City life hard, but better than mining and quakes
- Source: Global Times
- [08:32 December 31 2009]
- Comments
By Deng Yumei, as told to Chen Chenchen
My story of the past decade, if written out, is probably as long as a book.
I was born in a mountain village in Beichuan, Sichuan Province in 1966. Like other siblings in the family, I couldn’t afford to enter high school. I merely finished junior middle school. At 21, I married a man in another village. It took more than 10 hours to get there from my parents’ village.
By 1999, I had an 11-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. Farming was our only source of income; we made enough to feed ourselves, and sold whatever was left over. Life was very tight. Just before Spring Festival, several villagers returned from Shanxi Province, and boasted how easy it was to make money outside. They said each worker could make 100 yuan ($14.7 yuan) per day at the mine. My husband was excited by the huge figure, and left with them after the Spring Festival.
Months passed. One day when I was watching the yard for someone else, a neighbor ran to me in a flurry and shouted, “Hurry up! Your husband is dog sick! He’s lying in the road.” I ran to the edge of the village, where my husband was lying, thin and sallow.
A relative who had helped him back all the way told me that he was too weak to bear the work at the mine. My husband was suffering from icterohepatitis, as well as stomach disease and asthma. He was ill in bed for two to three years afterward, and it cost us nearly 3,000 yuan. The small sum of money he had brought home was soon spent, and we started to accumulate debts.
I decided that I should go out to earn money, since my kids were getting older, and I wanted them to get an education so they could lead a better life than us. I tried to make money by breeding silkworms at first, and raising pigs, and my husband tried buying and selling tree fungus, but it didn’t add up to much. It’s hard for farmers to do business.
I didn’t make up my mind to look for work in the city until both of my kids were older. In 2007, I went to Shandong and Zhejiang provinces to work as a waitress. It was light work, but I was too old to be hired by the best restaurants, which wanted young girls.
My daughter took the national college entrance examination that year, and was admitted by a university in Chengdu. Her performance in high school was really good. But she knew that we had no money for her to go to college.
She left for Zhejiang to be a worker in a textile factory after she graduated from high school. She said she should leave the money for her brother. I felt sad, but there was nothing I could do. She was a firm-minded girl, and had made her mind up long before.
2008 arrived. I went back to the village to help reap the wheat in May. On the afternoon of May 12, the ears of wheat in the field were shivering badly, and huge stones began to roll down from the mountain.
I had experienced an earthquake when I was young, and thus realized what was happening. People began to run in panic. My family was quite lucky, both kids were safe, and my husband was not indoors at that moment.
However, my father died in the earthquake. He was buried under the collapsing house, and his corpse is still there. My mother was sent to a collective boarding house, and I went to visit her in the winter. There’s no heating there. I heard that lots of money and donations have been sent to Sichuan, but we didn’t see any of it.
My daughter and I are both living in Beijing now, coincidentally. I work as a cleaner, making about 1,200 yuan a month, and she is a servant at the Pangu Plaza.
My son is going to take the national college entrance examination next year. He is a student of painting now, but it costs a lot to buy paint and paper. I send him 400 yuan every month. His sister encourages him to enter a college in Beijing, and promises to buy him a personal computer then. I just hope he can get an education.
It’s been a long trip, but I don’t regret it. The work here is easier than on the farm.
I hope that in 2010, my son will come to Beijing. Some say that by that time, I should ask his father to come here, too. The four of us should have a little trip together.
Deng Yumei is a cleaning lady living in Beijing, and Chen Chenchen is a Global Times reporter. chenchenchen@ globaltimes.com.cn
Gilbert: I was helping out at the Sichuan earthquake two months after it happened last year. The devastating earthquake killed at least 70,000 people there. Sichuan remains a poor and under-developed province in China. However, it’s beautiful scenery continues to attract many tourists to the place, making tourism as one of it’s main income earner.
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