Gerile—Making Snacks to Put Her Daughter Through College

Abstract

When our family drove through Inner Mongolia in 1994, it seemed the entire region had but one color—mud. I called it “Mudgolia” because the fields were mud, the deeply rutted roads were mud, the roadside houses and stables for the stout local Mongolian ponies were mud. By the end of day one, our white van was mud-colored; by day two, so were the passengers.

When our family drove through Inner Mongolia in 1994, it seemed the entire region had but one color—mud. I called it “Mudgolia” because the fields were mud, the deeply rutted roads were mud, the roadside houses and stables for the stout local Mongolian ponies were mud. By the end of day one, our white van was mud-colored; by day two, so were the passengers.

Inner Mongolia was truly like a time machine, whisking us back a century or two or 10. I’d have not been at all surprised if Genghis Khan’s descendants had ridden over the horizon and swooped down upon our van.

The steppes of Inner Mongolia are mythical in their expansiveness, but in 1994 the sun-scorched grass was dead, and I wondered how either people or animals survived. I could have never imagined that China’s vast infrastructure project would within two decades transform even this region and provide the locals with the means to self-sufficiency and even prosperity.

I compared photos I’d taken in 1994 with those I took in 2019, and they were worlds apart. Highways as beautifully designed and landscaped as those in my own Fujian Province have replaced the deeply rutted mud roads. Even more amazing—both sides of the highways, and often the center median as well, are now blanketed in lush grasses and local flowers and shrubs. And in Inner Mongolia, as in the rest of China, enterprising locals have taken full advantage of this infrastructure to not just survive but thrive and prosper. But I was most deeply moved by the Mongolian mother who shared with me how she went from grievous poverty to prosperity, and earned enough from making and selling traditional Inner Mongolian snacks to pay her daughter’s Xiamen University (XMU) tuition!

Mrs. Gerile was waiting for us as we pulled off the highway and drove past the rows of mock Mongolian yurts of wood or cement built for tourists who wanted the Mongolian experience without having to actually rough it. Mrs. Gerile waved and grinned as if we were long lost relatives—though I’d experienced this same hospitality around the entire country even back in 1994. The Chinese’ open-heartedness has never ceased to amaze me.

Mrs. Gerile invited us into her concrete home with its large windows that opened onto the grasslands. After she’d laid out bowls of the inner Mongolian snacks that are her stock and trade, she shared her story. At several points she wiped away her tears as she recalled her struggles, even as she smiled, putting a brave front on her story. At a few points I felt like crying myself (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1

Photo by Zhu Qingfu

Prof. William Brown interviewing herdsman Gerile in Xilamuren Grassland, Inner Mongolia on July 10, 2019.

“Such big changes over the decades,” she said. “Our family had a flock of sheep when I was a child. It was a large flock, but it belonged to the country. We gained work points in return for herding them. At nine years old, I became a shepherdess and helped my father, but from age 14 I did it alone. Winters were freezing [averages of −10 to −23 centigrade] and my thin clothes were threadbare….”

She stopped, lost in thought, then looked up and saw us waiting. She grinned and said, “But life is very good now! Policies are very good — much better than before.”

“Why are policies good now?” I asked.

Mrs. Gerile laughed. “I am illiterate but even I can see China’s improvements. So much has changed since I was a child.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I asked.

“My parents, who live only 30 km from here, had six sons and three daughters. I’m now the oldest because my two older brothers have passed away. One sister who worked in the Hohhot Railway Bureau is retired, and the other sister married a teacher in the Siziwang Banner of Inner Mongolia.”

“My brothers, and all but one of my younger sisters, went to school but my parents did not think I really needed an education because girls could always just get married. My brothers didn’t have enough to eat at school, so when I was only nine, not only did I help herd the sheep but each day I’d ride a donkey eight km to the school to give them steamed buns and pancakes. I was so small that I never dared dismount the donkey by myself, because I’d not be able to get back on. My father would put me on the donkey at home, and after I’d delivered the food at school, my brothers would put me back on the donkey for the return trip. It was a difficult trip, and I did it every day. And once I was home, I had to help care for the other children, and help herd — but the difficult conditions taught me to work hard!”

