ENGLISH EDITION OF THE WEEKLY CHINESE NEWSPAPER, IN-DEPTH AND INDEPENDENT
The Road to Urbanization
Summary:


Grains, wooden houses and colourful minority costume make up the landscape of Miao villages. 

Two yuan is all it costs to travel across the whole county of Rongjiang by taxi. With a one-lane road winding its way up the mountains, the county lies quietly in southwest China’s Guizhou province. Villages are scattered across mountain slopes.

This is the heartland of the Miao people, one of the largest ethnic minorities in China. To travel from one village to another, one has no choice but to walk. It is partly due to this seclusion that the Miao culture has remained virtually undisturbed by China's transformations.

The weekly Saturday market is the highlight of the locals' life. There, they have access to all the novelties of pop culture-- posters of celebrities, backdated magazines …

To the younger generation, literacy is becoming more important. Teachers in local schools teach both the children and their illiterate parents. In the past, some parents would interrupt classes to ask their kids to work on the farms, says a teacher. When he first taught here, only three out of the over 600 villagers had completed junior high school. Now, the number has increased to over 30, he says proudly.



The crowds gather at a power supply station to make payment on a market day.
Wood and help from friends and relatives are all it takes for the Miao people to build a house.

                                                                  Kids at different ages study in the same class. It’s been a custom for girls to go to school later than boys.


A mini calculator is a complete novelty to the kids.


A teacher teaches elementary arithmetic illiterate local adults at night.


As more men leave home to work in cities, wives frequently visit pay phones downtown and queue to talk to their loved ones.  


A boy is playing with hog blood at a butcher’s. 

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