The suicide of Song Pingshun, former chairman of the Tianjin Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) brought to mind the memory of Daqiuzhuang, once the nation's flagship and model village located in Tianjin. When the news reached the village, some locals slipped into Yu Zuomin's former residence and lit firecrackers to inform him of his sworn enemy's death. Villagers there still remember Yu, their former village head, although over ten years have passed since he died.

500 kilometers away from Daqiuzhuang is Dazhai, a village in Shanxi Province, during the reign of Mao Zedong. This village has also caught the public eye once again due to a grand temple built by the son of the Party secretary of the village. Though Guo Fenglian, the secretary, was not pleased at being in the media spotlight, villagers were cheerily talking about the new temple on Hutou Mountain. These villagers have been forgotten for a long time.

Both of these villages are eternally famous communities belonging to past eras. And even though many have forgotten about them, their stories will never disappear. From the period of the 'people's commune', to that of the 'household contract responsibility system' adopted in early 1980s, until finally that of the 'construction of new countryside', these two villages clearly display the typical development history of China's rural areas.

The communist fairyland

The expressway doesn't shorten the time it takes to reach Dazhai. From Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi Province, more than three hours are needed. This small village held a supreme position and was even dubbed "the First Village of China" in Mao's time.

Guo Fenglian, the Dazhai Party secretary, was in Beijing attending the National People's Congress, when this journalist arrived in Dazhai at the end of August. Though less brilliant than her predecessor Chen Yonggui, whose career ended acting as Vice Premier, Guo is still a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Deputy Chairperson of Shanxi Women's Federation. She was even deputy secretary of the CPC committee in Xiyang County, where Dazhai is located. In fact, Guo's political success is far beyond any ordinary farmer's expectations.

Built on earth and stone, scarce in arable farmland, Dazhai is a typical rural Chinese village: poverty stricken. But the situation changed after 1949 when the radical socialist policy was adopted in all rural areas. It was at this time that Dazhai showed great strength.

The village's 700 mu of fields were split into 5,000 pieces, scattered about a mountainous area. What lay before then Party's Secretary Chen Yonggui was how to transform those ditches, ridges and slopes into arable terraced fields. That was the villagers' supreme mission. To achieve their goal, they had to struggle from dawn till dusk. Their arduous efforts started from 1953 and ended 27 years later in 1979. From 1969 through 1977, this village of less than 300 souls uprooted 39 hills and created 500 mu of arable cropland. The annual output of newly cultivated land not only sufficed the village but also created a grain surplus that was turned over to the government.

Strenuous work was highly praised and welcomed by the state at that particular time. Chen was promoted to be a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and he also served as Vice Premier, in charge of agricultural production for the whole nation. Dazhai was honored as a model village. The government sent military troops there to help build irrigation cannels that wound up the mountains and scientists introduced sprinkler system irrigation. As early as the 1970s, mountainous Dazhai mechanized agricultural procedures, much earlier than those villages located on vast plains.

Every household in today's Dazhai contains pictures of their elders or themselves taken with Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Zhu Rongji. In total, more than 40 state leaders higher than vice premier and 40 high-ranking military officers had visited Dazhai. Moreover, the village had also welcomed foreign guests from 134 countries and regions, including 16 heads of state. From 1964 when Mao Zedeng called on the whole nation to follow the example of Dazhai in developing agriculture to the end of Cultural Revolution, a total of 9.6 million people paid visits to this small village, nearly one person per square kilometer in China.

Dazhai's glorious history lasted for 15 years. Things changed here, facilitated by policies and plans of social transformation. At that time, national policies aimed at promoting farmers and their agricultural work and establishing rural villages as most stable agricultural production units to stimulate the national economy.

After 1949, the principle task faced by the country was how to fulfill industrialization goals. The government enacted official policies to encourage the farmers to work harder. As a result they collected a surplus from vast rural areas. And Dazhai was more suitable than any other place to erect an example of this collection.

Directives became extreme. Vice Premier Chen experimented with planting rice on Hutou Mountain around Dazhai, after returning from an inspection in south China. He also encouraged sericulture and raising deer. His dream was "to transform Hutou Mountain into another prosperous area south of the Yangtze River."

