Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

Gansu
It is probably apt to describe the road to
Gansu provinceapproximately 1,500 km
west of Beijingas a road less travelled. A
far-flung province, Gansu is infamously
known amongst Indias China hands as
Chinas Bihar, a region of backwardness and
poverty. The province is located on the
fringes of Chinas north-western frontier,
squeezed between lesser known Inner
Mongolia (an autonomous region), Qinghai
(the Dalai Lamas birthplace), as well as the
equally forlorn Ningxia, ill-reputed as a
dumping ground for political prisoners and
inglorious riff-raff. One can easily agree that
the famous anthropologist G. William
Skinners description of Gansu as periphery
of the periphery is quite apropos.
Even in academic articles, the northwestern frontier has solicited precious little attentiondescribed
by the historian Jonathan Lipman as being a region of rough wilderness, sparse population, lawlessness,
distance from the affairs of the greater society, or as a Chinese academic Zou Lan described it, as the lame
leg of the giant. Clich or otherwise, Gansu is as Bihar as can be.
Yet such sweeping generalisations completely gloss over the critical historical value of this unique
place. The westernmost terminus of the Great Wall begins here in Gansu, winding its way across the swathe
of Chinas northern steppes and its expansive desert all the way north of the capital, Beijing, and finally
ending up at the easternmost frigid borderlands near Manchuria. Historically, Gansu was also a critical stage
on the famed Silk Route; the caravans had to pass through Gansu to reach Central Asia. It was thus a critical
passage out of (and into) China: the famous Buddhist monks whom we are familiar with in India, such as
Faxian (c. 337c. 422 AD; A Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms) and Xuanzang (c. 620c. 645 AD; The
Records of the Western Regions Visited During the Great Tang Dynasty) braved the overland routes crossing
Gansu to come to present-day Bihar, though Yijing (635713 AD; The Record of Buddhism As Practiced in
India Sent Home from the Southern Seas) took the maritime route starting from the eastern coast of China
through the Malacca Straits to the Bay of Bengal.
Gansu somewhat qualifies as Indias Bihar because both are noted for the prominent footprints of
Faxian, Xuanzang and Buddhism. Historically, Bodhgaya, Rajgir, and Nalanda in Bihar were ancient centres
of Buddhism, with Nalanda once a flourishing hub of Buddhist studies. Gansu, too, has the prominent
markings of Buddhism or the Indic world: the province tapers at a small desert town called Dunhuang,

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

noted for a large cave complex, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas with frescos of heavenly apsaras,
Buddhist divinities and stucco sculptures, an influence which perhaps originated from India. Some say that
the frescos are comparable to ones in Ajanta and Ellora caves in western India.
Most Chinese love to tell you about how the cave-complex at Dunhuang lost its treasures in the early
twentieth centurya story somewhat connected with India and the great explorer, Sir Marc Aurel Stein.
Stein had felt the call of the East and thus came to Lahore. Soon he discovered the sheer beauty and poetry
of Kashmir, where he found his dream retreat in a beloved mountain camp. Later, he enlisted with the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in 1904. During his first expedition in 1901, with the sanction of Lord
Curzon, he explored the region around Khotan (resulting in the magnum opus, Sand-Buried Ruins of
Khotan, 1903). His second expedition (19061908) took him to Dunhuang on the 16th of March 1907. There
he realised the enormous value of the Dunhuang documents, paintings, textiles.some of them dating from
the first centuries of our era. He brought back the important cache (these finds were listed and described
in Auriel Steins Serindia, 5 vols., 1921). Though he was no sinologist, spoke no Chinese and used an
interpreter, it is said that he charmed the guardian of the Dunhuang complex to part with some of the
treasures with his admission that Xuanzang (the 7th century Buddhist monk) was his patron saint. Today, a
majority of the manuscripts have survived and are preserved at the British Museum in London, Delhis
National Museum and elsewhere, while a very small collection can still be found at the Dunhuang Museum.
As for Aurel Steinthe man who loved Kashmir so and whose explorations opened a whole new window to
China and Central Asiahe lies buried in a marshy cemetery at Kabul, dank and desolate. Clearly,
legacies outlive flesh and blood.

The joys of fieldwork

I travelled to Gansu several times beginning in 2001 because the remote Dingxi county, apparently the
poorest county in China with nine droughts in ten years, was identified by a senior Indophile in Beijing
as my field area for research on poverty (my Beijinger and Shanghainese friends feign surprise, saying they
have never ever heard of the place; today due to administrative reorganisation, Dingxi is a prefecture-level
city and Anding is the district).
Poverty in China and India has been defined in so many different ways (caloric count, literacy,
income, entitlements) that comparisons become problematic. Going by the numbers, Chinas State Statistical
Bureau claims that the number of poorover 250 million in 1978, or 31% of the rural population thenfell
to 26.88 million in 2010 using the official Chinese poverty line of US$0.53 a day. Figures from the World
Bank are at variance (using a poverty line of US$1.25 a day), but no less laudatory. China claims to have
lifted 620 million people out of poverty since then; the World Bank claims the number is closer to 500
million. That aside, the singular fact that China accomplished to lift millions (and millions) out of poverty
in a short time has caught world-wide attentionand is of particular relevance for India which has long
battled the so-called Hindu rate of growth (roughly 34%, which just barely keeps pace with population
growth). Despite a break with the dismal rate of growth in the 1980s, 2632% of the Indian population by
2010 still remains under the poverty line.

