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| Gansu goats |
I realise that my post on Chinese people being happy, is biased. Because I was only thinking of people in the cities. Things are not nearly so bright in the country. I did say so in a post a while back -- stories that paint a picture of class divide in China -- and also in a video I posted that I can’t find for the moment, which look at the terrible state of many in the countryside.
It’s a picture you can see if you leave the superhighway, the brand new freeway, and go down any dirt track to any village. You’ll encounter a scene of poverty, of decrepitude and decay. People are leaving the country for the city, for obvious reasons (something happening throughout the world and really obvious in places like Russia and Japan). Even if they have problems getting permissions (the hukou) for living in the city, people are desperate to leave.
I’m correcting that bias now, by reposting the above link to my earlier story and by linking to “The Two Chinas”.
