A dying village
In the past, the village had a big pond at the entrance. People gathered there every morning to do business, while in the afternoon, women came here to wash clothes and chat with each other. Liquor producers came to fetch water to make wine.
But now in Maixi Village, the pond stinks with white plastic bags abandoned everywhere. And the ancient residences are toppling and teetering on the verge of collapse. According to Zhang, during the Qing Dynasty, there were over ten large-scale classrooms for people to study and read books.
Now there is only one such room still in existence in Maixi Village. The south and north wall of the room is collapsing, weeds and spider webs have conquered the room. Another room for people to practice martial arts in has been utilized as a factory.
Besides the occasional noise from the factory, the village is often as quite as a dead person. When walking through the village, senior citizens are the only "scenery," and you seldom see people born in the 1980s.
At night, you can see some middle aged people coming back to sleep. Most of them drive motorcycles out of the village for work in the morning and come back at nighttime, providing some vitality twice a day to this quite village.
Many residences that are well preserved in the village have been rented to outsiders for business. Zhang Shouquan, a 74-year-old man who lived in a two-floor house, has four kids and none of them live in the village.
Every year, they come back to see their father but none stay at the home. Though Zhang saved rooms for them, all of them stay in hotels in Danyang County. Zhang has now rented his rooms to people to use as a chemical fertilizer store.
Other senior citizens have met similar situations. The nearly 70-year-old Wei Biqing has three children and all of them live in Beijing. She saved her house for her children, they all just come back to the village once a year for less than 10 days.
The population of the village used to matter a lot. But for the first time after hundreds of years, the population has become the issue that obstructs the development of this village. Now in Maixi Village, those who do farm work are above the age of 50 and because of a lack of labor, a large number of fields have been rented to outsiders.
"Every year, about 50 to 100 families move out of the village. The village is hallowing," said Zhang Rongfa. Young talented people leave for further study but never come back.
Maixi is not alone
"Cities and urban life are like magnets attracting people from villages out to experience a completely different lifestyle. For young people, the small village can no longer satisfy their desire and curiosity," explained Zhang Rongfa.
With development of the economy, urbanization and modernization have affected every corner of the country. In the 1970s, the high speed economic development of Japan forced many talented people in villages to flow into cities. Nowadays, many villages in Japan only have old people doing farm work, said a professor.
In China, a similar situation is happening. Besides Maixi, many villages in Guangdong and other coastal areas also see people moving to large cities in large numbers.
"Cities attract talents, and once they come out, many young people will never go back," said Zhang Xuefeng, a professor in Nanjing. Without talented young people, senior citizens cannot solely preserve a village.
"The history and culture of these villages are dying as people who lived in them die. Japan has already learned a lesson, and if China does not do something to change the situation, more ancient villages will die quietly," said Zhang.
"How to bring people back and promote the modernization of villages in order to keep people is what the nation needs to think about," added Zhang.
