Li Zuquan has thought about moving his family away from Dahuangdi for years. Deep in the mountains of Yunnan province, the remote village has no natural water sources, meaning drinking water supplies and irrigation are heavily dependent on rainfall.
Sadly, it has not rained here for more than five months. All of Li's crops have dried up and his family is facing a severe shortage of food and water. Being relocated by the authorities may be their only chance of survival.
"Unless we move, our lives will be decided by our natural environment," said the 45-year-old farmer, whose family has lived in Mouding county for generations.
More than 5,000 people in neighboring Nanhua county are expected to be relocated due to the ongoing drought in Southwest China, according to media reports. Officials insist the move is only a short-term fix.
"The relocation will be temporary. Villagers will just move into tents around the nearest water source and will move back when the drought eases," said Meng Fu, a publicity official for the administering city of Chuxiong. "The government has been resorting to 20-day relocations to help those affected by the drought since 2005."
However, although no one in Mouding has yet been offered a new home, many villagers say only a permanent move from the drought-prone zone will end their suffering.
When asked if he would like his family to be resettled, Li hesitated before answering: "This village has no water. If, like in Nanhua, we have to come back after 20 days, we'll still have to face the drought, only milder."
From Mouding, the seat of the county government, it takes four hours of driving on rocky mountain roads to reach Dahuangdi, a community of less than 100 people. The next village is about a day's walk away and residents must climb for two hours to get drinking water from a mountain reservoir, their only available source during dry spells.
"When we have enough rainfall, farmers can easily afford food and clothes, and can possibly even have 1,000 yuan ($145) left in their pockets," said village head Wang Qiongzhen. "If we don't have enough rainfall, farmers are likely to go hungry."
Li stocks his food in the attic of his crumbling adobe house. All his family has is 30 kilograms of rice packed in a dirty weaving bag and a dried leg of pork hanging from a ceiling beam. He said mixing the food with corn will make it last for almost a month.
His annual bean crop usually nets him 4,000 yuan, the majority of which is reinvested into seedlings and farm chemicals for the summer tobacco planting. The ongoing dry spell, China's worst in a century, has ruined any chance of a good harvest.
As the high-lying village has no natural resources, any produce from its farms is used to feed the families living there. Residents have not even been able to find wild vegetables on the arid surrounding hills to ease the food shortage, said Li.
"Relocation is their only way out of drought environment," said Li Jianqin, deputy director of the county education department. "In some places, the environment is too harsh for people to make a living. People cannot change the situation. They can only leave."
No free land
Although farmer Li Zuquan admits he is tempted to move his family, he knows that relocation would bring very different problems. The big question, he said, is: "If we moved, would the government give us land?"
Farming is vital to the family. Li Zuquan earns a total of between 8,000 and 9,000 yuan from his beans and tobacco, which he grows on four mu (0.2 hectares) of hillside land, three mu of which is allocated by the village. As much as half of that income goes to tuition fees for his 13-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son.
"I don't have other skills," he said. "Farming at least gives us enough food. If we moved to another place, we would live in a better house with a city water supply, but how could I feed my family?"
Arable land in Nanhua is sorely limited, making it difficult to set aside areas for farmers relocated from remote regions, said Wang, head of Dahuangdi. She explained the county authorities use bulldozers to create space in towns for newcomers to build homes and plant crops, but the soil is usually far less fertile than in the mountains.
"Without land farmers can't survive," she said. "They are less competitive in the city. It is hard for even college graduates to find jobs, let alone farmers."
The cost of relocation is also a concern for many people. "Even if the government grants subsidies to farmers, they would still need to pay at least 20,000 to 30,000 yuan," said Wang.
Such an amount is way out of Li Zuquan's league.
The door to the family's small house is made of several pieces of wood. There is no lock, said Li, because they have nothing to steal. Inside is only a wooden bed, some wooden chairs and a strong odor of cow dung.
Li has already lost his thumbnails due to decades of heavy labor, while malnutrition has caused both his front teeth to fall out in recent years. Yet he remains the family's only breadwinner. Along with his wife and two young children, Li also cares for his 73-year-old father, Li Wenxue, who has been unable to walk for 12 years and lives beside the cowshed.
"We can't move as we simply can't afford it," he said before adding he may have to borrow money, even though he is still paying off a bank loan of 1,000 yuan to cover the shortfall caused by an earlier drought.
Even for those who have already been relocated, it has been far from the perfect solution, prompting some of them to return to their hometowns just years later, said Ma Yongbin, of the Mouding water resource department.
All 10 of the households that were resettled 30 km from the drought zone in 2007 returned within two years.
"They found it hard to make a living in city. More importantly, they couldn't integrate into their new community or adapt to changes in the social environment," said Ma.
In Zelang, a predominantly Miao ethnic village in the eastern mountains of Yunnan, young people from all 33 households have headed to cities because of the drought. Only elderly people and children remain.
"A lot of people went to find a work in brick factories in Jiangxi province but most choose to come back in the end," said Wu Yingzhen, a 26-year-old primary school teacher in the village. "They (Miao people) don't have many choices because they are lacking in education. Some can't even speak putonghua. The income they make is usually not enough to cover the high costs of living in city. They can't pay for healthcare or school fees, so they only move out temporarily and use the money they earn to rebuild their mud house with cement."
Farmers should only relocate to urban areas if they are educated and can be competitive, said Wu.
Zhang Jijun, another primary school teacher in central Yunnan, agreed and added: "My students write in their homework about how they envy their parents and older brothers working in the city but they have no idea what it is really like."
People also choose to return to their farms simply because of homesickness or a "longing for their traditional culture", according to Yang Jialiang, head of Jiuwuji, the township that administers Zelang.
Wu Guobao, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' rural development institute, agreed and said: "Sometimes, villagers move back as the new location is incompatible with their religious and cultural practices. They might also return over fears of losing connections with relatives, or if they feel lonely."
Every year, villagers across the township stage extravagant ceremonies to celebrate the "mountain gods", with drinking and dancing often lasting for several days. "Each village has a holy mountain and people are not allowed to cut trees and hunt there. People here have emotional connections with mountains, trees and animals."
Watching the trees wilt and die in the drought has been torture for Yang. "I feel terrible. These trees have probably lived for 100 years," he said.
Aside from the costs, the lack of farmland and the difficulty in resettling, some would not contemplate leaving their homes for a second.
Like millions of others in Southwest China, 72-year-old Li Huogui has lost all her crops and faces a daily arduous trek just to fetch drinking water for her family and cattle. Yet she insisted she would never move from her native Bixime, a village in Mouding county.
"If the government paid for us to move I would let my sons go, but I would rather die in my home," said the elderly woman, who is from the Yi ethnic group.
Moving from problems
China has launched relocation projects to alleviate poverty and improve people's living conditions since the 1980s, according to Wu, who is an expert on poverty alleviation.
The central government spent 6.7 billion yuan to resettle 1.4 million people in new homes between 2001 and 2005, he said.
"So far, for those living in extremely harsh conditions, relocation is the most effective way to solve the problem of poverty and natural disasters," he said.
The subsidies given by the government are relatively low, he said, meaning the poorest farmers cannot afford to move - even though they are usually the ones most in need of relocation.
However, as those moving away must abandon their farmland, the resettlement projects could indirectly be helping poor villagers.
"If the government selects the right location, one that has enough farmland and fully meets the relocated families' religious and cultural beliefs, I believe Chinese farmers would live a better life," he said.
Zhou Wenting in Beijing contributed to this story. (China Daily 04/21/2010 page1)