In Guizhou’s villages, thick ribbons of writing adorn even the most ramshackle buildings. Sometimes they are painted onto the bricks, sometimes they are written on fabric signs and pinned across a wall. Ever-present dust and faded colors make them easy to ignore.
But they reward a moment’s scrutiny, for these inconspicuous strips of text are actually government propaganda. What does China want to tell the farmers of Paiyang, a tiny village in the mountains outside Kaili, in eastern Guizhou? Let’s take a look:
Strengthen literacy programs to help farmers throw off poverty, become wealthy and raise their quality of life.
Long-distance education is farmers’ golden bridge to wealth.
Is this long-distance education in the Western sense of distance-learning classes? I’m not sure, but I couldn’t find any other way to translate it.
Walk with the Party for happiness, family planning has incentives.
Not sure about the exact translation on this one, but you get the idea — family planning + Communist party = happiness.
More scientific planning and rational use of every inch of land.
As you can see, most of the messages — a random sampling taken from all over Paiyang — pertain to education. Only one mentions the Communist Party, and only one alludes to the one-child policy. As China continues to develop, one of its big challenges will be raising the standard of living in places like Paiyang. Today, its low cement buildings and dirt roads of Paiyang hardly seem to belong in the same country with the skyscrapers and multilane highways of Shanghai. Education will be key to closing the gap between these rural and urban populations, and the government knows it.
This week, I’m turning the spotlight on Guizhou, one of China’s least-famous provinces. Read my introduction to Guizhou and then subscribe to my RSS feed to automatically receive the rest of the posts in the series!
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