All his trials halted when Deng Xiaoping took over. Suddenly, Dazhai became a synonym for "leftist deviation" and was flooded with a stream of criticism. Chen was stripped of all his power and authority; he died in Beijing. Guo Fenglian was dismissed from all her posts and put on probation by the Party in April 1980. Three years later, she was dispatched to an apple institute in Xiyang County.

During those years when Deng's reforms were being introduced nationwide, villagers in Dazhai felt quite at a loss: "We worked for so many years to link scraps of fields to create convenient collective plowing, why should we divide them now?" All their fields were allocated based on households after two years. These villagers had no choice but to accept the "household contract responsibility system" just as they accepted the "people's commune" system dozens of years ago. So the villagers voluntarily combined their allocated fields in 1990. They organized an "agriculture group" containing 40 members to do farm work every year.

No other village bound itself so closely to China's politics. But the exhibition hall of Dazhai shows the history of 1980s as blank: no head of state came to pay a visit. Like many other villages, Dazhai was totally forgotten in those years. Only the slogan posted at the entrance of the village, an excerpt from a poem by former Marshal Ye Jianying, reminded the elderly of the good old days.

The era of Daqiuzhuang

At the end of 1991, a new era finally arrived at Dazhai when Guo Fenglian was re-appointed Party secretary of the village. Her mission was to lead this eternal "communist fairyland" to erect another example of economic development.

The first thing Guo did back in her office was to learn from Daqiuzhuang's experiences. At that time the government was vigorously promoting rural enterprises. Rural industrialization was regarded as a remedy to languishing rural areas. Daqiuzhuang in Tianjin was an example of industrial development. Chinese observers even claimed that other Chinese rural areas had entered the era of Daqiuzhuang.

Everything Daqiuzhuang had came from steel production. In 1979, the first strip steel factory was set up. The factory bought steel scraps at low prices, processing them into pipes and selling at higher prices. The return was not only processing profits: price differences in commodities also had a ready market. Nobody knows how Daqiuzhuang managed to get those monopolized resources. But the first barrel of precious steel triggered the industry to boom. Later on, four major groups: strip steel, pipe products, publishing houses and electrical appliances were established one after another.

According to the China Statistical Yearbook 1992 from the National Bureau of Statistics, Daqiuzhuang's indices of GDP, per capita income topped the list with per capita annual income at US$3,000, ten times that of national average. The village was the richest in China.

The leader of Daqiuzhuang was Yu Zuomin. The old farmer who had used to carry reeds on a donkey carriage suddenly became the president of all four groups. Yu called himself a "good student" of Deng. After Deng gave his instruction during his south China tour, Yu asked every household in the village to put up a banner reading "Hello, Xiaoping!" Even now, the banner has not changed at the gates of the four groups.

Though focusing on industrialization, Yu always regarded Chen Yonggui as his example. He said to the officials who came to study: "Being director is nothing. What I want is to become Vice Premier." He dreamt of Daqiuzhuang becoming another Dazhai, a Chinese model village. In 1992, Guo Fenglian's visit made Yu wild with joy. The arrogant Party secretary gave the visitor 500,000 yuan for enterprise investment without any hesitation.

But times changed. The state was no longer able to dip a finger into a village's daily production. Yu dreamt that Deng might come to Daqiuzhuang for an inspection, but his dream never came true.

Yu didn't care about any officials other than those from the central government. There was a story circulating in the village that when Song Pingshun, the then director general of Tianjin Public Security Bureau, was promoted to Tianjin's vice mayor, Yu commented at the CPPCC meeting: "What a surprise that a person like Song is appointed vice mayor! It seems Tianjin is short of talented and capable people. If need be, I could step in as temporary Vice Mayor."

Yu's arrogance finally got him into trouble. At the end of 1992, several charges of illegal imprisonment and death by assault occurred there. Yu covered up for the offenders and detained 4 policemen who arrived to investigate. He organized tens of thousands of villagers and migrants, all holding steel pipes, to confront 400 armed police, and stopping them from entering the village.

This shocking disturbance subsided the following April when Yu was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He died later in jail. A total of 26 people were arrested and jailed, including Yu's son. In retrospect Yu's death was not painted with much political color. It was more like a cup of bitter wine brewed by a farmer/entrepreneur who ignored the law.

