Jiangnan House Hotel, Guangling district, Yangzhou, China,

Apropos of nothing, a repost of my article on Cao Pi's Guangling Expeditions.

In 224 and 225, Cao Pi personally led two expeditions from Guangling, hoping to cross the lower reaches of the Great River and attack Jianye. On both occasions, these plans never came to fruition. The Guangling Expeditions are one of the least discussed affairs of the Three Kingdoms, and for understandable reasons. They were of small consequence in the overall scheme of the war. Nevertheless,…

On the evening of June 27th, Lingling and I arrived in Guangling, our first stop outside of Beijing. We were both sad and happy to leave Beijing because we both loved our stay in the big city but were excited to start conducting some field visits (as we had been conducting office visits thus far). The purpose of our visit was to conduct site visits with a representative from Overseas China Education Foundation (海外中国教育基金会), a U.S. NGO that supports youth education in rural China.

Let’s start with an overview of Guangling County (广灵). Guangling is located in Shanxi Province (陕西省) to the east of Datong city (大同). Most buses from Beijing to Guangling  proper take around six hours. Guangling is one of the poorest counties in not only Shanxi, but also all of China. It has a population of approximately 200,000. Guangling is primarily known for its corn and potato exports. Although Shanxi province is well known for producing and exporting coal, Guangling does not have such capabilities. This means that people in Guangling rely on planting crops to earn a living, making Guangling poorer than coal-producing counties. Below are the 5 things that I learned in Guangling in no specific order:

There’s a phenomenon in Guangling known as Lao3 Kua3 (老侉) wherein men in Guangling that are unable to find wives for themselves purchase wives from other provinces, primarily Yunnan and Sichuan. These wives cost an average of 5,000 - 6,000 RMB. Some women are tricked by middle men and brought to Guangling whereas other women have come to this county of their own accord. Apparently women in Yunnan are treated far worse than women in Guangling, which may explain why women from Yunnan are both more easily tricked into coming to Guangling as well as come on their own. Women in Yunnan that are interested in marrying are also required to pay a dowry. However, in Guangling, it is the men that pay a marriage dowry. There’s an old saying that also says that the further the husband and wife’s hometowns are, the smarter their children will be. Although I doubt that this saying has any scientific backing, it is interesting that some people hold this sort of belief.

In Guangling, Yu2 Miao2 (鱼苗), literally translated as newly hatched fish, is the code word for Du2 Pin3 (毒品) aka illicit drugs such as heroin and the like. I noticed these words painted on village and city walls in Guangling along with a phone number to inquire about acquiring such drugs. Actual 鱼苗 are not sold in Guangling because Guangling is extremely dry and it is difficult to even acquire newly hatched fish for sale.

The average income for a rural family living in Guangling county is between 5,000 -6,000 RMB per year, which averages an annual income of around $830-$100 USD per year. Given that the average cost of sending a child to boarding school for their high school education can cost around 4,000 RMB, many rural families that are interested in seeing that their children successfully attend high school are forced to take out loans (and scholarships in some cases).

The number of children attending school in rural areas has been decreasing year after year and will likely continue to decrease. The principal at one of the elementary schools that we visited told us that five years ago, there were around 100 students at his school. Now, there are only around 35 students. There are many reasons for the decreasing number of rural students attending school, primarily: A) more and more young people are leaving rural areas for urban areas in the hopes of seeking jobs that pay better than agricultural work; and B) the majority of the population in rural areas around China leans more heavily towards the older end of the age spectrum.