From dbw:

留守妇女 [liúshǒufùnǚ]:  noun. wives who stay at home in rural areas while their husbands are away in urban areas for long periods of time

Not long ago, Dr. Zhang Hongyan encountered an embarrassing moment at the hospital emergency room: a woman dressed in rags was sent to the hospital with her lower body attached to her pet dog’s genital. When the medical staff pushed the bed into the operating room, the female patient’s face was colorless. No need to explain, Zhang Hongyan has already guessed what had happened. Zhang Hongyan picked up a suction syringe filled with anesthetic and injected into the panic pet dog.

Without much of struggle, a few minutes later, the sleeping dog was successfully taken out of the room. Drops of sweat rolled down from Dr, Zhang’s forehead. The patient gradually calmed down, however Dr, Zhang felt uneasy: in this imbalanced society, how many women are doing the same thing in order to relief their sufferings?

» » » » Continue reading ‘Sexual repression of the stay at home women in China’s rural areas’

This short article (from Tianya) was written by a student from the countryside. It has no statistics, nor is it necessarily anthropological, but it is an honest testimony from personal experience, which in my opinion, is sometimes more valuable than quasi-objective statistical conclusions.

It starts out:

I, myself, am a person from the countryside。 I’m not writing this to be discriminatory, I just hope it leads to reflection, and maybe to finding the source of the problem.

» » » » Continue reading ‘How come girls from the countryside are more open about sex?’

From MOP:

Life is a process, a process from birth to death. Everyone has their own attitude towards life. While some people are enjoying their healthy bodies and taking them for granted, some other people are living a difficult life because of their physical disabilities. In Xiaoyangba community Yichang town, Hubei Province, there is a “teacher” with severe physical disabilities. A childhood medical malpractice injured his sciatic nerve, so he forever could not stand up.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Legless teacher, I am proud of you’

What is this picture about? Why is this poor woman being blocked out by hundreds of Chengguan (City Urban Administrative and Law Enforcements)? [Netease] On December 17, Wuhan City organized over 800 law enforcement officers to forcefully demolish nearly 40,000 square meters of illegal buildings that are near the Wuhan City to Huangshi City railway construction site. The phenomenon of local famers rushing to “grow houses” is very common.

What does “growing houses” mean?

It is yet another unique phenomenon in China, formed in the last couple of years of amazingly fast social and economic development. When the entire nation is being modernized, countless high raises are erected every year, cities are expending and county’s infrastructures are also expending in order to support the economic growth. Highways, railroads and airports; bridges, tunnels and subway systems… are being built in almost every corner in China. This means some of the existing residential and farmland in the rural areas might be in the blue-print of a governments’ huge project. The government pays for development compensations for every house they have to tear down in order to build the development project. This motivated the farmers to build houses everywhere in the rural area of China. When some of them are permitted by the government but most are illegally and cheaply built. They even start to build houses in the agricultural fields therefore people say the farmers are “growing houses” instead of growing food.

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(picture: A polluted eggplant)

[Southern Metropolis Daily] In July and August of this year, the Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution incident caused nationwide concerns. It has been three to months since the incident, chemical plant was permanently closed, the relevant officials were suspended from their positions and affected farmers also received a certain amount of compensation. Recently the photographer went back to Liuyang, to some of the affected areas and shot a set of portraits for the crops. These terminally ill fruits and vegetables tell us the disaster has not yet ended.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Vegetables are sick – Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution’

As Chinese youth are exposed to more and more sex via the Internet in China’s rapidly expanding economy, the education system still has to catch up to their newfound curiosity. Even many schools in Beijing have only recently started true sex education classes, and these only usually begin in high school. There is an inconsistency in the way that China is becoming increasingly liberalized in some ways, but not quickly enough in some important ways and the problem of sexual education illuminates this (you can see the progression of abortion rates here). A number of horrific incidents have occurred recently, including a young woman giving birth in a toilet. Here is a recent article in the Slate concerning the lack of sex education in China. The following story provides a detailed description of the reaction of a small town to the incident of a 14-year old girl giving birth with no one ever noticing she was pregnant.

» » » » Continue reading ‘The Blank Slate of Sexual Education in the Chinese Countryside’