Back to the roots

Much has been written about the massive flows of people from rural to urban China during the last few decades.

And rightly so, as this unprecedented human mass migration has altered the very fabric of Chinese society. Regrettably, the dire consequences for the places of origin, the vast rural hinterlands, have been neglected for the most part in this narrative. Due to labour migration whole regions have been depopulated with solely children and the elderly staying behind in abandoned so-called 'shell villages (kongke cun)'.

Largely unnoticed, there is also a still small but growing flow of people in the opposite direction. Urban intellectuals leave the cities and settle down in the Chinese countryside not only to flee overcrowded, polluted and stressful urban agglomerations, but to revive rural traditions and ways of life as well as to support local economies.

One of these is the prominent art curator, graphic designer, documentary film-maker and writer Ou Ning.

In 2011, he left Beijing for the village of Bishan in Anhui province in order to realize his own vision of rural revitalization. And he is not alone in this endeavour - there are currently around 200 similar projects by artists, writers, academics and activists across China.

In fact, the country has a long history of well-meaning urban intellectuals embarking on a mission to develop or redevelop rural areas.

Pioneers of the so-called 'Rural Reconstruction Movement' were the famous Republican-era reformers Liang Shuming and James Yen. The most influential advocate of a 'New Rural Reconstruction (Xin xiangcun jianshe)' at the beginning of the 21st century is without doubt the renowned scholar Wen Tiejun whose elaborate theories and social experiments inspired and guided a new wave of activism at the grassroots level.

It has to be noted that this back-to-the-countryside movement is not to be confused with the state-driven, mainly top-down campaign to 'build a new socialist countryside' (jianshe xin shehuizhuyi nongcun) that was promulgated by the central government in 2006. The state initiative involves markedly different objectives, instruments and scale (for an assessment of this official policy on rural development, see here).

In an extensive and meticulously researched article, Ou Ning has described both the rich historical and theoretical context of rural reconstruction movements as well as his personal approach at so-called 'Bishan Commune' in Anhui province (see this blog post).

The short film 'Down to the Countryside' by ChinaFile's Sun Yunfan and Leah Thompson follows Ou Ning to his new domicile in the village.

It gives a very lively first impression of Bishan Commune with its diverse undertakings, main actors and problems encountered. According to the ChinaFile site, the video is part of an ongoing project, titled 'Bishan: Reinventing China's Emptying Countryside'.

So watch out for more!