Transcript: Home Village

NARRATOR: Once a year Dwanzhi returns to the tiny village in Wuhan where he was born and where the average wage is less than a dollar a day.

DWANZHI SHE: We're on our way to see my mother, my brother and his family and some of the folks. This is the entrance to my village. This road hasn't been improved since I left. The one problem in rural China is that all these infrastructures have to be funded by the peasants. It's really unfair because in the cities it's subsidized by the government and infrastructures are being -- are built by the government. But here, the people have to pay themselves. In my village the main source of income, the main industry, is growing rice, but growing rice is not really profitable.

The cost of producing rice is just not competitive at all compared to ah, for example, American farmers.

DWANZHI SHE: We're now heading to the primary school that I ah, attended when I was a little boy here. This is the first time they see a camera and then, maybe the first time they see a foreigner. So it's big news -- sensational! In fact I didn't see a car until I was like ten years old. Let's go and meet my teacher, Mr. Wong.

MR. WONG: (Chinese)

DWANZHI SHE: He could tell back then that I -- I would have a bright future because I was the hardest working student and ah, had the best scores.

DWANZHI SHE: This is the third grade classroom. This is typical one of those rural school classroom settings. She's gonna read us a children's poem.

STUDENT: (Reading in Chinese -- "Life is a long river...")

DWANZHI SHE: This poem is about ah, a ten year old child -- ah, his ambition for the future.

DWANZHI SHE: She wants to be a writer.

MR. WONG: (Chinese)

DWANZHI SHE: The government really has to provide stronger suppose to rural families. Because right now these -- a lot of families still have difficulties funding their children's education in schools. So perhaps out of this class of fifty-five, three kids will be able to make it. Most of the kids will just end up being farmers.

DWANZHI SHE: As somebody who came from this place it kind of makes me feel almost guilty that I live in the life so different from them.