“There is an urban district in China, which has a symbolic meaning for the Chinese people. Other Chinese often call them “Far Eastern Jews” for their initiative, intelligence, and family orientation. People from this county live in all parts of China. You can find them on every continent, but they prefer to live in Romanesque Europe: countries like France, Italy, and Spain. Those quiet people from a small Chinese county are often the actual makers of the famous Italian clothes and shoes. How Chinese migrants from Wenzhou became a powerful diaspora in Europe?”(here the full article from “The Lorcha”)
A few months ago, The Economist published an article titled: “Emigrants from a small corner of China are making an outsize mark abroad”. Here you can read the very first part.
“Wang Rui was too young to remember his parents when they left him. He was just two when his mother set off to start a new life in Europe. A year later his father followed her. In the countryside around the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou, young adults like them were doing the same in droves—abandoning their towns and villages, and often their children, in pursuit of a dream. Why eke out a hand-to-mouth existence in Wenzhou when there was far more money to be made in sweatshops in France or Italy? Why stay behind when so many had already left?”The Economist (Dec 20th, 2022)
Zhanwang is the author of the Facebook Post you can find below. He and his family come from Qingtian, a town near Wenzhou. When he was still a child, they moved to my hometown (Follonica, Tuscany, Italy), where they own a restaurant. His sister Zhanxing came back to China several years ago, and now lives in Shanghai like me.
Zhanwang talks about life in his hometown Qingtian (and in China in general) in a very spontaneous, funny and enriching way. I also include his nice and sometimes touching photos. Very interesting first person experience, especially for Western people who have a very different background.
Here you can find the original Post, written in Italian Language.
Thank you Zhanwang for allowing me to share your experience!
Qingtian Memories from Italy (by Zhanwang Xu) – ENG
China, like any country, has its own negative sides.
Here we are, stop. Who wants to hear the usual things can look somewhere else. Today I want to talk about that part of China that newspapers, tv and experts too often neglect because it does not give strong sensations.
China is a country filled with opportunities where merit, effort and results are usually prized, but it is not for everyone.
China is for those who have an open mind, for curious people, for those who are not used to lay in their comfort zone. It is for those who are aware that they will find a completely new world, different, sour. It is for people who are willing to accept that something different can exist, even if they don’t share the same thoughts, habits, traditions.
Have you ever noticed that, when talking about China, almost no one asks chinese people what they think about it?
Ask over-50 people (but even over-40) what is their thought about China. They saw the change, the most important one.
I am talking about hunger. If you go to China and you ask any old person how do people live in China, they will reply: “good, much better!”.
They will tell you about years in which there was no food, when you couldn’t even find ants on the ground.
They will tell you about freezing winters spent farming land with bare feet, watching cows and livestock starting age of 7 or 8. They will tell you about shouts, beatings, long hours walking even only to collect water. They will tell you about 10 years old children that had to take care of younger siblings, about abandoned children. They will tell you about newborn babies, male and females, exchanged as if they were things.
Grandma lived that time. She watches the Party assembly, she says that maybe they will increase her pension. It happened everytime Uncle Xi has been re-elected. She remembers that in the 90’s her pension was equal to 75 rmb (10 €). She remembers that she had to rely on that to feed the whole family, and that now she receives a bit more than 3000 rmb (400 €), a big difference (she smiles).
Most men retire at the age 55 – 60, women at the age 50 – 55. Salaries for low skilled jobs are still low (in the range between 500 € – 800 €), but skilled workers can find good salaries with good benefits.
Public buses are free for people older than 65 years old. Ticket is half-price for children. A normal ticket usually costs between 0.15 € – 0.4 €.
People older than 80 years old receive 4 € per month to pay phone bills, it is enough for phone calls. They also receive 80 € per year on a special card, that can be used for eating, massages, house-cleaning.
If you don’t keep heating and air conditioners always on, the expense for water, electricity and gas is really low.
There are special restaurants where old people can eat very cheaply. In some small villages 40€ is enough to eat for a whole month, two meals per day.
In my small town you cannot find hundreds of rickshaws anymore. They have been replaced by small blue electric cars (similar to the ones used in golf fields), that can bring you around the city for a few coins.
Many shops work with continued schedule from 8 am to 9 – 10 pm. The idea “the more you work, the more you earn” strongly sticks in everyone’s mind.
