A VIRTUAL TOUR
OF A PEASANTS' VILLAGE IN CHINA
While in Beijing, my delegation visited the Great Wall of China. On the way to the Great Wall, we passed dozens of peasants' villages, and eventually persuaded our guide to let us stop in one. Peasants make up a large percentage of China's population. In Shaanxi province, the largest province in China, farmers make up 80 percent of the population. Of the 34 million inhabitants of the province, some 2 million of them live below the poverty line. At least 50 percent of these people are illiterate.
Most peasant villages have no running water, but for a spicket in the center of the vilalge, and their houses have no central heat or air. Each family is given a narrow plot of land, which extended from the wall you will see marking the boundary of the fields out to the back of the fields, seen in the background. Peasants spend their days laboring in the fields, and usually work a seven day week. Their income is approximately $500 US dollars a year. The quicktime movie is a virtual tour of the village in which I stopped, nestled in the shadow of the Great Wall.
This appeared to be a relatively prosperous village; the peasants were reasonably well-dressed, there were tiny shops, a credit union, and several peasants were gathered together in small groups passing the time of day by playing games or talking with one another. Although many were curious about us, many of them were also frightened. When they saw us attempting to take their pictures, they would scurry quickly back into their dwellings.
Our delegation had stopped at the cloisonne factory on the outskirts of Beijing on our way to the Wall; collectively, the nine of us spent about twice the annual earnings of one of these peasants. Cloisonne was an art form considered so beautiful it was once restricted to the emperor; I could not help but wonder what meaning such precious objects would have to the people I saw in this village and to the thousands of other Chinese peasants living below the poverty line.
For further exploration of peasants in global societies and in history, visit:
From Jinshan Township in Shanghai.
Academy of Jinshan Peasant Painting
More peasant work from Shanghai, including lacquer and silk rugs. This is an online gallery, which includes images of work for sale.
Nangi Village in Nepal.
Social Organization in a Turkish Village
Text by Paul Stirling
Huarochi: Peruvian Culture in Time
There are some pictures here of Tupicocha, a modern Huarochi village. This site is not all that easy to navigate, there is not very much textual information on the village, but it is an interesting visual experience.
Kathe Kollwitz works on Peasant revolts in World War I.
Culture Committee: The Peasants' Role in Hongshan Culture
Serfs, Peasants, and Socialists: A former serf village in the Republic of Guinea
Starvin' the Peasants: Russian Peasants in the famine of 1891
during the Stalinist era
Ukranian Peasants in the Age of Stalin. This is one of the best links on this list. A must-visit site!
Posters of the Spanish Civil War
art as propaganda and the appeal to the peasantry.
publisher of "Peasants' Truth" in Belarus
Peasants in History:
Old Sturbridge Village: A New England Village from the 1830's
a little off our topic of "peasants," but still an interesting view of rural life in nineteenth-century America
Lords and Peasants in 12th and 13th century Catalonia
Brief description of the highly significant excavation of a medieval village outside of York, England.
The Origins of the English Village
Les Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry
medieval illuminated manuscript which shows much about peasant life in the western Middle Ages.
Frederich Engels: The Peasants' War in Germany (16th century)
Created by Dr. Deborah Vess, copyright 1998. All rights reserved.
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