Professor Xu is from a very poor family. He grew up in the wetlands and channel networks far beyond the “water towns” around ShangHai. Meat never got on the table there, with a few exceptions: If he managed to catch a mouse or a rat, then he grilled it on a stick over an open fire, still no meat on the table, but at least in the stomach.
Back when I visited him in ChangChun, his father was still a self-sustaining peasant who grew himself all that he needed for living. His income, as far as money was concerned, was equal to about ten Euros. Per year. Everything that he and his wife were eating and drinking they produced themselves.
Because of his exceptional talent and performance, Little Xu very early received a scholarship. He was not even 30 when he got an appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences.
A few years later he finally succeeded in convincing his parents to visit him. He picked them up in his native village, together they drove to the airport and flew from there to ChangChun. ShangHai and ChangChun were cities of a kind that his father and his mother had never seen before. For them, it was unthinkable, in terms of money, ever to travel there.
The second evening they went to a restaurant for dinner. The son invited his parents, along with his wife and their little baby. Father and mother were not shown the menu table, the son ordered the dishes.
When the bill was brought, the father heard the amount that was to be paid. Right at the table he started crying bitterly and could not stop. His son had at that one evening spent four or five times as much of money as he had available for a whole year.
This story moved me very much, and it reminded me of the trip to the border with Inner Mongolia. On the way to there, country and villages had looked increasingly poorer. You have to understand that in China, not just anyone who wants to may move to a city and find a job there. I asked Professor Xu: “What if suddenly, at the very same day, all those poor maize and cabbage farmers within a radius of 50 km would decide to move into the city?” – “Well, then we get a problem.”