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

Gansu is generally considered luanan oft-used Chinese word which narrowly means chaotic
read thieves, marauders, pickpockets and unconfirmed danger. Of course, it does not help that the average
Chinese categorises India as luan, toodisordered, chaotic and not given to easy navigation.
I did not know that the provincial capital of Gansu, Lanzhou, was located at the geographic centre of
China and on the banks of the famed Yellow River, considered Chinas Mother River and cradle of
civilisation. My memories of Lanzhou are of giant billboards that lined the main street from the train
station to the city. Back then, in 2001, Party-sponsored billboards depicting Party leaders were not so
common in Shanghai, but it seemed different in faraway Lanzhou. I quickly realised that these billboards
were a proclamation of (then President) Jiang Zemins grand strategy to Open up the West. The Open up
the West strategy, launched in 2000, held the promise that things would change in the Western regions or
interior China. Interior China is Chinas proverbial ugly duckling, what with its cursed geography of arid
deserts and barren mountains. The promise was that heavy investment would turn the West into the
beautiful swan.
I came to understand the rhetoric. Lanzhou was a sprawling grey mass of a city seemingly choked by
a thick cloud of noxious smog. In the distant skyline, factories billowed smoke and a putrid stench of rotting
flesh wafted in the air. Lanzhou seemed to be stuck in a weird Stalinist time-warp, much more than any
other city I had come across in central provinces such as Anhui or Henan, which while poorer than the
eastern provinces had remnants of both the old (such as socialist-style squat housing) and the new (gleaming
skyscrapers). And then the eastern provinces of Jiangsu with its peach orchards and Zhejiang with its ricepaddies had given way to break-neck developmentwhich meant a soaring skyline. (A few coastal cities
such as Shanghai and Hangzhou bore fewer architectural scars of Communism for various reasons.
Shanghais case was always different because the Opium War in the nineteenth century made it an open city,
which resulted in foreign settlements such as the French Concession. Hangzhou was largely left untouched
as the Geneva of the East.)
Perhaps Lanzhous distance from Beijing made its case a little different. The humongous brick-red
Lanzhou Hotel sat like an old matron on the University Square. The main Dongfanghong square (which
literally means the East is Red Square) could have been transplanted from the heyday of Communist
Russia.
I had to make the trip to the romanticised bank of the Yellow River. It was late evening and the
atmospheric old iron bridgethe first bridge across the Yellow Riverwas beginning to twinkle with gaudy
lights. Contrary to my expectations of grandeur and inspiration in the dappling waves of the Yellow River (I
had even envisioned myself wading into its waves), I was met with a snaking brown mass that slithered off
into the distance. I trailed the locals who haggled hard for yellow melons with the fruit vendors squatting by
the bank. The plump and sweet melons (made sweeter by the Yellow River, it is said) were to die for. The
generous slices of Lanzhous famous melons sold for a pittance. I joined the crowd slurping on the juicy
flesh, keeping an eye on my wallet, lest I be accosted by the citys other well-known specialtypickpockets.
Taking a chance, I caught the last cable car. As I swung on the rickety coil above, I could see that the
pace of the city had settled into a languid flow, and fortuitously the city could almost be described as pretty.
The evening sky hid the grey grime of the city as lights glimmered, and moving cars created a sense of
warmth in the twilight. There was the unmistakable presence of sprouting skyscrapers and furiously
ambitious roads cut east to west, north to south. With a twinge of regret, I felt even the Lanzhou laggard had

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

left PatnaDelhis unloved poor provincial cousinfar, far behind.

