介绍:
"In Winter the land is frozen and still. A cloudless sky shines off snow-covered rice paddies, reflecting light so bright, you have to shield your eyes. I lean into a stinging wind and trudge north up Red Flag Road, to a village named Wasteland."
With these gripping and graphic descriptions shown above, this is how American author Michael Meyer starts his latest book, "In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China".
For many readers, as a geographical term, Manchuria may sound quite strange, unless you switch it to "Dongbei", which literally means "Northeast" in Chinese. With a population and size equal to Germany and France combined, the region is always synonymous with the cradle of the mighty Qing Dynasty, numbing cold as well as the hometown of warm-hearted and generous northeasterners.
"I grew up in Minnesota, which is in American's north. You know, it is the origin of Mississippi River and there is lots of countryside too. I grew up around corn farms specially. So when I moved up to this village, to me, it felt a lot like home actually. My home is also snowy and cold. People play ice hockey and there are farmers. So when I got there, it was sort of relief actually after living in Sichuan and Beijing. I feel like: 'Oh, I'm coming home!'"
In 2010, after finishing his internationally acclaimed debut "The Last Days of Old Beijing", this travel writer decided to spend sometime in a rice-farming community in Jilin Province, where his wife grew up.
"When I moved there, I thought I was sort of doing a fun book about local history, local jokes and local recipes. So it was sort of like a year in a life of a Chinese village. What I wasn't expecting when I moved there was that the massive transformation was going to be happened, where the family-held farms have been converted into a company-run agribusiness."
Instead of romanticize a tranquil, pastoral image of the Chinese countryside, Meyer applies a sharp alertness of a former journalist to document the astonishing transformation of this hamlet. Empty boxes of expensive Panda brand cigarettes and bottles of Moutai liquor are dotted along the main road, giving off the smell of new money; the residents of Wasteland lease their land rights to a private agribusiness company and move into high-rising apartments; and a huge billboard is standing besides the road with the message: "Build the Northeast's Top Village".
"For example, when the hot spring resort opened, I said to the farmers: 'that's the bad thing, right? Because you don't go to the resort.' And they said: 'No, that's really a good thing. (Because) we are not in the dead end anymore. We are integrated into Jilin province. We have people coming from different cities to visit our village. We are integrated into China proper, because people all over China are buying our rice.' So their attitude has changed too. They don't consider themselves as villagers anymore necessarily. "
But he also reveals a much more mixed emotion behind the seemingly promising urbanization. Seniors still feel attached to their lands; some farmers are concerned about the rice price; and people worry about that if they give up old homes in exchange for living in modern apartments, they will lose secondary incomes by keeping the farming yards.
Meyer emphasizes that what happens in Wasteland is definitely not a typical image of rural China, but rather, an epitome of the country on the brink of change.
"Is it a trend or is it a historical inevitability? You know, western countries have already gone these movements, (such as) generations of shift from small towns to big cities, from agriculture-based economy to the service and knowledge-based economy. China is catching up. It is going through that period right now. "
But be aware that "In Manchuria" is anything but a simple sociological research. Combining elements of travelogue, memoir, reportage, and historical research, the writer delves into the past four hundred years of the vast landscape. Travelling 25 thousand miles throughout the region, he weaves the rich texture of history into life of today.
"There is no other part of China that has been the site of so many international incidents, foreign occupations and all these different wars. You are talking about the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, then the warlord era under the Kuomindang, Chinese communist party era, Japanese era, and Korean war era, which make it so much history overlapping on each other up there. (It's) a fascinating place to travel around and hunt the history down."
Written in a witty and sometimes sensitive manner, "In Manchuria" is praised by Wall Street Journal and New York Times for its "simple grace" and "amusingly incongruous details".
Its Chinese version will be out this year with the title, "Journey to the Northeast".
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