as told to Lynette MacDonald
February 2012
“I have heard about you and seen you here, you are the foreigner who brings things, you help people. Please come and see my house, please come” said a lady while she tugged on my sleeve as I took pictures of the bulldozed houses and piles of rubbish.
Having the kids soon home from school Jillian and I attempted to make our excuses, but there was no saying ’No’ to this lady, so off we went again, up a path, through the fields, on our next random adventure.
We didn’t need to go far this time to find another flattened house, just a few poles and the kitchen cauldron with toys and clothes scattered around in pieces and ground into the mud. Her name is Shan, and Mr. Shan is there too but his lips are sealed tight while her lips never cease to move as she relates how the bulldozer crashed into their house a few days before, then her lips start to tremble and she is sobbing. The situation was actually a little embarrassing as she seemed to think that we could do something when in reality we are powerless and struggling even to decipher what she is telling us. Jillian speaks native Chinese but the Shans’ are from the Province of Shandong and if you imagine the accent diversity across tiny UK you can appreciate that accents across China can be hard to follow.
As we stood in their little house Shan told me their story.
The Shans’ came to Shanghai from Shandong to grow vegetables for sale at market, there is too much veg in Shandong and too little in Shanghai; the economics add up. They came with their daughter and 5 year old grandson. A few months back the daugther disappeared, they think she left and so they have the boy and they till the fields and sell the veggies. The plan is to ‘chur cu’, literally meaning, ‘eat vinegar’, as in, ‘live the hard life’ for 2 years and make enough money off Shanghai vegetable prices to go back to Shandong a few steps up the ladder of prosperity.
Being squatters has not paid off. Now their make shift house is flat, and they are living in a make-shift tent, Mr., Mrs. and a five year old boy and they know the bulldozer will destroy their crops but they are determined to stay until the last possible moment and let the most possible crops get ripe for harvesting and selling. ‘Where will you go once your crops are flat?’ we ask, ‘no idea’ they say.
As we are talking my eyes flick to her hand which is wiping a bloody Stanley knife on her trousers. As we turn to view the temporary tent behind us, laid across a big white pipe are the skins of her dogs, drying in the cloud shine, fresh from the kill.
I guess hunger drives you to extremes – I think to myself, but when showing my Ayi the photos she happily agrees that dogs are very useful for guarding the house and making soup – although her family takes them out to be killed by the butcher. I flinch, and maybe you flinch too, but how is it really different from a cute furry lamb, a fluffy chicken or a dough eyed cow? The main difference is that we don’t have to look our lunch in the eye before pulling the trigger or slashing the knife.
I went back a few days later, their crops were flat and they were gone.
Read the chronicle’s of those who live in a migrant village.
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