Lanzhou University guesthouse

The Lanzhou University guesthouse inside the university campus was another old-timer which lay deserted
and quiet as though it were the prime setting for a classic Ramsay Brothers Indian horror flick. The large
communal kitchen and the musty laundry room on the first floor lay abandoned; so deathly quiet was it that I
found a saving grace in the din from the university kindergarten housed next door, which began sharp at 7
am. It was a cacophony that I began to eagerly anticipate.
The university campus itself was fairly run down, but it had a nice, laidback air with plenty of pine
trees, a large sundial, gardens and basketball courts. The area around the back gate was boisterously lined
with sundry warehouses, bicycle shops, Sichuan hot-pot, fruits and vegetables, rat-traps and snacks.
Around the corner from the guesthouse and still very much inside the campus were two dingy little
Xerox stores patronised by Chinese students, who like their counterparts in India had to cram notes closer to
examination time. A shabby run-down garage that smelled of engine oil and an old cafeteria with less than
appetising fare made up the small world.
I waited to meet Vice-Chancellor Su Rong, an Indophile known to Indias well-known sinologist
Prof. Mohanty, for clearance. Prof. Mohanty was far away and Su Rong was too busy, which fortunately
gave me plenty time to kill.
Lanzhou was a city so unlike Patna, in a good way: broad boulevards, pavements, allotted vending
and parking zones. I had imagined poverty and deprivation in the slums of Lanzhou much like the notorious
Tondo slums (in Manila) or Dharavi slums (in Bombay) or perhaps even Chinese versions of Rio de
Janeiros favelas: poor thatched squatters squeezed along railway tracks, along pavements, between
skyscrapersbut I found none. Certainly, extreme deprivation of the Indian kind that hit and humbled you
be it in the streets of Bombay or the streets of Patnawas missing; poverty in China was of a different
entitlement kind. It was not about whether China was better than India or vice-versa. Chinese state
philanthropy had come to an end in the late 1970s: survival was about making ends meet by working.
Socialism had done some good; it was a combination of the firm hand and socialist pride in work that had
resulted in begging being considered the lowest abomination. Beggars, it was rumoured, had few human
rights as they were carted off to distant corners, including Xinjiang. A few Muslim beggars (distinctly
Muslim because of their caps and beards) discreetly came asking for alms; I dished out my camera to take
their pictures, but they ran away.
Among others, the demographer Judith Bannister has famously chronicled the fruits of Maos
compulsive campaigns in health care and literacy: for a developing country, there was little garbage on the
streets, no open gutters and certainly very few instances of people defecating or urinating on the streets
(though many Chinese liked to cough up a dollop of spit, among other things). No graffiti on the walls, no
movie posters, no stray animals eitherdogs and cows go straight into Chinese cooking pots, as some of us
liked to joke. The city lacked its own personality, subsumed and unmistakably marked by the signature red
Communist touch.
What I found inside the recesses of the city instead were areas that looked like a war zonelarge

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

areas being demolished for beautification or modernisation. Bulldozed land lay strewn with plastic and
garbage, the dirty and tired remains that were making way for Chinas development frenzy. Development
from the top was Lanzhous ultimate destiny.
Gansu was Chinas frontier province thanks to its location on the western periphery. Yet I had
forgotten what a huge country China is: Lanzhou the provincial capital was Chinas geographic centre! As
the province abuts Xinjiang and Mongolia, Gansu was a tacit melting point for different ethnicities,
amounting to roughly 8% of the total population. As I navigated the city I learnt by chance to differentiate
between ethnic groups. I met one old gentleman who was blue-eyed and pale-skinned; he said he was a Salar
(Turkic) Muslim. Then there were the Dongxiang Muslims. According to scholars, the ancestors of the Salar
Muslims left Samarkand and settled in Gansus Linxia county (a county being comparable to a district in
India), commonly known as Little Mecca.
The Tibetan population in the city was sizeable, too. The Tibetan monk at the monastery in Lanzhou
knew no Hindi, yet not only did he give a shy smile but also gently waived the entrance fee. The Chinese
hardly let go of a penny, but here was gentle acknowledgement, a moving token from a Tibetan so far away
from India who recognised that India had granted the Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, the XIV Dalai
Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, along with an estimated 100,000 Tibetans-in-exile, a home in Dharamsala (on the
foothills of the Himalayas in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, some 500 km away from Indias capital
Delhi). The presence of Tibetans drew my attention to the dismemberment of historic Tibet (U-Tsang, Amdo
and Kham). U-Tsang made up most of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1965. Amdo became
annexed into the neighbouring provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, while Kham was divided between TAR and
the neighbouring provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan.
Not surprisingly, revered monasteries are not just located in TAR but other provinces in China. The
Labrang monastery (founded in 1709), one of the most influential centres of the Yellow Hat sect (or the
Gelugpa Sect, to which the Dalai Lama belongs), was just four hours away from Lanzhou in the town of
Xiahe.
At the tail end of the week, I met Su Rong. By this time, I had acquired three friends: two budding
physicists whom I had met at the university had lent me their bike, showed me the short-cuts around campus
and proved more than amicable companions, introducing me to local foods such as the exquisite lily bulb
(usually stir-fried with chicken or vegetables) and giving me the heads-up on provincial politics. They were
fans of the Indian flying pancakewhatever on earth that was. Bewildered about my ignorance, they
carted me to the best place in town to taste the Indian treat. It turned out to be a cute little place which
boasted a Taj Mahal pin-up in the background, manned by a charming Hui Muslim chef. The young chef
swirled the dough in the air a couple of times (much to the delight of the audience) before going on to
slather it with a generous dose of margarine, stuffing with sliced bananas, nuts and honey. This was a hipper,
cooler version of my mothers delicious fluffy roti, only that she never quite twirled it in the air.
The other friend who made a lasting impression was the grungy, chain-smoking owner of one of the
two Xerox shops. I made use of his services sitting around in his tiny shop in the late evenings when the
crowd of students had thinned, his shop conveniently located ten minutes away on foot from the guesthouse.
He often offered me a smoke, loved to talk about how nasty the Communists wererazing this and that
and how life in China or India and elsewhere was often about a similar bottom-linemoney and success.
The universality of dreams and desires unites us, he said. But more on this enigmatic friend later.

