandelions.
These women took the Dandelion School as their first project. They help in different ways, such as sponsoring a child or donating clothes. They have also used their resources to build us a library, computer lab, chemistry lab, physics lab and biology lab. I don't know what we would do without the big dandelions.
The local government has also become more and more supportive. They have given us ping-pong tables, basketball hoops and some funding to help fix the school.
How do students find out about the school?
We have teachers go out to different locations, such as wholesale markets, to hand out materials and talk about the school. When the students come to the school, we give them a test to see what grade to start in. The test is not difficult, and our teachers work with the students to make up for lost time.
How is the transition from village to school life?
There are a lot of basic things these children have never been taught and have never seen. For instance, [many have never known] how to make a bed and how to take a shower. A lot of these children were never taught basic sanitation and health needs, so we provide a school doctor to help with this transition.
There's also a big effort from teachers to stop kids from spitting, drinking alcohol, smoking and fighting. But kids change fast and enjoy their new environment. One big challenge is getting kids to study, and then from simply studying, to studying well. A lot of our teachers are [also] from a migrant background, so this helps with the transition.
How is the school doing right now?
We have 530 students, 36 full-time teachers and 4 administrative staff. Going into our third year, we have developed an attachment to the kids. It's wonderful to see how hard they work to make up for the schooling they have missed in the past.
[Last] June, we had our first group of graduates who were allowed to take the standard exams in Beijing. This is one step forward towards equal opportunity for these migrant youth. The kids have really come a long way.
In the beginning, only five students passed their exams and, this year, 37 did. These 37 students are now able to go to a vocational high school, through scholarships from Mercy Corps. For the kids who did not pass their exams, we will continue working with them at the Dandelion School until they are ready to move on. We need to find a model to help better prepare our students after graduation, and this is what we are doing with the School to Work Project [with Mercy Corps].
Can you explain this project?
Through a partnership with Mercy Corps, we are working with 37 students at the vocational high school — as well as students here at the Dandelion School — providing ten months of vocational and life skills training which will result in employment, apprenticeships or further vocational training opportunities. In this way, we are able to give these youth employable skills and connections to the job market so they do not end up in the same situation as their parents.
What other ways has your relationship with Mercy Corps helped the students?
It opens our children's minds to the wider world and the range of humanitarian ideas. It gives them a deep desire to help.
I remember, not too long ago, a young student got up in front of his class for a presentation. One thing he said was this: "My dreams are very simple — I just want to be able to help others."
He moved the entire classroom, including his teacher, to tears. That's the kind of awareness — and change — we're trying to create here.
China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Finding Hope on the Side of the Road
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps One day as 40-year-old Guo Peiling was rummaging around the neighborhood for his recycling business, he found a school for his youngest daughter.
"I saw this big white building behind a wall with a gate. I must have passed by it a hundred times before, but something told me to find out more about it that day," he remembered. "So I asked the guard, 'what is this place?' He told me that it was the Dandelion School, a place for the children of migrant workers."
And that was the best news that the father of migrant family from Hunan Province had heard in a long time.
Guo, his wife, two daughters and young son have lived in Daxing District, a gritty neighborhood on Beijing's southern outskirts, for more than ten years. This area, on the periphery of China's capital city, is clogged with factories — many shuttered — and home to more than 650,000 people. By some estimates, migrant families account for more than 75 percent of the district's population.
Most of Daxing's residents have similar stories to Guo: they moved to Beijing in search of job opportunities, because they could no longer make ends meet from subsistence agriculture in their own rural villages. But when they got to the big city, they found thousands of people with the same idea, all competing for jobs.
So Guo, who had been a farmer all of his life, decided to live off the land as best he knew how in his new surroundings. He bought a small motorbike and an attachable cart with the money he'd made from temporary warehouse work, and began collecting recyclable materials that homes, stores and factories left on the side of the road or in dumpsters. He sells what he finds to local recyclers or craftsmen who re-process the materials.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps It's an uncertain business: how much he makes in a given day depends on what he finds, which could be next to nothing. Paper, cardboard and plastic don't pay much. Occasionally, Guo will hit the jackpot and discover a treasure trove of electrical wires or iron bars. For these higher-end recyclables, he might profit 70 RMB (US $10) for a day's work. But those are rare finds. Some days, he comes home empty-handed despite searching all day.
And for a family already struggling to put food on the table, that means that some heartfelt wishes go unaddressed: like sending children to school. Guo's oldest daughter was unable to continue school after they moved to Beijing, and is now working full-time in a pickle factory across the city. She works long hours and sometimes sleeps at the factory; they rarely see her these days.