Decline of public life

By August 2007, with a resident population of nearly 50,000, Daqiuzhuang had already grown into a town although it is still called a "village". Streets are flanked with 24-hour Internet cafés, beauty salons, hotels, bathing centers and song-and-dance halls. Overhead electric wires are densely distributed in industrial zones. At night, Daqiuzhuang is as noisy as any big city.

An old man led the journalist to the former residence of Yu Zuomin, located opposite the town government building. Gleaming by silver moonlight, the building was covered with spider webs. Loofah vines burrowed their way through the walls and were now spreading in profusion towards the ceiling.

"The building has been abandoned for several years," the local told the journalist. "A few days ago, someone came here and set off some firecrackers. At first, I thought it was his (Yu Zuomin) death anniversary, but others told me later that it was because Song Pingshun had committed suicide in Tianjin." In Daqiuzhuang, many elderly residents still held Yu Zuomin in high esteem. In their eyes, Song Pingshun was the "enemy" of the whole village.

When the 1993 disturbance was quelled, the municipal government of Tianjin promptly restructured the administrative division of Daqiuzhuang. The village was upgraded into a town. Under its jurisdiction, four village committees evolved from the four major groups. Both of the Party secretary and town head were appointed by the county government a level higher than Daqiuzhuang. From then on, local people were rarely seen in the leading group.

Most of the former village leaders left their hometown after 1993. During the disturbance, only a small number of the leading cadres were not arrested. Yu Zuozhang was one of them. As the former village head, he used to be an old partner of Yu Zuomin. When Daqiuzhuang was transformed into a town, Yu Zuozhang was appointed as a deputy town head and had worked at that post for several years. When being asked about Yu Zuomin, however, the old man shook his head. "I had a stroke some years ago. Now I have a very bad memory. The case of Yu Zuomin is the concern of the government. You'd better go to the municipal government or the town government. I am just a farmer and I have nothing to tell." Finishing these words, the elderly man placed a hoe upon his shoulder and went to work in his fields.

After Yu Zuomin was arrested, the town of Daqiuzhuang bid farewell to their collective life style. The four major groups were either sold out or contracted by individuals. The local economy developed even faster than before. Although the chemical plant, the printing house and other collective enterprises went bankrupt one after another, the steel pipe factory prospered. During this period, the salesmen and technicians of the four major groups quit one by one to open their own businesses. At present, there are over 1,000 steel pipe factories, strip steel factories and various accessory plants in Daqiuzhuang. A new group of billionaires has emerged. In Tianjin, or even in all of north China, Daqiuzhuang is still leading the list of the richest villages.

Life seems to be better now. However, villagers feel they are less happy than before. "When Yu Zuomin headed the village, all matters, big or small, were managed by village authorities. Now we have to attend to things all by ourselves. If you possess special skills, you can set up a factory and make big money. If you have no abilities, you have to lead a poor life. Or, if you dare to conduct dishonest deals, you can live rather comfortably."

Wang Shicheng used to be a factory head when Yu Zuomin was in power. Now, he runs a small bookshop around street corner. In Daqiuzhuang, locals like him are rarely seen. Instead, 80 percent of the village population comes from other parts of the country. Of them, most are from northeastern China.

Now, the most heard complaint in Daqiuzhuang concerns public security. At night, no taxi driver dares to go to Daqiuzhuang because six taxi drivers were robbed there in the course of a month. Not long ago, several criminals were caught and the local public security bureau held a public trial on the Jiulongbi (Nine-Dragon Wall) Square. "The square was built at Yu Zuomin's command. It used to be the place to convene village meetings," sighed Wang Shicheng. "Such disgraceful things never happened before."

Today, fighting and brawls are common on the streets. Although public authorities are working hard to keep order, their administrative rules fail to yield desired results. Currently, the most influential figure in Daqiuzhuang is a villager with the surname Liu. Operating several factories, Liu is rich and powerful. He makes friends with people of all sorts. "If you have any troubles, just go to him. He can handle things impartially. As long as you don't offend him, he will not get too pushy," Wang Shicheng told the journalist.

