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While
growing up many children hear their parents
recalling how different and difficult their
own lives were. This was true for me, as
both my father and mother both immigrated
from China to America and lived through
the Cultural Revolution in China during
the 1970s. During the "Down to the
Countryside Movement" initiated by
Mao Tze Tung in 1974 students were sent
to the countryside. My father was forced
to leave his home city of Wuhu to work
on the fields of the farming complex of
Fan chen after high school.
As
a child I heard stories of my father running
a tofu farm during his years as a farm hand.
Walking barefoot through the rice patties he
was constantly hunched over planting barley
in straight rows across the field. Their work
began at sunrise 5 am and continued until 11
pm. There was no irrigation and water had to
be carried from a nearby river. My father worked
with three other students, two of which didn't
care for their work and frequently decided
to urinate in the clay vats where food was
being preserved.
This time when I heard the same story of toil
and hardship it did not come from my father's
lips. Driving from my hometown, Wuhu, for an
hour I reached the large farm where my father
had worked 25 years earlier. This time the
story came from old wizened farmers, whom my
father had worked with earlier.
"Today, 28,000 people occupy the farming
district of Fan chen and 20 million Renminbi
have been devoted to developing roads, schools,
and general development," said Chao Den
Mu, the mayor of Fan chen. The farming area
had been transformed like so many of the other
villages throughout China. Many of the improvements
had only begun recently including building
a road through the entire village in 1997 and
rebuilding old bridges in 1998.
Across
the entire area small two-story houses were
being
built while old residences were
being restored with modern conveniences. Water
no longer had to be carried from the river
as even the poorest families now had running
water. "Over half the people in Fan chen
have risen above the poverty level," Mu
said. The changes were very evident when in
the midst of a old stone house, I found the
wife of my father's boss speaking on the telephone
and watching television. All that was left
of the former tofu farm was a dilapidated stone
building- the tofu making process had been
moved to larger factories elsewhere.
Fan chen now produces $1 million in produce
every year and it like so many rural areas
in China is indicative of the rapid changes
affecting the country. Like many of the other
student farmers in China, my father has found
success in America. Instead of planting rice,
he now prepares bacterial cultures and studies
DNA sequences as a research scientist at New
York University. While walking through the
fields under the sweltering sun, I could finally
appreciate the weight of those stories I had
been told as a child.
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