I said, "It refers to farmers who went to the cities to work as early as the 1980s and 1990s."
Zhenru replied, "In that case, I belong to this group. I went out to work in 1985."
At that time, Tangxian County had already started distributing farmland to households, and had eased restrictions to allow farmers to work outside of the county. Zhenru had a family of six; including grandparents and the two children. They lived off a mere five mu of corn and wheat. With no other income, on a good year the Zhao family could just manage to fill their stomachs, but on a bad year, the hunger was constant. It seemed as if they were farming year after year, only to dig themselves deeper into debt.
It just happened that two brothers from his village, Li Zhenhu and Li Zhenshuan, were getting a team of contractors together in Beijing and were in search of more workers, and Zhenru and several other village youths decided to join their ranks. Most of the jobs available were offered by the army, and involved tasks such as building barracks or warehouses and repairing roads. To begin with, Zhenru worked as a petty laborer for two yuan a day, which was just sixty yuan a month. After three years, Zhenru trained to be a bricklayer, and his daily wage increased from five yuan to seven yuan, then up to twelve yuan… until by 1995, it had eventually risen to thirty yuan. They generally started work on January 15 of the lunar calendar, and returned home during the Dragon Boat Festival for around two weeks to help shear the wheat. They went home again in late September for the autumn harvest, but then remained in the city until the end of year when they came home for the Spring Festival.
"When did you stop working in the city?" I asked him.
"Around 2002 or 2003."
"Why did you stop?"
Zhenru said, "Our generation went out to work with a clear goal in mind, some to earn enough money to get married, others to build a house. I was married at that time, but we still lived in a mud-brick house. So I had set my heart on staying until I had earned enough money to build a new one. By 2000, I had done it. I came home, demolished our old house, and built a new brick one with five rooms in its place. I thought a simple brick house could keep me happy for the rest of my life. During those years, I watched my son and daughter graduate from junior high school one after the other. But they went with some classmates to work in the city because they didn't want to continue their studies. So I went back too."
"Oh, so your son and daughter are both working outside the county now?"
"Yes, they are. My son is a woodworker on a construction site in Tianjin, and my daughter works in a restaurant in Beijing."
I asked for the phone number of his son and daughter in order to contact them when I got back to Beijing.
Pointing at Chen Baoxing, the village accountant, Zhenru told me, "He was also one of the first to go out to work from our village."
I asked Chen, "When did you leave?"
"In 1989."
"And did you also go to Beijing?"
"Yes, mainly to the suburbs; Shunyi, Daxing, Tongzhou…"
"Did you work in construction?"
"Those from our village mostly worked in construction. In the beginning I worked as a petty laborer on a construction site; then I took a course while working and qualified as a plumber."
"Are you still working now?"
"I stopped working three or four years ago."
"Why?"
Baoxing said, "For similar reasons to our village chief. My daughter got married, and three years ago my son went to work in Taiyuan in Shanxi, so I had no reason to work in the city any more. I also still had a few mu of farmland at home."
I asked Zhenru, "You said you followed Li Zhenhu and Li Zhenshuan. Are they still contracting projects elsewhere?"
"They haven't done that for seven or eight years."
"So have they all come back?"
"I haven't seen Zhenhu recently, but Zhenshuan is at home."
I asked Zhenru to take me to Zhenshuan's house for a visit.
At first glance, Zhenshuan's house looked quite different from the others. Facing the south, it was a brick house with eight rooms and a glass porch at the front. In the countryside, the house is the most concrete reflection of a family's wealth.
Upon seeing me in military uniform, Li Zhenshuan exclaimed, "How good it is to see a soldier again!"
"You've been in the army?" I asked him.
"Yes, I have."
In 1968, Zhenshuan enlisted in an armored unit in Beijing. During his five years as a soldier he had been a gunner, a captain of artillery, and a driver. After retiring in 1973, Zhenshuan worked as an electrician in the village, a job that demanded professional skills and which therefore paid the same as the strongest worker: ten work points a day. But even ten work points were worth no more than several dozen cents.
Later when the village distributed farmlands to its households, Zhenshuan's family of six got six mu of land. He worked both as an electrician and a farmer, but he was still poor.
But Zhenshuan had been in the army, he had seen the world. He knew that if he relied on farming to make a living, he would struggle for the rest of his life. At that time people had already started to go to the cities. Zhenshuan was also tempted, but he had no idea where he could go. One day, it suddenly occurred to him that when he had been a soldier, migrant workers were always being brought in to help build camps and repair garages and roads in the barracks. He then wrote to one of his old friends who had become a battalion commander, to ask if he could find a job for him. His old friend agreed to help him, and so Zhenshuan went back to work for his old unit. For three years, he worked as a temporary laborer for a small contractor from Sichuan. Zhenshuan was smart, adroit and hardworking, and was soon proficient at both bricklaying and carpentry. Taking into consideration his previous training as an electrician, he had become a very useful and versatile worker. Although he didn't earn much, he did a lot better than when he had been a farmer.
One day, Zhenshuan met the regiment commander, who was also from Baoding, and whom he had known before.