Long term residents recall that people lived in peace and worked happily in Daqiuzhuang 10 years ago. At that time, village authorities paid local children's tuition fees. Those who were enrolled in colleges and universities would get a large annual subsidy of tens of thousands of yuan. If a family member died, the family would receive some money to cover the funeral expenses. In addition, Yu Zuomin would send a man to conduct a simple but dignified funeral. Bands were not allowed because Yu Zuomin thought them too expensive. Instead, a tape recorder would be put at the village entrance to play the funeral music. If a wedding ceremony were held, the village authorities would send all the collectively-owned Benz sedans, which were extremely luxurious at that time, to carry the new couple and guests to the wedding hall.

Now families have to cover their children's tuition fees all by themselves. The rich can send their children abroad at an early age while the poor must send their children to study in the village primary school. Wedding ceremonies and funerals are also at the expense of individuals. Last winter, a villager with the surname Wang held a grand wedding ceremony with 10 full-sized Lincoln sedans. Villagers have become accustomed to such spectacular scenes.

Public facilities such as schools, squares, villa complexes and roads were all built during Yu Zuomin's time. All of them are old and shabby now. Two years ago the government built a recreation center for senior residents. However, the construction has not been completed yet due to a lack of capital investment. Although sanitation workers are hired to take care of public places, major roads are badly damaged and waste water runs everywhere.

When the communal life style was abandoned in Daqiuzhuang, local authorities glued their eyes to tax revenues and birth control. They thus devoted less attention to the management of public life. Thus, as private life enjoys more prosperity, public life largely declines. Social order is deteriorating and rural communities are falling apart. After the 1993 incident, municipal authorities placed no trust in any kind of self-rule organizations. All political and financial supports were withdrawn from their activities. This exerted an even worse impact on the declining public life in Daqiuzhuang.

Future of Dazhai

Unlike the affluent life and chaotic social order of Daqiuzhuang, Dazhai people live in peace and are content with their current situation. In the past decades, Dazhai has managed to maintain a population of around 520 souls. The only new comers were villagers from neighboring villages. They relocated to look after their children who studied in the county middle school that was situated in Dazhai. Li Huailian, director of local women's federation, told the journalist proudly, "We Dazhai people always follow state instructions strictly. Since the one-child policy was adopted, no one here has ever violated the rule."

The public order in Dazhai never worries the local public security bureau. Criminal cases rarely happen here. No complaints against the government or village leaders can be heard.

Jia Jincai recommended Chen Yonggui for the Party membership. What's more, Jia retired voluntarily from the post of Party secretary to give way to Chen. Nowadays, all of Chen's children and grandchildren are working in Taiyuan and Beijing as leading cadres or big merchants. In the eyes of villagers, "Chen's family has risen high in the country." In comparison, the son of Jia Jincai still lives in Dazhai and earns his living by running a grocery store. When talking about Chen Yonggui, however, the Jia family is forever singing his praises. Their only complaint is that when Dazhai started to develop tourism, village authorities wanted to move the tombs of the Jia family to renovate the funerary park of Chen Yonggui. The son of Jia Jincai refused. "The tombs of our Jia family are located in an auspicious place. We will not move them under any conditions," said Jia Jincai's daughter-in-law.

Nowadays, Guo Fenglian and her two sons have become celebrities in Xiyang County. Each of Guo's sons owns several large enterprises. Whenever villagers go downtown, Xiyang people will talk with them about the current situation of Guo Fenglian. "Your Party secretary has made a big fortune. Both of her sons have become billionaires." However, villagers just shrug off the gossip with a laugh.

Li Jiaoyue, now at his seventies, used to be one of Chen Yonggui's pals during hard times. He spent a lifetime working after Chen. After being promoted as the Vice Premier of China, Chen Yonggui never returned home to visit his old friends. Nowadays, Li Jiaoyue still cherishes the memory of Chen's virtues, "Chen Yonggui was a good man. He never put money in his own pocket. Guo Fenglian also made it big. When she returned in 1992, she erected new villas, hotels, schools and street lamps. She had all the roads renovated. Now one of the roads leads directly up to the mountaintop. A new exhibition hall was also built to develop tourism. And significantly, the village authorities provide us several welfare allowances every year."

