Li Xiang'ai, a farmer in Wannian county, Jiangxi Province, sits in the living room of her newly constructed house on December 7, 2008. Photos: CFP

By Zuo Xuan in Guangdong

With the sun rising and dew vaporizing from the corn leaves, the small mountainous village of Dongshan was still asleep.

A pack of hungry dogs foraged for food on the main road of the village, but food was scarce. Most of the houses lining the road were locked and deserted. The only sign of life was the sound of somebody having a coughing fit inside a rotten wood door. Otherwise, Dongshan appeared as an eerie ghost town in the morning mist.

After a while, a man appeared at the entrance of the village. He carried a slab of pork on his shoulder, and grasped two meat cleavers in his right hand.

Seeing the man, the dogs got excited and quickly rushed to him in hopes of getting a bone to gnaw on. The butcher dropped the pork slab on a desk in front of a market stand and started to slice up the side of bacon, about one-quarter of a pig's belly.

Hearing the clash of the cleavers, some villagers came out and approached the marketplace. "Uncle Zhou, how much is it today?" a 35-year-old man, surnamed He, shouted from 30 meters away.

"Twelve yuan per 0.5 kilogram ($1.77)," Zhou answered without raising his head.

The conversation halted at the price. He and three or four other villagers sur-rounded the butcher, the only dealer in the spacious market of 200 square meters, silently watching him slice pork.

Robbing the poor

After a month of heavy rainfall, corn in the fields grows slowly and so does the confidence to consume. Corn is the food staple and main source of income for the village, about 22 kilometers away from the county center of Yangshan in Qingyuan city. The barren land, which can barely hold water, is able to produce corn stalks only once a year. If the harvest rots, the livelihood of the villagers is in peril. "There's nothing we can do but tighten our belts," He said.

Due to the uncertainty of the weather, many of the 12,000 people in Dongshan have moved to the flat lands around Yangshan county and live in government-subsidized houses. About 4,500 people have been left behind, either because they are too old or too young, disabled or illiterate. They can't afford to move and pay even the cheap subsidized rent.

It is June 30, the annual "Poverty Alleviation Day" in Guangdong Province. Poverty issues have grabbed the headlines of the local newspaper. Some popular newspapers, such as the Southern Metro-politan News, have run special issues to raise money for poor people in the area. But charity donations from outside Dongzhan seem unrealistic to the villagers.

"Tell people not to come here again with the excuse that they want to reduce poverty. Wave after wave of rich people and officials have been here to say they are donating money. But where is it?" asked a 50-year-old farmer surnamed Chen, who lives next to the market.

The villagers claimed that village officials, who are not elected but appointed through private relationships, have appropriated the money intended for the poor.

"Six months ago, Nanhai, our sister city, donated 88,000 yuan($12,985) to the poor people here. The money was entrusted to the village committee; but up to now, we have no clue where the money has gone," said Chen Shuijie, 33, a shopkeeper in the neighborhood.

Lin Bijin, a disabled farmer in Xifeng county, Guizhou Province, struggles in his shabby hut with the wife and two children on May 6, 2010. The low-income family of four depends on a minimum living subsidy of 160 yuan ($23.5) per month.

Charity scams

Knowing the existence of venal officials, some outside donors have tried to circumvent the village committee and contact the villagers through local "middlemen," who claim they can help money donors identify the poor families strictly by their impoverished appearance.

"There was a very ridiculous case concerning a 'middleperson'," says Liu Shuijie, who loves to chitchat in Chen Shuijie's shop.

"During the Spring Festival, the elderly in our village were told to go to a neighboring village where they would be given a bag of rice, a bottle of vegetable oil and 400 yuan($59). They walked over several miles of mountain road to get the food and brought back the cash donations. But right after the donors left, the 'middleperson' knocked on one door after another to take back the money."

"If the elderly refused to give him the money, he threatened to beat them," 36-year-old Liu said in a steady voice, resigned to any unfairness in her village. She used to work in a factory in Foshan, a city known for its ceramic tiles, but has returned to Dongshan during the economic crisis.

Family misery

A good portion of the population has moved out of the mountains. The village's only clinic and one middle school have been abandoned, their health services and teaching responsibilities taken over by other institutions in Dubu town, at the foot of the mountain.

He Youtai, 44, sheds tears when talking about her family. When her husband Chen Fangcai died of cancer in 2000, she took over the burden of raising three children by herself. After she married off her mute daughter Chen Lingling, 21, to a man in Dubu, her 18-year-old son Chen Zhihao broke his right leg in a car accident on his way to find a temporary job in Dubu. Unable to afford hospital treatment, the young man had a barefoot doctor reset his broken leg. Three months have passed, and the teenager still cannot walk without crutches.

Living on a 200 yuan-per-month ($29.50) government subsidy, He Youtai said she can only pray for the recovery of her son. While she takes care of her brother and labors in the family's vegetable fields, her 10-year-old adopted daughter, Chen Xiaoshan, is left home alone. The baby girl was found abandoned on the side of a dirt road in 2000, as frequently happens in the village, according to He. Many become "left-behind" children, unsupervised by their parents.