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

Prepping for field work

Su Rongs office bore a quiet dignity. He came across as a quiet, serious man in spectacles who examined
the packet of Darjeeling tea that I gave him with much interest. I explained that unlike the Chinese, Indians
liked to drink it with a spot of milk and sugar. He had never been to India, he said, but was impressed by
Indias Silicon Valley, Bangalore. The smog had been particularly bad that day in Lanzhouthe city
looked tired and dull. Lanzhou, he said, was one of the most polluted cities in the world; it was Chinas
development taking its toll, he said sadly. He asked if smog in Delhi and Bombay was as bad; recent reports
in 20132014 slam Delhis smog, too.
Su Rong wholeheartedly agreed that Dingxi, to the south-east of the capital, was appropriate as my
field. Partly it was geography, he explained: semi-arid with unpredictable rainfall, the ecologically fragile
mountains, and the loess soil made it hostile. Chinas reformer Deng Xiaoping made poverty a part of the
political discourse; acknowledging the problem was a turning point. One of the first institutions was the
Leading Group on Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGPAD, 1993), which later initiated the grandiose
8-7 Poverty Alleviation Plan (the problem of 80 million poor to be resolved in 7 years) in 1994. Poverty
alleviation measures were to be directed at 592 designated counties. Now, he said, the National Poverty
Reduction Plan (20012010) was being discussed.
Su Rong explained that poverty was a rural phenomenon and accrued because of geography (a recurrent
Party argument). What he did not say was that poverty in China resulting from backlash of reforms and urban
poverty were lower on the priority list. The Three West programme in three western districtsHexi, Dingxi
(both in Gansu province), and Xihaigu (Ningxia province)had been successful in addressing poverty, he said.
The Party, he added, opened the spigot of public investment, education, vocational education, non-farm
employment, micro-credit, village development and afforestation. These schemes, state-led and state-directed,
helped. The Party tries its best, said Su Rong, making the Party sound a benevolent patriarchwhich it
undoubtedly was, but for its occasional malevolent streak.
Su Rong approved of the plan to visit Dingxi, writing a letter for the county head and entrusted me in
the care of a young economist, Professor Yao, a short, spectacled man who spoke English with a Chinese
accent and who fit the Partys definition of a seasoned economic cheerleader. Unlike others in the field, Prof.
Yao had many questions for me, too. Among other questions, he asked if I knew N. Ram from The Hindu
(one of the largest and most reputable newspapers in India), whom he described a true friend of China. It
lent credence to a belief I nurseda Chinese propensity in government or Party circles to see official
discourse in black and whitefriends or foes, swap deal or nothingwith nothing in between.
I did not know N. Ram, I replied, but had heard the impressive gentleman speak at Miranda House in
the late 1980s at the height of the Bofors Scandal. There was no doubting N. Rams popularity in China, even
in far out Lanzhou. (On a subsequent trip in the mid-2000s, I got an update. N. Rams daughter is in
Shenyang, he said in the passing. I did not know how true that was but thought that nothing inconsequential
escaped the Chinese, not even in the periphery of the periphery.)
Dingxi, said Prof. Yao, was once the poorest place in China but now a shining beacon of light.
He waxed eloquent about Dengs contribution, but that was nothing short of the routine reductionist Party

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approach. He droned that Deng recognised that poverty would benefit from external aid and partners
UNDP and the Ford Foundation were some of the first external organisations to collaborate with China.
Second, Deng made a policy break, and Dingxi is the proof of its success. Prof. Yao said that Dingxi
was living proof that free handoutsinfusions from above such as subsidies, cash grants, and the like for
the poorwere futile. Charity is no good, he insisted with a passion that would have resurrected Deng.
The one-time cash transfers of yore were akin to blood transfusions, a temporary arrest of the problem
because the poor either spent it all in one stroke on food (a Chinese passion, he explained sorrowfully) and
mahjong (gambling runs in our blood, he admitted sheepishly) or just made plain bad choices like large
televisions and refrigerators (catching up with neighbours, he winked).
The new spin endorsed by Dengsubstituting blood transfusion with blood-forming policies
enabled and empowered the poor by making them a stakeholder in development: micro-credit, cooperatives,
rainwater harvesting and grain for green (the latter an inventive way to address the fragile eco-system). He
shot off numbers (a confirmed Chinese hobby), and filled me to the gills on minute details such as of the
number of saplings and quantity of grain earmarked for the grain for green programme. The local
government was spearheading an intensive plantation programme in the dry belt that would return cropland to
forest and thereby significantly reduce the impact of the sandstorms that Beijing is infamous for.
It was still the summer of 2002. A sultry humid heat circled the air. I thought how the Party had its
eyes on the Olympics, six years away! I could not fault the Partys long-term vision, panned out and in the
works.
Back in Shanghai, an Indian staffer at the Indian Consulate who had become de facto family often
discussed key differences between India and China over lunch. Over his delightful wife Graces delicious
Indian fish curry served with the hospitality of the athithi devo bhava (literally, the guest is God)
variety, I listened to him speak of the lack of long-term planning and visionaries in Indian politics. As he
would say, Delhi needed to put its house in order before throwing stones at Beijinga complicated but valid
argument. The Commonwealth Games in 2012 in Delhi, for instance, showcased the Indian art of possibility,
and despite last minute glitches went off without a hitchbut it certainly did not make for the case of best
planning.