Guo wanted a different outcome for his younger daughter, 16-year-old Guo Yan; he was saddened by the family's inability to send his older daughter to school, and constantly mindful of his own illiteracy. His serendipitous notice of the Dandelion School — supported by Mercy Corps — gave both of them the opportunity for a happier ending.
"After I talked to the guard, told them about Guo Yan and explained where we lived," Guo said, "we had a teacher from the Dandelion School sitting in our house, talking to us, the very next day."
The teacher assessed the family’s finances and living conditions, took time to discuss the school with everyone and then immediately offered a full scholarship to Guo Yan — which includes a place to stay in the school’s dormitories and all meals.
"Neither my wife nor I were even able to attend primary school," Guo explained, "so we're excited and thankful for this opportunity. We want Guo Yan to learn as much as possible, and will continue to support her however we can.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps "In Chinese, 'Guo Yan signifies a kind of goose, a migratory bird. We want her to fly, to go far and make something good of her life."
Guo Yan is well on the way to fulfilling her parents' fondest wishes. Now several months into her studies, she's reading Russian literature in her spare time. She wants to go to university after graduating, and study psychology.
"I feel like I'm a very perceptive person, and want to learn more about understanding people," she said.
At Dandelion School her favorite subject is English, a course taught by a fellow migrant from Hunan Province. Guo Yan's favorite English word is "beautiful" — a perfect way to describe the circumstances that finally brought her here.
China February 6, 2008 12:33AM
Dandelion Seeds
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps Hu Yan's school days are hectic. She takes a full course load, including math, English, science and ethics. And her 45-minute lunch period affords no time to relax. That's when she dashes home, hangs laundry on the line, prepares lunch for herself and her younger brother, washes the dishes, then sprints back to school in time for her afternoon classes.
Despite the bustle, Hu Yan treasures each school day. Less than a year ago, she and her brother, Hu Bing, were out of school. With their mother, they floated from city to city as one of China's millions of migrant families.
These families, who hail almost exclusively from rural villages, drift to China's burgeoning cities in search of better incomes than subsistence farming can provide. They pay a steep price, however, for choosing to move toward greater opportunity. The Chinese hukou household registration system largely defines where people are allowed to live and work. As a result, migrants sacrifice both job options and the social benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled, such as health care, time off, pensions and public schooling for their children.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps Yet Hu Yan's mother saw no other choice. After her husband died in a mine accident when Hu Yan was just two, she had to find work. Her search caused the small family to leave their native mountain village of Xiabiayang and join the 150 million migrant workers that constitute China's "floating population."
In all, the family weathered a dozen moves before they settled in their current home amid the crumbling tenements and grimy factories of Beijing's Daxing District, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Hu Yan's mother found factory job – and a one-room house on the other side of town. Because the commute is so long, the children rarely see their mother; she usually sleeps at the factory to gain more work time. In her absence, Hu Yan and Hu Bing are responsible for all household chores.
At last, however, they have returned to school. In spite of their rural hukou, Hu Yan and her brother were able to enroll at an innovative school located right in their district. The privately funded, not-for-profit Dandelion School, begun in April 2005 to serve unmet needs, is the capital's only middle school for the children of migrant workers.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps The school currently has 530 students and 36 teachers, many of whom are migrants themselves. The director, Zheng Hong, wants to provide opportunities to even more students, and has amassed support from a variety of businesses, Mercy Corps and the Chinese government to do just that.
Urban life is a chaotic alternative to the villages that rural people like Hu Yan and her family knew. That tranquil life must now seem a distant dream. "In Chinese," Hu Yan reminisces, "Xiabaiyang means 'sheep coming down the mountain.' That's because, when it rains there, the drifting clouds look like white sheep on the mountain's slopes."
Today Hu Yan herself drifts no more. It's tough balancing housework with homework, but she knows the alternative and is grateful for the opportunity to finally attend school. What's more, Hu Yan was recently selected to participate in the School to Work Project, a partnership between Mercy Corps and The Dandelion School. Through this program, Hu Yan will receive intensive vocational and life-skills training and apprenticeships that will prepare her join China's skilled labor market.
Back in school after her busy lunch period, Hu Yan settles into her desk for history class. Her favorite era is that of Confucius. Like the storied wise man, she's sage beyond her years. She has endured harsh lessons in her short lifetime. Now, thanks to the Dandelion School, she can get down to the business of learning – and building a more stable, hopeful future.
