I was five and had lived in the village my entire life. I fantasized about living in the city. Not long before, I had learned the Chinese words gongren (workers) and nongmin (farmers) from a children’s magazine. I asked my mother which we were. My mother said we were farmers. Workers lived in the cities, and farmers worked in rice paddies in the countryside, she explained. “But I’m not farming,” I said. “Why am I a farmer?” I was puzzled.
It would take me a few more decades to grasp how China’s stratified hukou system worked against its majority rural population, depriving them of opportunity and mobility. I don’t remember how my mother addressed my question, but that conversation in the mid-1990s left an impression: Everything associated with the city was superior, and farmers lived a backward life.