Word: dongju
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...they do it in their own down-to-earth way. Li Dongju's husband Zhang Zhanzha, 45, was elected vice chairman of the village committee last year on the strength of the family's commercial success. He did not need to campaign. The farmers here have no use for bluster or bombast. "It is not the Chinese way to brag about 'how great I am,'" says Li Xiumin. What villagers respect and what they vote for is practical achievement. "If there is no proof you can do things, the voters think you are just an empty talker, and you will...
Looking across her lush orchards, Li Dongju says her aspirations are fulfilled. "We feel like we're free here," she says. Free to get rich, if they can. Free to focus on family matters, village problems, the immediate society, without interference from the government or the party. But Tuonan township is not ready to stretch its new thinking to national politics. Li Dongju credits her achievements to Deng's "wise opening," and she resents it when outsiders say China's ways are all bad. If there is a rising tide of nationalism, it lies less in dreams of hegemony than...
...Unless the people approve of you," she says, "you can't get them to do anything. Now we know elections are the best way to get good things done." But such political progress hasn't paid off financially in Yangzhuang, a village of 1,200 not far from Li Dongju's peach orchards. Her neighbors say Zhao would "naturally" win any vote, but her current ambitions are all economic. Yangzhuang has no rich orchards, no 10,000-yuan households and little arable land. Hardscrabble farming is still the daily lot as fathers struggle to make a living and sons...