Voices From The Ground: Real Life Stories of Changing China

This book is a compilation of some of the most important and in-depth stories taken on by China Dailys award-winning Cover Story team in 2010. In order to fulfill their mission, China Dailys dedicated teams have traveled across China to listen to the voices of people on the ground. These stories cover various aspects of common Chinese peoples life, recording their sorrow, hope and survival in the face of disaster. Both real content and rich details will help readers touch and taste common Chinese peoples daily life.

contents

Eye on China

Bodyguards a safe investment for rich

Poor patients dicing with their lives

They survived SARS, but live in agony

Copy-making vs profit-making

Magazines turning new page in battle for readers

Human flesh search could turn predatory

Donors kept in the dark on where money goes

Nuclear reaction to tourist attraction

Misconceptions about contraception

AIDS and the elderly

Gay rights in China: Road to respect

Migrants cash in on labor shortage

‘Ants’ feel the bite of being forced out

View from the villages

Radical treatment for healthcare

Trade in trigger-happy towns

‘Work widows’ suffer in silence

From land to luxury

Green NGO drives change at grass roots

‘Strangers’ return to a frosty village welcome

Getting past the class divide

Taking the flicks into the sticks

Travelers make final stretch for reunions

Unlike parents, young migrants won’t take their fate lying down

Fight against AIDS has a long way to go

Democracy takes root in rural areas

Home alone in the countryside

City life

‘I will never give up my search’

Foreign faces there for rent

When love no longer reigns for 'kings & queens'

Springing the Net to reconnect

Couples become easy prey in tube baby boom

Heartache of childless couples

Short-term gain vs long-term strain

Bidding fashionable farewell to the dead

Too good to waste as rubbish is chic

Bid to make the way to heaven smooth

Eking out a living is becoming burden

Underpaid, overworked and ignored

Ancient cures for modern ills

Prejudice forcing men off wards

Gay rights in China: ROAD TO RESPECT

Pensioner’s life shows the shift in attitudes towards homosexuality in China but experts say challenges still lay ahead.

Cao Li reports.

To many gay men and women, Ba Li is an inspiration. At the age of 72, he has endured decades of humiliation because of his sexuality, including being sentenced to a total of seven years hard labor. Yet it is his message of hope that resonates most with young homosexuals.

His extraordinary life charts the slow but sure transformation in Chinese attitudes towards the gay and lesbian community, and although difficulties still exist, he believes people now enjoy more freedom than ever to express their sexuality.

The pensioner, who asked to be called Ba Li — the same Chinese characters for Paris — to protect his family, invited China Daily to his birthday celebrations at a small restaurant not far from Xidan, the commercial heart of Beijing.

“I have lived through sorrows and joys,” he said after blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, surrounded by several gay friends. “I am no longer considered a wrongdoer and I can finally live my life with my head held high.”

At his birthday party Ba Li sang, read poems and posed for numerous photographs with friends, stopping only to look at a picture of his boyfriend he kept in his shirt pocket. Many of his guests said how much they admired him for his courage in tougher times.

“I knew I was a woman’s soul in man’s body at very early age,” he said, his round face breaking into a broad smile. He was 16 when he started his first relationship, which lasted four years. “At the time, homosexuals were called ‘rabbits’ or other more derogatory names, and they met in secret at parks, bathhouses or public restrooms.”

His mother refused to accept his sexuality. “One night she sneaked into my bedroom when she thought I was sleeping and checked my body for abnormalities,” he said. His parents eventually forced him into a marriage that lasted less than six months. The marriage produced a daughter but he has no contact with her.

In 1977, Ba Li was sentenced to three years in a labor re-education camp after being found guilty of sodomy. He said another homosexual reported him to the police. The teacher was immediately fired from his job at a respectable high school as the supervisor felt he had “committed a crime that could never be forgiven”, he said.

He was also interred in 1982 and 1984, each time for two years.

“I even suffered discrimination from other inmates in prison,” he said. “Once I gave a young boy a steamed bun out of sympathy and I was beaten like a dog. It was so bad I contemplated jumping off the top of one of the labor camp buildings.” When he walked free from the camp in 1986, he said attitudes were already starting to change. “I began to see more gay people being active within their circles and the word ‘homosexual’ was being used more by the media,” he said.

Unemployed, Ba Li sold maps of Beijing to make a living and worked as a volunteer to distribute leaflets on AIDS prevention among the gay community. “Police used to take us back to the station and confiscate the pamphlets because they said they contained evil and pornographic content,” he said.

Introduction

Voices from the Ground is a compilation of some of the most important and in-depth stories taken on by China Daily’s award-winning “Cover Story” team in 2010. “Cover Story” was launched on March 1, 2010, as part of the newspaper’s fifth redesign in 30 years. Its mission is to look deep into the heart of China and find the people and places that are driving the rapid change in this vast nation. This book contains just some of the many topics covered by our dedicated team of Chinese and foreign journalists and photographers, from social changes affecting millions of people to innovative business trends involving billions of dollars. They have traveled across China and the world to listen to the voices of those on the ground, to record their tales of sorrow, their tales of hope and their tales of survival in the face of disaster. From the countryside to the cities, our reporters talked to people at the center of some of the world’s most pressing issues: the financial crisis, humanitarian and disaster relief, disease prevention, political and social conflicts. Meet the coastal factory owners facing labor shortages, the “post-1980s” couples struggling to stick together, the Wenchuan earthquake survivors rebuilding their lives and the “Ant Tribe” graduates searching for a sense of belonging.

There are also a lot of the works featured in this book focusing on China’s 240 million migrant workers. Dubbed by many as the “engine” powering the nation’s rapid growth, their lives reflect the successes and setbacks of almost every aspect of China’s political, economic and social reforms. Follow a bricklayer as he makes his annual pilgrimage to his family home for Chinese new year; meet the family of a worker stabbed when he fought for unpaid wages; witness the struggle of village women returning from the cities, and share the dreams of laborers with grand plans of their own. In just a short time, “Cover Story” has become one of China Daily’s most important features, going on to win both national and international acclaim. This is testament not only to the “Cover Story” team’s unwavering efforts, but also to those across other areas of the newspaper that have provided vital support and advice. By enjoying this book, I hope you will gain a better understanding of the changes ongoing in China, as well as the efforts China is making to better understand the world.

Zhu Ling

Editor-in-Chief, China Daily News Group