Rural Workers Tell Their Own Stories

By staff reporter QIAO TIANBI

Rural workers form part of an installation at the art exhibition titled “We Are Together, Comrade Rural Workers.”

A new breed of bard – the Chinese migrant worker – jotted the following lines:

A frog whose blood comes from the countryside,

Leaps to the city - then he’s clad in irons.

There are some 120 million farmers are working in China’s major cities that make up a special community within society. Many local artists have brought their troubles to light, but migrant workers are now penning their own verses, based on their own experiences.

In China, the countryside and the city have long been two separate worlds. In 1958, the government decided to control the influx of farmers into the cities by restricting their employment opportunities. Back then, to be born a farmer meant being destined to die one. The only way to leave the countryside was by joining the army, or by going to college. It was not until after the national identity card system had been introduced in 1985, and urban household ration coupons were abolished in 1992, that city gates opened to farmers once again. At that time, rural reform and technological improvements had great impact on agricultural productivity, and led to a surplus of workers in the countryside. So they flooded to the cities, where rapid economic development almost guaranteed them work. However, there remains a disparity between the social security that rural workers and their urban counterparts enjoy. Many feel they belong nowhere – neither to the countryside nor the city.

At the Lowest Level of Society?

An Zi, a rural worker that became a writer.

From their poems, it is interesting to note that many rural writers liken themselves to small, weak unappealing animals, like the mouse, frog or earthworm. In his History of a Mouse Family, Lu Weiping wrote:

We never walk the streets while calm of mind,

Bones broken and trapped tails we often find.

Our tears and groans, behind brick walls are hid,

Small is the pain brief contact home can rid…

Another rural poet Liu Dongwu explains that these unattractive animals are analogous to disadvantaged communities whose utmost concern is survival. They often have the urge, he says, to cry out and let their miserable situation be known. Liu says that although these migrant workers labor hard in the cities for the benefit of the nation and its people, few people acknowledge them. “Our society has little respect for rural workers. The public cares much for the elite and superstars, but not at all for those at the bottom of the ladder. As poets, we do notice these hardworking people, and write about them in recognition of the fundamental role they play in society.

This opinion is echoed by another poet, Yu Jin, in his Living Like a Dog: “

In Beijing one can live without a child

But not without a dog – a thing so wild

While honest working men from out of town

Must sit outside in the cold wearing a frown…

An ancient Chinese scholar once said that a poet cannot write verses of any significance until he has tasted the true bitterness of life. The hardships they endure enable rural worker poets to paint their world in stark, evocative language.

A Leap in Art and Life

Sections of Liang Shuo’s sculpture series “Snazzy Farmers.”

The first rural worker-turned writer to be well-known in China was An Zi. In 1984, when An Zi was just seventeen years old, she dropped out of school in her rural hometown in Guangdong Province, and headed for Shenzhen. There she found work in an electronic parts factory, toiling 12 hours a day on the assembly line, which after a few days, left her fingers punctured and bloody. She kept on studying in her spare time, and progressed from junior middle school to the Chinese Department of Shenzhen University. Almost all of her income was spent on books and tuition.

In 1991, a newspaper called Youth Post published An Zi’s The True Story of a Rural Girl in Shenzhen. The readers’ response was out of anyone’s expectations. Soon Shenzhen Radio Station invited her to host An Zi’s Sky, a program targeting young rural workers in the city. A recent CCTV documentary about China’s reform and opening up, 20 Years•20 People, also introduced An Zi as the most famous rural worker in Shenzhen, and friend and spokesperson for anyone with dreams of life in the city.

Now the chairwoman of the board of four companies, An Zi wants to inspire more people by promoting the culture of success. Her latest work, Reach the Summit, aims to help rural workers succeed and be respected within society.

These days, rural workers come to the city not only just to make a living, but also to realize their own self worth. Today, over a dozen rural poets and writers have earned a reputation among Chinese literary circles. And as this new generation of rural workers grows up, more and more of them turn to art as a medium for expressing their views on the world.

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Avant-garde artist Qiu Zhijie has created several works featuring rural workers. He first approached them for cheap labor, but later discovered their artistic value.

When he started holding exhibitions across China in the 1990s, he hired rural workers to set up the displays. “If I needed a wall in my work, it was cheaper to employ rural workers to line up as a wall than build a real one – that’s how I first came in contact with them,” Qiu says. While working together, Qiu was surprised to find how many rural dwellers understood his art. “They view things in a simple, down-to-earth way. So they could get the meaning behind some of my most bizarre works, even better than some old professors at the art academy! Some of them even helped me to create some of my works.”

At the end of 2003, Qiu jointly held the exhibition We Are Together, Comrade Rural Workers with several other artists and 200 rural workers. The organizer hoped that an open discussion of the migrant worker issue might ensue concern for this group in all areas of Chinese society.

In 2004 Chinese Humanism, the largest-ever realist photography exhibition in China, kicked off with a fancy opening ceremony: 160 rural workers sitting on a bamboo scaffold, stripped to the waist, each holding a camera. They took pictures of the audience while having their own group photo snapped by a thousand lenses.

Rural workers have also entered some of the more commercial aspects of art, such as TV and pop music. Pioneer director Guan Hu recently produced a 30-part TV drama Rural Workers’ Survival, starring 40 rural workers, and a number of celebrity film stars acting out that role. Guan says he made the drama in the hope of bringing this community --- one that has long been neglected and misunderstood --- to the forefront of Chinese society.

Jingwen Music Corporation, best known for promoting successful pop stars, released a CD last September by a band of rural workers in Beijing. All the tracks on the album tell stories of migrant workers. Lyrics from We Are a Family read “You are from Sichuan, I am from Henan…wherever we are from, we come here for a living…You are a constructor, I am a babysitter…whatever job we take, we work for a living, and we are a family.” Jingwen President Up Hangman is confident that this album will arouse public interest in rural workers and their spiritual world.

Halo Jean, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, insists that most people purposely ignore the existence of rural workers. When he saw some 80 bare-chested rural workers standing on the windowsill at the We Are Together, Comrade Rural Workers exhibition, he suddenly felt the urge to join them. He took off his coat, climbed onto the windowsill, and joined their number. But one wonders, could he do their job?