Seeing children between the ages of 4 to 8 going around by themselves, both during the day and during the night, coming back from school, having breakfast… all this takes me back 25 years.
Girls can walk alone in the street. In front of bank offices you can find many women with large bags filled with cash that people can exchange without having to queue – of course speculating on the exchange rate. Policemen go around without guns or batons, there are cameras everywhere and crimes are really rare.
Shanghai subways shine and are huge (not only in Shanghai, this is true for many cities – Editor’s note). Sometimes you need to walk half kilometer just to change line. The travel time between stops is usually a couple of minutes. Trash cans are a problem… there are very few, probably to maintain decorum. Cleaning staff very frequently gets into the trains. There are metaldetector controls, tickets have different costs based on the travel length and they usually cost between 0.4 € and 0.7 €. No one climbs over the gates, even the worst person pays the ticket. And subways even connect different airports (for example from Hongqiao Airport to Pudong Airport, 95 minutes, 58 km, ticket cost around 1.2 € – Editor’s note). Many chinese people learned how to correctly queue to get on trains and subway. At each steps there are two operators on the platforms checking the regular service and the driver gets out at every stop to be sure that the train can depart again. Platforms are not open – which means that no one can fall or throw himself on the train tracks.
One thing you will notice if you will ever go to China is that you will find free toilets everywhere!
Public toilets almost everywhere in the city, mostly new even in the smallest towns, and kept super clean (I must say that it was not like this before, even only 4-5 years ago – Editor’s note).
If Amazon delivers within one day, in China you can order a lot of stuff and seeing it at home within one hour.
China is like this because everyone does its part. It seems that everyone knows what his place and role is in society.
These workers (5), often old or troubled people, sweep roads from day to night. Sometimes they continue to do it even in non-sense situations, like during strong windfalls causing leaves to fall down repeatedly: they clean and it will be exactly the same after 5 seconds.
Sometimes I find them sitting on the roadside, on a chair, on their bicycles, with closed eyes. You also find those who go around the city to collect bottles, cardboard boxes to sell them to waste landfills. Actually, my grandparents do the same: they keep all sort of recyclable waste, not to earn 1 € or 2 € but as a habit.
China is a country that does not wait anyone, if you stop you are over. You will be blocked in that limbo where millions of people live a mediocre life. Competition is fierce, pressure is incredible.
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China is in the eyes of fathers and mothers seeing their sons and daughters leaving to go allover the world, to find them again aged, adults.
China is the millions of children who could not grow up next to their parents, giving birth to a fracture that often cannot be healed.
China is this picture (7), a mother (the one on her feet) looking at her child playing. Those emotions that too often we leave apart, those emotions that our culture somehow forces us not to show making us look like robots.
China are those silhouettes that we met at 5 am in the winter, pushing their carts filled with goods along a dirt road without lights, to reach the city at dawn.
China are those people that stay at the road corner until late at night, waiting for someone buying a few more strawberries.
China is the sacrifice of entire generations.
My aunt and her tears, waiting for my cousin return after 14 year. His sacrifice, fatigue, and his silence not to let her worry.
My grandfather gaze. 30 years earlier he saw her daughter leaving with a backpack; in 1998 he brought us (his grandchildren) to Beijing Airport and also this time he was the last figure we saw while we were stepping away.
Grandpa is always there saying goodbye to us, at any time, from 3 pm to 4 am, as if each time could be the last.
China is its young people, who got used to try to be the best since when they were children. They are the ones who decided to have education abroad, learning and bringing back the know-how to China.
I remember during school time or at the university (in Italy – Editor’s note) hearing sentences like “let’s hope to achieve at least a score of 6” (6 out of 10 is the minimum passing score for assignments up to high school – Editor’s note), “let’s hope to pass the exam”, and I never understood.
I have not always studied well, I was not always prepared, but everytime there was an assignment, written or oral, I always tried my best and thought I could achieve the maximum score. This should be the common mentality.
China is what it is today ALSO because entire generations gave up their lives, their personal relationships and their dreams so that the ones coming after them could have a easier path.
China is the widespread awareness that, in order to improve your familiar and economic situations, you must make sacrifices that are often unsustainable and inexplicable, but necessary.
Qingtian in the 90’s (6).
On picture (2), upper photo, our home (the left building on the left of the red bridge in picture 6).
On picture (2), lower photo, what you can see now on the right side of picture (6) river (yes, it was empty).
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