At 8:25 am, Chen Xiaoshan wanders on the grounds of the only school in the village, Jigong Dongshan Central Elementary School. She watches boys fighting with bamboo sticks and girls playing cards. The weak education system makes the future of the village even bleaker.

Rich get richer

In sharp contrast to the grinding poverty of Dongshan village, people living in the seat of county government, about 22 kilometers away, enjoy a much easier life.

They have recently moved into a new building complex, opposite an old, poor-looking county center. A neat villa community faces the government buildings. A local pedicab driver said each villa is worth more than 1,000,000 yuan ($147,565), thousand times his monthly earnings.

The rainy season has just ended and there are no visitors on the public green in front of the government buildings, except one naked, mad woman bathing in a fountain.

Inside the spacious main building, government employees are working out figures to compete for a national-level "civilized county" award. Liu Jie, an official in the poverty reduction office, told the Global Times that the goal is to elevate the per capita income of poor people to at least 1,500 yuan ($221) annually by the end of 2011. If they achieve the goal, the average daily income will be about 4 yuan ($0.60) per person.

There are indeed rich people in Yangshan. A taxi driver surnamed Wang said the provincial government is doing its best to help the poor. One effort to alleviate poverty involves drivers' licenses. The provincial government stipulated that anyone who applies for a driver license in Guangdong must register there, but then travel three hours away to take their driving exams on the highway running through the county.

The trip almost always involves an overnight stay, with new hotels and restaurants built to accommodate the travelers. But the economic benefits haven't trickled down to the poor.

"This policy has enriched many restaurant and hotel owners here," said Wang.

"Meanwhile, the large influx of exam-takers has boosted prices beyond the budget of the locals."

Two-car families

The distance between heaven and hell is about a "three-and-a-half hour bus ride," according to Zhan Youbing, a factory manager who migrated 15 years ago to Chang'an, a county-level town in Dongguan. He has travelled to many corners of the province as an amateur photographer.

Chang'an is the other face of Guangdong, said Yuan Dehe, the town's Party leader. He told Xinhua Net that the average per capita income reached 40,000 yuan ($5,902) last year, including 15,900 yuan ($2,346) in land lease dividends.

Take a look at Shangsha village, where most natives share the surname Sun and boast that the village is the birthplace of Sun Yat-Sen's grandfather.

About 90 percent of the villagers have moved into two-story homes built by the village government. Through the government, they rent out their land rights to factories and migrants who come to invest or work here. Dividends paid on the land shares range from 50,000 to 250,000 yuan ($7,378-$36,891) per family every year.

Being ultra rich, the villagers keep a low profile and don't flaunt their fortunes. They seldom talk about money in public, nor do they dress to the nines. But Lu Xuelan, a photographer who migrated to Chang'an from Gaozhou city of Guangdong in the 1980s, described to the Global Times the lavish lifestyle of the villagers, "The interior design of their houses is as luxurious as five-star hotels."

"It is common for each local household to own two cars. One car is no longer a status symbol," said Lu, whose camera lens has recorded the economic changes in the county over the past 20 years. In other parts of China, cars are still regarded as luxuries; even in the most developed cities, a tiny percentage of families can afford two cars.

'Invisible wealth'

It is difficult to imagine the prosperity of today's Chang'an without the sweat and toil of thousands of nameless migrant workers.

Migrants accounted for 63 percent of the city's residents last year. Many of them were laid off during the global economic crisis and have since returned to their hometowns.

Assessing the wealth gap between rich and poor villagers, Huang Xiaoli, the publicity director of the county government, said that wealth should not be the only measure of richness in life. "The government has invested a lot to build public hospitals, libraries and parks for anyone here to share. That's the invisible wealth."

While mountainous Yangshan is struggling to survive, Chang'an is braced for another round of prosperity. Huang said the current focal point of the government is to facilitate the industrial transformation of the county after the world recovers from the global economic crisis.

"We started to upgrade the industrial structure even before the economic crisis. We tried to move polluted factories out of the county and encouraged manufacturers to invest more in research and development. So when there was an exodus of workers earlier this year, enterprises with vision performed very well.

"Government here functions to provide a good environment for people to live, work and invest. For instance, we have forbidden motorcycles in our county because many pedestrians were being robbed by motorcyclists. Now, Chang'an is probably one of the safest counties in Guangdong. We are ready for another round of development."

The Chang'an bonanza is typical of rich towns in Guangdong where life is a sumptuous banquet. The government challenge for the future is to give villages like Dongshan hope that the poor will someday have a seat at the table.

The quest for social justice

More than three decades after China launched its reform and opening-up policy, the widening gap between the rich and the poor has posed a severe test for the government.

Guangdong Province, China's pioneer in the socialist market economy, contributed one eighth of the national GDP last year and has long been regarded as a typical region where the rich are getting richer.

According to a recent report jointly conducted by the Guangdong government and the World Bank, the latest regional development coefficient reached 0.75 in Guangdong, above the national average of 0.62 and close to the international critical value of 0.80, which means the wealth gap between regions is large enough to threaten social stability.

Ye Jianpin, a researcher with the Xinhua News Agency, attributed the income disparity to business monopolies stemming from rapid economic growth.