To the poorest county

Dingxi was a little over a hundred kilometres away from Lanzhou, a journey made trying by the zig-zag
curves of the rugged mountainous road. The journey was defined by the colour of the landscape: brown and
bare mountains with sparse reeds and gangly trees, and the brown parched earth that thirsted for water.
Sometimes, a lone Muslim cemetery with a green crescent-moon flag broke the monotony of the practically
bare hillside. At other times, a shabby Chinese-style motel was the relief. A patch of land being worked on
by a lone farmer, wearing a large straw hat, and trudging with his donkey in the field under the scorching
sun, impressed that this place was not entirely shorn of human existence. If anything, this was indeed a far
cry from Chinas glittering eastern coast.
When the car entered Dingxi, it seemed strangely familiar, giving the impression of a small
inconspicuous Indian district. Dingxi was a nondescript little place that one could happily navigate by foot.

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Unlike India then, it was built primarily in concrete with streets lined by squat shops, double-storied
supermarkets, and well-paved pavements.
Large billboards at the golchakkars (circular intersection of roads) drew my attention. They read:
DingxiPotato County of China. The only thing that grew in poverty is potato, joked my middle-aged
companion by the name of Yang. Potato was, by the way, the only thing that the Chinese did not like to eat
much of and yet Westerners loved it, she said with a laugh. Yang was surprised to learn that potato curry
with tomatoes, or fried potatoes with turmeric, or mashed potatoes with mustard and rice, were staples of the
poor in India.
The first stop was the county office. The county office was a very modest but busy place, teeming
with villagers who wanted an audience with the county head. Clerks and county officials sat with piles of
dusty files; the place reeked of strong Chinese tea.
Most of the staff looked at me with wide-eyed wonder. I was the first Indian they had ever seen in
flesh and blood! They fawned, so much so that I felt like an important visiting dignitary. They knew India
from old Bollywood movies and there I wasperhaps putting a face to their idea of India. They asked why I
did not have a red dot on my forehead (a matter of personal choice, I explained). They showed me to the
washroom apologising that their poor county had terrible facilities and that surely India would be leaps
ahead? One of them got me a cup of Chinese tea, apologetic that there was no Coke to offer.
I did not wait long. A clerk ushered me into an acid blue room with a portly figure sitting in a cloud
of smoke, a retinue of villagers at hand.
The county head looked every bit a greasy Communistsort of a spys nightmare. He shot off
routine questions: where I was from and what was the purpose of my visit, and how nice it was to have a
visitor from a faraway land. This is the right place, he enthused, signing a letter for me to pass down the
chain. My eyes travelled around in the room and rested on a bronze plaque on the wall. It said that Dingxi
was a model county in 2000 visited by none other than the (now former) President Jiang Zemin. The
thought of fieldwork in a model county in China was an immediate dampener. It is an open secret that
model counties are made for showin this case, showcasing the best foot forward of poverty. And I was
in the middle of it.
Afterwards, I was treated to a starch-heavy meal in a Dingxi restaurant, a blur of potato fritters,
chicken with potatoes and potato pancake. The finely shredded potatoes and green pepper seasoned with
vinegar was appetisingin Chinas poorest place, the delicious treat was one fit for a king.

Showcasing development, Chinese-style

If Dingxi was proud of something, it was the spanking new experimental developmental zone located on the
outskirts of the town. Yang explained that it had been built to disseminate technical expertise to the locals
and attract industry. The idea was to have people tap into opportunities right here in Chinas Western
regions, without having to move to the coast.
The experimental development zone had been timed for the then-President Jiang Zemins visit. A
small group of fidgety farmers stood in single file listening to enthusiastic personnel: what to plant in the

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fields and what seeds to choose; how to protect the crop and how to market.
As we walked around, I gathered that the zone had few strange ventures: a fledgling pigeon farm
(for meat, Yang explained), a dog farm (always buyers in dreadful winters, said Yang with a laugh), a
mushroom farm (which I understood could be grown indoors in controlled environs) and a scorpion farm
(for Chinese medicine). Here were some of the rural non-farm opportunities: it was up to the farmers of the
district to embrace them.

