Going from village to village in China to study poverty eradication is a story in inspiration. I have already produced a little substack about the Cun Chao experiment in Ronjiang, where football played a major role. More about Ronjiang will come in a Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research study written by Professor Lu Xinyu next year.
But today, I went to Qingxi Village in Heshan District in Hunan. Here books, reading, and writing have been the main instrument to eradicate poverty. The villagers took advantage of the fact that their village is the birthplace of Zhou Libo (1908-1979), about whom I will write more (since he has a connection to India via Agnes Smedley).
The villagers decided to showcase Zhou Libo’s life and to build bookshops around the theme of his immense contributions. There are now twenty-two high-quality bookshops in the village, which attract people from all over the place. These bookshops carry works by Chinese writers from the past century.
The bookshops are owned and managed by the villagers, all of whom have built bookshops in and around their homes. Here I am with one of the owners:
The village is built around lotus ponds, which provide them with food and beauty. They also have waxberry plants (waxberry or yangmei, 杨梅), and so we drank yangmei juice and ate sour plums and dates. There is also a multimedia theatre and a very fine restaurant in the village for those who want to come for the day, walk around, read and buy books, and rest.
In the village is a Museum of Signed Editions by Contemporary Chinese Writers. So, I gave them a printed copy – in Chinese – of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research study on the anti-fascist war (to read it in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, please go to our website for a free download).
I handed the copy over to Comrade Fang Xiaoni, the Director-General of the Publicity Bureau of Yiyang City. She handed it to the chief archivist. The book was processed before us. Our study is now in the collection and the certificate of that will be sent to me by the mail.
What a lovely feeling.
