By Du Wenjuan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-11-09 18:57

Twenty-six-year-old Li Chengqiang wants to be a writer.

The thin and friendly young man graduated from university this July. Instead of finding a job in the city, he headed for the hills. He went to the mountainous Huangtuwa Village in Changping District, a suburb of Beijing for three years as a “test field” to fulfill his dream as a writer.

Li graduated with a Master's degree in modern Chinese literature from Beijing Language and Culture University. He is among the 3,000 fresh graduates sent to villages around Beijing, nicknamed “college student village officials”.

He signed a three-year contract with the local town-level government, and “village officials” like Li will be looked on more favorably when they pass the national civil servant recruitment examination and the national graduate school entrance exams after finishing their service from the countryside.

This year, China has about 4.95 million fresh graduates, an increase of 820,000 from 2006. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, about 1.44 million are still unemployed this September, with the employment rate of fresh graduates reaching 70.9 percent.

“Over 580,000 go to government institutions below the county level this year, accounting for about 16.6 percent of the total,” a spokesman from the Ministry of Education said late last month.

In a bid to alleviate the difficulty fresh graduates have in finding jobs, and help develop rural economy, several provinces have launched similar programs of sending university graduates to local governments below county level.

Li has lived in Huangtuwa Village for about four months now.

“Though I was not born in the city, I feel this is a place to make me more determined to prepare well for my future career,” Li said with confidence. But he is also unsure about whether he could contribute to the village's businesses.

A Runner on the Road and the Scenery on the Way

In his student days, Li was a “college life” writer, fictionalizing the lives of the post-1980s generation. One of his professors encouraged Li to go to the countryside to experience real life.

“A man needs to have the life before he writes about it,” he said. In his blog, he calls himself “a runner on the road”. He explained that way he could see and experience a lot, as well as push himself to accomplish goals.

From the nearest town, it takes 40 minutes by car to get to the rugged road around the mountains to the village Li works and lives. The coldness in the mountainous area sometimes wakes him up in the night.

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