Hometown journals

Is quality of life in China's rural areas surpassing metropolises?

Ihave spent every Lunar New Year in my “old home” Juye, even though I had never truly lived there. It is my father’s hometown. I was born and raised in Jinan, capital city of East China’s Shandong Province.

Juye is a county with a population of half a million people, and is administered by Heze city in southeastern Shandong, which used to be considered the least advanced region in the coastal province. Most of my relatives live there. To them, I have always been a “city girl.”

My grandparents’ home was in a northern town. Over the decades, the house has been upgraded. After its last renovation, it was a three-floor replica of a Western style building, complete with a table tennis room and a vegetable plot.

But the house has never had heating or tap water.

In China, it is a fact that there has long been a big gap in development level between big cities and small ones or rural areas.

In the past, I was often able to share stories of experiencing “rural life” in my hometown with my city peers.

However, this Lunar New Year, I found it hard to keep up with the changes that had taken place in Juye. In many ways, quality of life in the small county has surpassed that of big cities.

More than 10 years ago, a coal mine was found in Juye and factories were built, making it stand out among its neighboring counties.

In 2014, the local government initiated a project to renovate the old town and launch an “urbanization” drive. As a part of the project, our house was torn down in 2017 after the family moved into a newlybuilt 11-floor apartment.

The town is modernizing, so are people’s lives.

Taste of Italy

Before the New Year, I had to get a haircut. My sister-in-law, a social butterfly who knows almost half the people in town, volunteered to take me to a good hairdresser.

There is a superstition in northern China that says if you cut your hair during the first lunar month, your mother’s brother will die. Since my uncle is still alive, I felt I had better follow the old way of thinking and get my hair done before the Spring Festival.

In a small city like Juye, a hairdresser that all the locals know usually becomes a top social spot.

My sister-in-law drove me to a salon she recommended –Armani Fashion Style. It did not remind me much of the Italian brand Armani, but in my hometown, everything related to Italy is considered fashionable. One nearby boutique is named Sicilia.

“Dahai, the owner, is a master of women’s hairstyles,” she enthused.

The room was not big but it was welldecorated and raucous, filled with women chatting loudly and children crying.

Ten seconds after entering the salon, my sister-in-law saw several women she knew and began to greet them.

“You must be very busy these days,” she warmly said to one of the hairdressers, a woman with short cobalt blue hair that looked like a wig.

Another woman with an LV handbag came to say hello. She runs several KTVs in Beijing.

“The county governor’s wife and many rich ladies also do their hair here,” my sister-inlaw told me. I didn’t doubt it – the table by the door was littered with Mercedes and Porsche car keys.

Unfortunately, Dahai was not at his best that day. He had just woken up with a hangover and gave my hair the most casual of cuts.

He finished in ten minutes, during which the small salon experienced a power failure.

Stunning supermarket

After Armani, I was taken to a newlyopened shopping mall which is only 500 meters from our new apartment. There was a supermarket in the basement.

When I went to store my bag, I found the lockers were controlled by facial-recognition locks. Shoppers opened the locker simply by having their faces scanned.

This technology was also used during payment, as I later found out. In previous years, I have written news stories about the application of facial recognition in China. It was the first time that I saw this technology being used here in this way.

The inside of the supermarket was also a sight to behold.

Peppa Pig was on everything – cookies, candies, toys – and piled everywhere to mark the upcoming Year of the Pig.

Taedonggang Beer from North Korea and Wusu beer from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were displayed besides each other, under the mermaidshaped bottles of Georgia wine.

A huge Charizard doll guarded a mountain of toilet paper.

Crowds squeezed past each other, struggling to add more to their holiday food stocks.

It was a scene that I had never expected to see in my fifth-tier county hometown.

All I could do was take out my phone and share this unique experience with my city peers.