Some people or poor because they are lazy and some people are poor because they have no had proper recompense for their work. In Lang Shi we found one of each.
The first person to make contact with in each village (apart from the chief) is always the doctor because he usually knows everybody. So off we went, guided by a villagers, to see the doctor. when you hear the word doctor, you think of someone who has spent many years training and is wealthy.
This doctor was one of the nicest men we met.
He lives his wife in a very large but dirty house on the edge of the village. He was pleased to receive us and offered us breakfast. This was very welcome because we had started out at 6am from Xing Ping so we could be on the water before the police caught us using an illegal boat. The kitchen was rudimentary – just a small wood fired stove belching smoke filling the kitchen and making the whole house black.
Then he told us his story. He had left the village school at 10 and got married at 15 to a 16 year old girl who the matchmaker had found for him from another very remote village. Then he became a vet – clearly with no training. Then, after some time the chief came to his house and told him that he was to become the village doctor.
He didn’t really want to become the doctor but he had no choice. He was sent on a 10 day training course, learnt how to write enough Chinese to record the medicines he was dispensing and let him loose with the population of 7 villages.
The government gave him 5p per annum for every villager which should cover medicines. If that ran out he would get another £6 and if that ran out he had to go up the mountains and pick his own herbs. He would have to spend his time walking between these villages seeing patients and giving out medicines.
The shocking thing was that he never got paid for his work and today he does not get a pension either. The villagers were always too poor to pay for his help but he told us that he was happy to give it never-the-less.
On a wage of nothing but a few mu of land he managed to bring up his 8 children and 2 of his brother’s children.
Now he relies on the money his sons send back from working in a fish sauce factory. He deserves better.