China has 900 million farmers that want to read stories like My Old Hometown (Guxiang) by famous Chinese writer Lu Xun. But currently the number of writers interested in writing about rural life is shrinking in Chinese mainland.

Some literary critics believed such phenomenon reflected that a huge economic gap and different cultural taste still existed between cities and rural area. In recent years, although China's rural area has witnessed great changes, fewer and fewer writers have paid their attention to the countryside. When local governments are focused on economic developments in cities during the opening-up, novels about city life and individualism are flourishing, which make readers quite familiar with life in metropolises. However, they know little about today's rural life partly because literal works about the countryside are few.

Jia Pingao, a 54-year-old Chinese up-to-date littérateur, still persists in writing about rural life. Jia, a descendent from a rural family, has produced many popular literary works about rural areas. He said, "Starting from Impulsive Life, (Fuzao) I have written everything happening in rural areas for 20 years, from land reforms in 1978 to the 1990s." His latest work, Qin Qiang, a 400-thousand-word novel, describes the rural life in the period of modernization and globalization. While expressing sympathy for those farmers living under heavy burdens and land loss, the author also discloses his worries about the possible loss of rural cultures.

Jia said, "I hope several years later, farmers can become rich, and their children can receive education. An exuberant rural area can thus be built, where urbanization can be realized."
 
(Chinanews.cn July 11, 2006)