He Zui Le!
It had been hot and dry in the morning, but as the evening descended, the cemented corridors of the hotel in
Dingxi began to radiate a bone-chilling cold typical of the semi-arid loess plateau. The housekeeping staff
looked suitably country as they shuffled along the grey length of the corridor dispensing hot-water flasks.
Joining in for dinner were three county officials. There were three others, too, from a reputable
Beijing university who had come for fieldwork. As we sat, I discovered that the three county officials were
of disparate dispositions and so were the researchers.
The first official was a sincere, predictable functionary who gave a glowing account of the successful
greening of the hillsides. Once dry as bone, he explained, they now boasted sturdy trees suited to local
geographical conditions and the villagers had enthusiastically participated in large numbers.
The second was more interested in knowing and learning about India. Had micro-credit been
successful in India, he asked. Apparently, the provincial head had discovered Mohammad Yunus, and the
Grameen Bank (1976), a model being feted in Dingxi. The extension of Agricultural Bank of China was
partly resolving the issue of institutional credit, since informal banking with high interest rates was common
in poorer China. At the local level, the Poor Area Development Office (PADO) was identifying target groups
and encouraging group-based lending to create a social collateral that worked against loan default. But this
was an experiment; whether it would work as well in Dingxi as in Bangladesh was still unknown then.
Official Number Three sat drinking quietly, warming his bones. He was generous with himself,
drinking in big gulps neat portions of the baijiu, a firewater-like liquor from China that is usually distilled
from sorghum. I avoided the baijiu toasts not because I was averse to alcohol but inevitably one toast led to
the othera deadly trap that one could not wriggle out of. I looked amused as the young economist from
Beijing excused herself to throw up. The other two young field-workers suffered with flaming red faces.
The dinner itself: blood-red jelly-like pudding (coagulated duck blood), inch-long thin chewy pieces
of blubber (duck tongue), a dish of cartilage (pig ears), among others. A merry dinner and drink that
encourages singing makes for a successful host. On that metric, it was a runaway success: the young
economist slurred jokes, the students entertained, and the two stoic county officials struggled to keep face
as their third colleague got progressively more drunk. It reminded me of a joke, one that a Chinese academic
Zou Lan cracked, Fupin Office (Poverty Alleviation Office) should be nicknamed Fuping Office (BottleGrasping Office). It certainly fit the picture.
It was then when Number Three slurred a silky threat, You know the Chinese are very good with
their friends. When I had not even recovered, he asked embarrassingly aloud: Are all Indians as black
(dark skinned) as you? It took quite an effort to stop his racist remarks but then there was no stopping his

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running tongue as he slid into a nasty diatribe on India as a place of filth and poverty. This marked an
uncomfortable end to Chinas legendary hospitality.
At breakfast over watery rice porridge and mustard pickle, Number Three showed up, reeking of the
orgy, his eyes blood-shot, sporting a sheepish grin: He zui le (I was drunk), he said.

From county to town

Chinas administrative apparatus runs from the central government to province to prefecture to county to
town to village. Lujiagou was the largest town of the district, approximately 35 km north of Dingxi. Yang
filled up on statistics, which was interesting but hardly illuminating: The town received an annual rainfall
of 280 mm/year with a high annual rate of evaporation; The town head was attempting to engage the
community in infrastructure works besides working on branding the potatoes grown; and so on.
En route, Yang talked about the UNDP programme which generously backed a rainwater harvesting
programme 121 that facilitated the construction of two water wells every 100 km capable of irrigating 1
mu (1/15th of a hectare).
Lujiagou was not a very big town nor was it pretty. It was neither a quaint kampong of Southeast
Asia, say, in Thailand or Malaysia with atmospheric wooden-thatched houses, nor was it the elegance of
stone-walled houses of poorer parts of Europe such as Albania. There was something undeniably shabby
about Lujiagou: an old trinket seller by the street, locals who lugged sacks of agricultural produce, a
smattering of noodle shops and provisionsit was the smooth road and the row of shops that made the
town look a notch better than a comparably poor and dusty Indian town.
The town headquarters was a simple quadrangle, rooms spread around an open central courtyard
mimicking the plan of a grand courtyard house, with the profile of dry hills as the backdrop. The town head
was a man with an honest weather-beaten face.
Chairs were quickly pulled onto the open courtyard as I pulled out the tape recorder. The taped
conversation covered mundane details such as Lujiagous administrative jurisdiction over seven
villagesNanchuan, Jiangtai, Xiaochakou, Taiping (in the plains), and Dongfeng, Ziyun and Huacha
(poorer villages in the mountains)the population, the male to female sex ratio, along with the
annual rainfall. The conversation tapered to Lujiagous 65 groups, 2385 families, and 10345 people. The
town head was proud of two major achievements: Liujiahe and Xijiajian bridges. Moreover, he pointed out
that the leading cadre had set in motion a micro-credit system modeled on Grameen Bank that helped potato
farmers. The cadre had created a potato trading company which enabled the harvest of potatoes. Moreover the
infrastructure connectivity ensured that the potatoes reached all the way to the distant southern cities of
Changsha, Wuhan and Guangzhou for processing.
He explained that of the forty cadres, the average age of the cadres was 36.8 years and the average
age of a member of the leading group was 33 years. Since 1998, the county had a stipulation that the cadre
should have a diploma. Entry into the Party is not easy, he explained. Yes, membership was literally
Chinas crme de la crme.

