Idyll or nightmare: what does rurality mean for farmers in a Chinese village undergoing commercialization?

ABSTRACT

Amid arguments over the recurrence or deconstruction of rural life – prompted by cultural reconstruction of rurality – the increasing complexity of rural life can be variously traced to economic, social, and political transformations common to all corners of the world. With primary reference to archives and in-depth interviews, this study aims to describe the experience with, negotiation of, and reproduction of rurality among farmers of a thousand-year-old village on the east coast of mainland China. In doing so, it reveals rurality as a Western concept used to clarify the fate of rural communities in a transitional economy. Indeed, market-oriented reform seems to have changed farmers’ conceptualization of rurality, with their references to “the good old days” serving as a complaint about their economically and politically inferior status. Certainly, rural tourism development is an idyllic prospect for urbanite, but it is becoming a nightmare for indigenous farmers as the cultural colonization embodied in the commercialization of rurality threatens to join industrialization and urbanization in encroaching on rural communities in a transitional economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Rurality
• cultural reconstruction
• commercialization
• rural tourism
• transitional economy

Acknowledgments

We thank all the interviewees for giving up their time to share with us their experiences, opinions, and ideas. We have greatly benefited from our discussions with Terry N. Clark, Dingxin Zhao, and Susanne M. Cohen from the University of Chicago. We are also grateful to the editor and to the anonymous reviewer’s insightful and constructive comments.

Notes on contributors

Bing Peng is a professor at the Department of Ethnology, Lishui University. He is also a professor at the Center for Local Governance Studies, Zhejiang University. He received his PhD degree from College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University. He was a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science, the University of Chicago. His research interest includes rural development, and community development.

Zhijun Liu is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University. He is also a research fellow of the Social Survey and Research Center at Zhejiang University. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Sun Yat-Sen University and once studied economics at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center. He was a visiting scholar of Kiel University, Germany in 2006 and Harvard-Yenching Institute from 2007 to 2008. His research interest includes urbanization, migration, rural development and left-behind children.

Bingxuan Zhang is an associate professor at the Department of Urban Governance and Public Economics, Zhejiang Gongshang University. He received his PhD degree from College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University. His research interest includes local governmental reform and social governance. He has completed a book on bureaucracy and governmental action.

Xutang Chen is an associate professor at the Department of Business, Lishui University. His research interest includes rural economy and rural development.

Notes

1 The genealogy of the lineage can be seen as a gazetteer of the village, for about 94% of indigenous farmers in the village are descendants of the lineage Zhu. Because their remote ancestor's honorific title was Yiyang, the lineage is named by the title and the surname: Yiyang Zhu.

2 The ba was a local unit of area at that time; the mu is a Chinese unit of area still used by many farmers in mainland China. 1 mu is approximately equivalent to 8 ba and is slightly more than 0.16 acres.

3 In the village, grain output in 1950 was 400 jin (200 kg) per mu. During the transition from mutual aid teams to low-level cooperatives, it gradually rose to 800 jin (400 kg) per mu. After the implementation of the household responsibility system in 1981, as well as improvements in grain varieties, the yield increased to 1200 jin (600 kg) per mu. With the introduction of hybrid rice in 1988, grain output jumped to 1600–2000 jin (800–1000 kg) per mu and sometimes reached 2200 jin (1100 kg) per mu.

4 Statistics were provided by the village, based on official estimates of current residents’ incomes – it being difficult to ascertain the precise incomes of those who work outside.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Sciences Foundation of China (grant number 12BSH064) and Zhijiang Outstanding Young Scholars of Social Sciences in Zhejiang Province of China (grant number T8).