Well, here’s one look at rural China, focussing on Gansu (a province I would love to visit, especially Shandan, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out why). It’s worth a read, especially if you don’t know much about rural China. Meaning: It’s a rather shallow, flight piece, but it still manages to give a brief introduction to what life is most likely like for the majority of China’s people.
There’s only one thing I want to quibble with:
To put that in perspective, nationwide the average GDP per capita – not per family – is just over RMB16,000. In China’s boomtown of Shanghai, that figure rises to more than RMB55,000.
Those absurdly high figures are due to the presence of a certain number of people with an income which, in comparison with the incomes of the majority of Chinese people (and foreign teachers), can only be described as absurdly high.
Otherwise that article is well worth a read. And the pictures are cool, too.
