Editor Choice

Rural healthcare system has cracks to fix

By Daniel Chinoy (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-05 07:33

Unlikely friendship highlights inequalities

At first glance, Weng Yongkai and Song Xiuru have little in common. Weng is sophisticated and cosmopolitan, an expert on rural healthcare with a PhD in molecular biology. Song is homespun, with barely an elementary school education, and has lived all her life in a small town in Shaanxi province.

But the two women are close friends, linked by years of shared experiences that reflect some of the changes, opportunities and inequities that have defined China's last 30 years.

In 1969, at the height of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), Weng arrived in Jiziwan, a remote village in Shaanxi, to "learn from the peasants". It was a far cry from her native Beijing. Most residents lived in small, manmade caves carved in the loess mountains. There was often not enough food and water was scarce.

Weng became firm friends with Song when they were assigned to plant an apple orchard

8 km from the village. "Conditions were really bad but she was really tough," recalled Song.

Isolated, Weng suffered from periodontis, which caused her to lose many of her teeth, and serious malnutrition. But after two years of manual labor in the orchard, she returned to Jiziwan. There, Weng worked as the village doctor at night and in the fields during the day. It was exhausting but Weng continued to study, often by candlelight. "She hated wasting time," Song said. "She studied so hard she sometimes forgot to eat."

Weng returned to Beijing in 1975 and enrolled at Peking University two years later, launching an academic career that would see her earn a PhD in the United States and a job with the US Food and Drug Administration.

"Without experiencing life in the village, it would have been impossible for me to overcome the difficulties in studying abroad," she said.

With little education, Song did not have Weng's academic credentials or the option of returning to Beijing. Instead, she was pressured into a marriage by her family. Her husband often drank and beat her. Depressed, she retired early from her job at a concrete factory in 1993.

Weng remained in touch. In 2002, she helped found the Aixin Foundation, which focuses mostly on health education in rural China, before also taking early retirement in 2006 to work fulltime on healthcare issues. "She never forgot us ordinary people," said Song.

Weng said: "I was no smarter than Song, she just had no opportunity. If I were born in the countryside, my fate would be like hers."