Poyang Lake, Jiangxi province
The Guardian, October 19, 2002
The village beside Poyang Lake provides vivid proof of the flight from
the land in the vast rurql interior. No attempt has been made to reclaim the abandoned houses and gardens where a single
young buffalo grazes the turf quietly.
Hefei and Beijing
The Guardian, August 07, 2001
"Ninety per cent of the children here have been abandoned, 60% are disabled
and 70% are girls. Sometimes they leave them right outside the gate: the mothers are migrants from the countryside. They see
what a fine place this is and want to make sure their children are taken in."
Kaifeng, Henan province
The Guardian, June 11, 2001
The rural counties around the ancient capital of Kaifeng have been well
planted with trees, under which the villagers cool down and eat their midday meal. Yet some of these peaceful villages - no
one knows how many - nurture a terrible scourge, spread by unhygienic blood collection, which the provincial medical authorities
are trying desperately to hide.
Questions about annual per capita income mean nothing on a remote hillside
in the south of Yunnan. The village head squats on the ground and searches for an answer. "If a family has
a pig and sells it, then they can earn some cash," he says.
Zongyang County, Anhui
The Guardian, March 01, 2000
Zhang Meifeng looks out from under the blankets of her bed in an icy rural
hospital in central China, and lists the benefits of breast-feeding. She has been inspired by the maternal and child
health (MCH) project, sponsored by Unicef and run by the ministry of health.
Beijing
The Observer, March 16, 1999
Four young Chinese peasant girls - Brilliant Frost, Winter Plum, Auspicious
Grape and Cultured Grace - died last month on Train 105, on a cold grey morning soon after Chinese New Year. The express from
Beijing to Shenzhen - the boom town on the Hong Kong border where they sought work - was already packed. At Shangqiu in Henan
province, several hundred more migrants struggled to board with their cheap leather bags and cotton sacks of clothing.
