This past Saturday our group visited a local migrant school. It was quite an experience. Besides Beijing’s affluent Chaoyang district there’s another bloc of the 1.3 billion people (and counting) that are often overlooked: Migrant workers. Also known as the “floating population” of China, they have flooded into big cities from the countryside throughout the past half-century looking for work to send money back home (one of the many surrounding provinces).
We were given some readings concerning China’s rural vs. urban situation, a problem that plagues many developing nations. As we drove north, on one side you could see the Summer Palace area, a popular tourist destination, and on the other began the impoverished migrant communities. Our bus eventually trudged through an alleyway littered with trash and multicolored puddles of stagnant water. A man on a bike with his little pudgy-cheeked boy came and led us back to the school. We eventually learned that the school’s principal started teaching in 1989 and has been forced to move locations several times by the State, the last time because of a light-rail system implemented by the government.
The school itself was only one-story and made of bricks. Classrooms surrounded the square breezeway or yard on all sides. As we walked through the entrance you could immediately hear the buzz of excitement and laughter coming from each classroom. For many of these children I was probably the first foreigner they had ever laid eyes on. Once again, the language barrier was a bit of an obstacle, but as soon as the kids were given the green light to kick around the soccer ball or use us tall American guys as basketball hoops, the frenzy of a Chinese elementary recess began. For a while it seemed as though every one of them had just chugged a Red Bull; they were on full throttle and we felt like celebrities.
We all split up into smaller groups and followed a couple of the children to their homes. The level of poverty that they live in was something I had never experienced before. Plenty of people have read about it in newspapers or magazines but to actually see it first hand really touched me. This one girl, her parents, and 2 grandparents all lived in this tiny, maybe the size of a college dorm room, one room apartment. They didn’t even own it either, they had to pay 800 RMB a month; which is very expensive for migrant communities. The girl’s family makes soy milk for a living, and they sell their products around their community. They came there a few years ago.
These migrant communities are so interesting because they are full of people from all over, many different provinces, who have their extended family back home where they eventually plan on returning.
The link below will take you to photos of that morning spent with the migrant school children. The Peace Sign was quite popular that day.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jhhoward87/MigrantSchool02?feat=directlink