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

For the record, and off the record
Once the tape-recorder was switched off, he became a different man. He spoke of internal churning within
the Partyhow the Party had been changing recruitment policy by focusing on merit and downsizing the
number of cadre at the local level. Only fresh young blood and merit knows priorities, he said, but there
was entrenched hierarchy that was difficult to dislodge. Systemic problems, he said, which is also the bane
of Indian political parties.
It was getting to noon. The town head gently asked a young staffer to rustle up something simple on
the stove in the office. The gathering broke into a happy intermission. A young staffer took me to the
bathrooman old-style hole in the ground. I walked around the courtyard until the fare on the table
beckoned: steaming hot rice with some stir-fried greens. I listened as everybody talked. One said that the
greens were delicious, not doused in chemicals as in other parts of China. Everybody cackled with laughter.
I watched cadres ribbing each other, offering each other a smoke. It was obvious that the official face of the
Party was different from the countenances of these individuals.
I thought about this as I watched scruffy bedraggled children playing hopscotch by the entrance
perhaps a brush with Chinas simple life.

From model village to Huacha village

Model villages are not very real and believable. I stood at Taiping village, which had been lauded by none
other than Chinas top cadre, wondering how they failed to see through all this. Taiping village was an ode
to concrete: a row of concrete-tiled houses on either side of a main street with barren hills in the distance
could only be an odd transplant. Taiping came across as a posh microcosm of Lujiagou, itself a microcosm
of Dingxi. If this was the poorest village, I was an astronaut.
This wont do because I dont feel convinced enough about its poverty, I said sitting in the car.
Saying something directly instead of convoluted intellectual, theoretical arguments helpedthe Chinese did
not care much for the argumentative Indian prone to the logically profane, but just saying it simply and
directly.
The car turned to another appropriate village, Huacha, running clouds of dust. The landscape was
indeed wretched: rounded bare mountains sported dry terrace farms. Crops had been harvested. Fields lay
fallow sapped by the ruthless sun. Soon a small settlement appeared ensconced in the lap of a valley.
As the car drove in, children ran down the mountain path chasing the car, ducking the clouds of dust,
clamouring around it as it came to a stop, panting with excitement. The commotion settled. The village Party
head emerged from nowhere, introductions quickly made.
Yang and I walked accompanied by a Village Committee member to the first house. This was China;
there was no time to kill.
The village looked poor and brown all right but it was surprisingly clean. I had expected garbage,
huts, clogged drains and droves of pigs.
The first house visit was memorable. The house of Wang Li looked deceptively bleak from outside

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

and yet I could not help but gasp when I stepped in. The large airy rectangular hall sported a certain level of
affluence. The hall separated into two living quarters; on the right was a patent leather sofa with a central
table and a television; on the left was a Chinese kang (bed with coal heating) piled high with blankets and
rugs. A pallid odourof sweat, unwashed clothes and soya saucehung in the air, the odour of long hard
winters and water shortages.
The householder was a young man with a mischievous face. He was a farmer, he said, who grew
sorghum and millets. The Party improved the lot of the villagers, he said; the proof was the television and
the plush sofa (of course). His life had improved through participating in the initiative grain for green.
Operational since 1999, it promised that if a family returned 0.07 hectares of farmland, they would get 100
kg of grain. The family planted trees on the hills to prevent soil erosion and windstorms and in return they
were subsidised for seedlings. The Village Committee member proudly gleamed.
Then there was the fact of equal distribution of land, which had been a fundamental leveler. As if on
cue, the Village Committee member pulled out a sheaf of paper which said in Chinese (and English):
Villagers make decisions, Villagers exercise management, Villagers conduct supervision, Villagers receive
benefits. Democracy (of the Chinese type) had taken root at the village level and that the Organic Law of
the Villagers Committees that the Party had mooted was bringing a fundamental revolution to the
countryside.
When it was time to go, the young man spoke up. By the way, I did not get my grains on time
because leakages are common. Fubai, fubai (corruption, corruption), he said loudly. I pretended not to
understand.
Another householder was an old man, more than sixty years old. He wore circular Gandhi (or John
Lennon) glasses and carried a crooked walking stick. I asked him why he had decided to stay on in the
village instead of migrating out to the coastal region, like so many others. He had a deep connection with the
land, he replied. He was born in the village, got married, raised his children and was now old. He had
cataract, so it was too late to move, he said. He had become accustomed to life in the place. Several attempts
had been made to move his family through the voluntary resettlement initiated by the Party, but he proved a
reluctant candidate. Poverty Reduction through Voluntary Resettlement (PRTVR)a Party sponsored
initiative to resettle peoplewas not for him.
Did he tend the fields? I asked. He answered that he did, with the help of his wife and his two sons.
But his two sons were away in Xinjiang working as seasonal migrantsswallows, as the Chinese call them.
Their remittances kept them going.
Migration from poorer areas has become a more marked phenomenon. Lately, villages are becoming
hollowed out as the young depart from rural areas, leaving their childrennicknamed leftover
childrenwith aging grandparents tending to childcare and the fields.
Yet another householder was the beneficiary of the bilateral help programme, where the richer
provinces help the poorer provinces. Shandong province was Gansus partnerand had provided the
livestock to targeted families in Dingxi county to help generate income.
The farmer took me to his backyard, where two fat sheep bleated. Sheep mortality is a vexing
problem, he said. Only if they survived would he make a neat profit. The farmers backyard had a deep,
round well covered by a heavy cement lid, an example of rainwater harvesting.
Vast areas of hillsides had indeed been greened. The earnest hand of the Party playing the lead in

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

developmentblood-forming policieswas evident. As we walked back to the car, a lone wall lay
splattered with a fading slogan that made me smile: Dengs Development is the fundamental principle.

