Hong Kong, June 06’ I wish I lived the cultural revolution…

Mr Chen is a taxi driver in Hong Kong. This morning he drove me to Hung Hom train station and engaged the conversation by asking me what was my destination from there. Guangzhou, definitly sounded familiar to this man who was born there and flew to HK beginning of the 60’s to escape poverty. 40 years later he was telling me how he wished he had stayed there in order to make lots of money like his friends and relatives over there.
Looking at the financial success, some of his mainland chinese relatives built in the 80’ up to now, a terrible decade like the cultural revolution, appeared to him as something that would have been “worth” passing through.
“I used to pay for all when we were going to the restaurant, now they are the one who invite me”.

Nan Hua, Guangxi province, April 06’, who’s the greatest ?

“who’s the greatest of the three?” is the question, we asked to Mr Li when we saw a big poster representing the last three former leaders of China over the Forbidden City in his living room, while we were sharing dinner with him.
Mr Li is a 37 years old farmer, that belongs to the Miao minority. He is married and has three children (yes three, explanations come later) and lives in a traditional Miao three floors wooden house.
So who is the greatest of the three in your opinion ? Mao Tse Dong, Den Xiao Ping or Yang Zemin? To our surprise, he replied without a moment of hesitation, Mao.
The leader who had the most positive influence on the country was not the one that gave a bit of fresh air and noticeably improved the standard of living of Chinese people, as Mr Li acknowledges himself. Neither was it the one that kept these changes on track and pushed them further.
We probed to see how much he knew about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. As a matter of fact, though his level of education was low and heavily influenced by the official truth, this period of the Chinese history meant millions of deads, as many starving and overall a huge failure.

So how did Mao managed to appear as the greatest leader of China ? “Because he liberated the country”, meaning he managed to keep it unified.
Here is Mr Li, one of the 3% of China population that belongs to ethnic minority (meaning not being Han), defending the unity of China as what matters the most.
One thing leading to another, we discovered a person who had gone through a couple of the things that epitomize the contradictions of post communist China.
Mr Li has three children. As a minority member, he is legally allowed to have two children, but getting a third one put him in troubles. He had already two girls and wanted a boy to take care of him and his wife when they would get older (boys in China, often replace quasi non existing pension schemes, while girls are expected to play the same role for the family in law).
He told us about how his wife had to hide when she got visibly pregnant to avoid to be aborted by the local officials. He told us also about the 3000 RMB (about 300 euros) fine he had to pay after she gave birth for having broken the law. A sum that back then represented more than a year of wages for him.

Like many poor farmers in China, he got attracted by the lights of the city and headed a couple of years ago to the Guangdong province to look for work in a garments factory.
There he discovered the reality of the factory of the world : he was receiving about 250 RMB a month (about 25 euros), but often would not get paid or with a couple of months delay. Working time, was 7 days a week and at least 12 hours a day, with overtime frequently not even paid. After two years he left, or actually never went back from his Chinese New Year annual leave. Today an equivalent unqualified job in a garment factory there would be paid about 500 RMB and the conditions would most of the time be as bad. Employees that go back and stay in their home place after Chinese New Year holidays are very frequent today in China, which doesn’t come as a surprise…