Border

Enduring Dreams

One of the words I heard most often last year was "dream", and in the secluded areas of Yunnan province, dreams endured in people's hearts despite perils and poverty.

Beyond Yunnan's borders, poverty and war are still the cause of problems for the locals. The people of the Kachin ethnic group in northern Myanmar were living under the twin threats of bombs and food shortages.

However, despite hunger and the dangers they faced daily, the kids continued to study Chinese - a skill that almost guarantees good employment prospects - in shabby bamboo buildings and "ignored the explosions outside", as they told me.

In July, I visited Hekou county in southern Yunnan, a place famous for its strong Vietnamese presence. Out of curiosity, my colleague and I walked to Vietnam Street, where hundreds of young, scantily clad women were "on display". One of them agilely snatched my colleague's eyeglasses. There is an unwritten rule; the girl requested to be taken to a hotel and be paid a "bonus" of 10 yuan ($1.60) for her services. Although we declined the offer, we had no option but to negotiate for the return of the eyeglasses - at a price of 50 yuan.

To many, she is engaged in an ugly business, but I discovered that her "bonus", small though it may appear, went toward the cost of medical treatment for her cancer-stricken father. The "ugly business" is often the only option for these uneducated young women.

Dreams were also on the agenda in remote villages such as Longjia in Huize county. The 100-kilometer journey from Huize to the village took five hours. The roads were so badly potholed that our car lurched violently and I almost vomited. The children living in the isolated valleys set out for school at 4 am, using torches to find their way.

The disparity between life in the city and in the small towns was obvious. In Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, millions of yuan have been spent on building a subway, but the dirt roads around Huize school are still impassible on rainy days.

To some extent, the line of torches was like a guide for the innocent children. Seven locals who had recently graduated from universities joined the school to offer the kids a better education. In 2012, 13 high school graduates from Huize enrolled at Peking University and Tsinghua University, the two best schools in China.

The "Chinese Dream" will only become a reality when those at the bottom of the pile see their own personal dreams fulfilled.

Further reading: Kachin: Conflict Sees Refugee Numbers Soar, published on Jan 23.