With a little help from a friend

I returned to Lanzhou with a hefty hoard of primary documents. One late evening, I walked to the Xerox
shop. The owner, Xerox man, was in a complaining mood; the day had been tiring. He took a long look at
the documents and said that I could sit outside as he ran the photocopier.
As I waited we began chatting. How did the Dingxi visit go, he asked. I told him that I had visited
Huacha because the first of the villages, Taiping village, hardly looked like a villagemore or less a
concrete bunkerand seriously speaking, nothing short of publicity disaster. Xerox man laughed as he
heard this; nobody was nave but the Party desperately wished it so.
Suddenly, he stopped to look carefully at all the documents slithering out of the photocopier. Some
of these numbers are manufactured for researchers like you, he said. You saw what you were meant to see.
Come for only a day with me. I will drive you outside Lanzhou and show you. All good, but what if
something happened? What if he slit my throat?
I returned to make two phone calls: one to the family and one to Prof. Mohanty. Both egged me to go.

Back to see the real thing

I met the Xerox man outside the Lanzhou University. He wore bell-bottomed pants and a scarf around his
neck (which suddenly made him suspect) and stood by a navy blue sedan, a car he said he had borrowed
from the garage. I had somebody in tow, and so did he: a burly man who would be driving for the day.
The road out of Lanzhou towards Dingxi was recognisable. We crossed the familiar landmarks,
signposts and hillsides. Instead of stopping at Dingxi, the car sailed right past. The journey had been fairly
quiet: Xerox man had been in a meditative mood, which made me uneasy.
The first village, Jingxiguan village, bore an uncanny geographical similarity to Huachadry and
desolate, brown and dusty. Xerox man called out to a lone farmer on the road, who told us that the villagers
had gone to the field and would return by sunset; only the primary school was bustling with two handfuls of
students. So off we went in the direction of the school, led by the farmer who had stayed behind (because
one of his pigs was about to give birth at any time).
The primary school, Quanwan Xiaoxue, was a small thatched building. The teacher was a bearded
gentleman, an ethnic Hui Muslim. He had a diploma, he said, and was forty years old. He took it upon
himself to take us around the two-roomed school of basic benches and chairs, a blackboard on the wall, a
modest bare playgroundnot very different from what you would find in an Indian village.
He explained that universal enrollment was a failure: nothing was free any more, including
education, as books cost money. The school had a string of under-skilled teachers who had disappeared as
they seldom received salary on time. The middle school was far away and negotiated by the students on foot.
Children stayed back at home during winters. Chinas free, nine-year compulsory education in the post-

Excerpt from FINDING INDIA IN CHINA by Anurag Viswanath : GANSU

reform period was akin to Indias free mid-day meal schemes where in many cases watered down meals
provided little or no nutrition. Literacy was an important goal, but under a market economy, the commitment
to education seemed
to be slackening.
Xerox man turned to the farmer, asking him if we could visit his house. He complained about the
water shortage: rainwater harvesting techniques and rainwater cellars (such as in Huacha village) had yet to
reach them. The farmers house had no TV nor plush sofa, only a squirming pig in the front yard. Does this
village fall under one of the 592 designated counties for poverty relief? I asked. The farmer did not know.
The next stop was Xiang Quan, an ethnic Hui town which looked better than the village Jingxiguan.
The main street boasted a mosque and a hospital. Unlike Jingxiguan village, with its strong agrarian
bearings (and missing farmers), the village wore the markings of occupational diversity. The villagers, most
of them bearded and fez-capped, crowded the car and crowed in the local dialect, literally mobbing me until
somebody offered to call the towns most respected person: a Doctor who was well-versed in Mandarin and
could give correct information.
The Doctor arrived and soon volunteered to write a one-page note of information. There were several
glitches at the grassroots, he said gravely, especially when it came to implementationat the mercy of the
local government that stood squeezed by resources. The foundation of equality had been laid by socialism,
he said, but the market is changing that,
The Doctors scribbles stayed with me. I took several photographs of all these villagers clambering
up the car, extending a hugbasically delighted to welcome an Indian. And yet, the trip had been so
priceless: it was Chinas common man who encouraged me to have a deeper insight into China, literally by
leading my hand. And it was not for profit that he did it. I never understood what the motivation of the
Xerox man was.
I lost the camera soon after. A friend suggested that I had been tailed, which was amusing. I returned
several times after to Lanzhou. I found that in making the campus pretty, the Xerox shop had been asked to
go. The garage had been razed. The man at the convenience shop overlooking the dormitories shrugged and
said that the Xerox man had set up shop somewhere else in the city.