Today, Dazhai provides several welfare allowances for its villagers. Those who are over the age of 60 receive a monthly old-age pension of 200 yuan. University students get an annual subsidy of 1,000 yuan and vocational college students receive 800 yuan. Each villager is allotted one ton of free coal every year. When the Spring Festival arrives, village authorities provide free flour, beverages, liquor and watermelons as Spring Festival gifts. Moreover, a group of two-story villas, each with a floor space of around 200 square meters, was built on the mountain slope. Any villager may purchase a villa at the expense of 55,000 yuan with village authorities subsidizing the remaining 50,000 yuan. By now, some 50 households in Dazhai, or one-third of the village's total population, have moved to the new villas.

An economic development company was established to promote the local economy. Headed by Guo Fenglian, the company has under it over 10 branches, engaging in various fields like coal mining, cement production, husbandry, liquor manufacturing and tourism. However, most of these branches are losing money. The only two profitable ones are a small coal mine run by the village authorities and a cement plant built with investments from Hong Kong. Today, the coal mine reserves have almost been emptied. In 2005 when China launched the red tourism program to encourage people to visit old revolutionary bases, the forest park on the Hutou Mountain brought villagers considerable wealth. But today, the park only makes money sporadically. Under these circumstances it is quite difficult for village authorities to provide public welfare funds.

But the villagers don't care about public welfare allotments. Although communal life style ended over three decades ago, these villagers still cherish their close ties with each other. Maybe they are not rich in terms of material wealth, but they are inundated with happiness from their frequent and intimate communications.

They live on the land that their ancestors left them. They enjoy family bliss with their children running and playing all around. After over five decades of reforestation, the formerly barren Hutou (Tiger Head) Mountain has been transformed into a thriving forest. Nestled in the mountainous area, Dazhai is still full of idyllic pleasures.

Future of Villages

Dazhai and Daqiuzhuang rose to national fame at different periods. They now also face different destinies. When China drew up the grand plan of building a new countryside, both of these places were at a loss of what to do.

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong called on all farmers to join people's communes and fight against nature. He wanted farmers to accumulate enough material wealth to transform China into a modernized country.

In the 1980s, the Chinese government made great efforts to promote the household contract responsibility system. Households took the place of village communes as the basic production unit in rural China. Thanks to this policy, the food and clothing problem that had troubled Chinese farmers for thousands of years was addressed. But currently rural China is handicapped by a severe scarcity of public facilities. Social life is also disordered. In the 1980s, in order to rejuvenate rural economy, the government adopted several policies in the favor of township enterprises. But in the 1990s township enterprises crashed down one after another. Relevant authorities had no effort to spare on rural issues this time. During those years, Shenzhen and Pudong were the focus of national construction plan. All energies and resources were allocated to accelerate the pace of urbanization and industrialization. Suffering heavy tax loads, most farmers had to leave their home to try to earn a living in big cities.

In the past five decades, the government has enacted a great many policies covering rural management. Some of them were too strict and some too loose. In 2006, the Central Government abolished the agricultural tax. China ushered in a new era of "industry subsidizing agriculture". Unlike the previous rural developments, this time, there is no specific path for farmers to follow.

When consumption becomes widespread all around the globe, what will Chinese farmers choose for their future? Will the mode of Daqiuzhuang defeat that of Dazhai? Across the vast land of China, there are a number of villages enjoying the same opportunities and favorable locations like Daqiuzhuang. Is it wise for them to embark on this road of industrialization?

When the journalist left the home of Jia Jincai, the last one he interviewed in Dazhai, Jia's granddaughter, eight-year-old Jia Tongtong, was watching TV in the cave dwelling. Her grandparents were both national model workers. Except the commonly seen photos of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Jia Tongtong's cave was decorated with photos in which her grandparents stand side by side with state leaders like Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Zhu Rongji. However, the eight-year old girl didn't understand the significance of these photos. When the journalist left, she was laughing heartily at the scene of a popular TV program. Jia Tongtong liked the plump boy in it and she seemed very fond of cartoons.

What is the future of Chinese villages? The idyllic Dazhai or the industrialized Daqiuzhuang? After visiting both villages, it seems no concrete answer. But it is important to note that in both villages, the younger generation is unwilling to return home after studying in big cities.

(Translated from Nanfengchuang magazine for China.org.cn by Huang Shan and Chen Xia October 10, 2007)