Orderly cultural life
The village party committee makes both financial and cultural rules for residents to follow, reports the Zhengzhou Evening Paper. People here live an orderly life in every respect.
For instance, the village committee encourages people to keep cats rather than dogs because the former catch mice but the latter may be troublesome and bite people. You are awarded bonus points for having a cat but fined for keeping a dog.
Gambling is strictly regulated by the former village chief Wu Renbao. Only people over 60 years of age are allowed to gamble. Gambling after eight p.m. is subject to fines because it is deemed to produce poor health. Besides that, only petty sums are allowed.
The village rewards respect for the elderly. Households caring for seniors eighty and older entitle the immediate family members to cash rewards based on the person's age. For instance, when villager Li Jinman turned one hundred, his family members were each awarded 10,000 yuan.
A company specializing in continuing education was established in 1989. This company organizes classes in Maoism and Deng Xiao-ping Theory. Wu Renbao, the founder of Huaxi's legendary wealth, is 84 years old now. He still sticks to sharing his successful experiences every day with residents and visitors: every day he repeats the same tale and even the same jokes, in local dialect interpreted by his granddaughter-in-law who also the deputy chief of party committee of Huaxi Village.
A special report of Huaxi Magazine by Huaxi Village shows the photos of 88 brilliant villagers who form a kind of power pyramid. Twenty-two figures from Wu Renbao's family occupy the top of this pyramid. Three generations of Wu's family all take important leading roles in this village.
Journalists from China Youth Daily were accompanied by a village party committee for their day of interviews with villagers. They thought they could get some candid comments from residents in the evening, but when they finally found a house with lights still on after 8 p.m., the owner, a migrant worker, declined to speak with them, saying they needed to contact the committee office.
At the material level, Huaxi village is far better off than the average village in China, and even richer than some cities. A visit to the primary school here reveals a well decorated library with a fountain and artificial greenery, but still you feel something is wrong - something about the limited topics on the bookshelf.