“What made conditions so difficult?” I asked.

“Living under the centralized system was very difficult,” she said. “We worked daily to earn work points, and if at year end the entire collective earned money, one work point would be exchanged for about RMB1 or even less, but if the collective lost money, work points were useless.”

“Only 20 years ago, we still lived in a small earthen house, but I built this house when my son was 20, and I’ve been here 19 years now. My son was very frugal and saved all he could for this house and to get married. At first, it was just bare walls — not even any windows. But then my son had an accident and died.” XMU teacher Jie handed Mrs. Gerile’s a tissue to wipe her eyes, and it was a few moments before she could continue.

“I had two children, but my son passed away unexpectedly in junior high school when he was 20; he would be 39 years today had he lived.”

“His accident was in the winter, and my daughter’s vacation was only days later. And before the school was to restart at New Year, I had spent every penny I had on my son’s 20 days in the hospital. I tried borrowing money from everyone, and finally got RMB900, with which I sent my daughter to school in Baotou. I was worried she’d not pass the high school entrance exam because her brother’s death hit her very hard, and she cried every day. But she told me, ‘I’ve cried for an entire week. I must stop now.’ And she did. She buried her head in the books and passed the exam.”

Just as Mrs. Gerile’s daughter entered university, a son of her aunt also died in an accident. He had been closer to her than anyone but her brother, and once again she was devastated. “She had a hard time going off to college. She is very diligent and frugal, never spending money. But when she went to XMU, our family condition improved. I had already started selling inner Mongolian traditional snacks. Because my products were very authentic, customers who tasted them snapped them up.”

“What motivated your daughter to study so hard?” I asked. “As you said, it was not easy for her to enter university.”

“Two things, perhaps,” Mrs. Gerile said. “One, I encouraged her strongly. And two, I never let her know that we had no money. When her cousin died, I didn’t even have enough money to buy 50 steamed buns for the New Year, so I tried to borrow from other herders, but they only earned RMB300 to RMB400 a month from grazing sheep. School restarted March 1, and I had no money at all for tuition. I went to an uncle who had a job and earned RMB1,000 a month. He loaned me RMB900 to send my daughter to Baotou, but wealthier people would not help me because they thought I could never repay them. You could say that, in effect, those wealthier people regarded me as worthless. I know I should not say this but I can’t help it.”

“And to this day, the poorer people are, the more I love to help them, because I understand what they are going through. I’ve been there myself. When I needed help, the wealthy people just looked at me as a 44-year-old woman without a son and no prospects in life, but the poorer people helped me out.”

“This reminds me of our family’s baomu,” I said. “When she was young, Lixi wanted to study but was not allowed to go to school. Later, she made money to buy pencils and paper, and tried to teach herself. And years later I found that even though we did not pay her a very big salary, she used some of it to help her family back in her Anxi hometown — even though her own family had treated her so badly!”

“My parents also said I could study by myself,” Mrs. Gerile said. “But they did not buy pencils or paper. And what would I write, anyway, when no one would teach me? Besides, I had to spend so much time each day on a bicycle picking up my brothers and sisters who did go to school.”

“Life was so hard back then — not just for me but for everyone, especially because people had so many children. Only with my generation did ethnic minorities begin having fewer children. Life now is generally very good.”

“It looks like things are much better off now,” I said, as I looked around at the large, modern home, the motorcycles in front, and the mock Mongolian yurts for tourists.

“Our town has rich people now. Not me, of course!” she said, laughing. “But we work very hard. I love to work, and I keep at it. I have but one wish — that children can learn some knowledge. I am uneducated, and I envy educated people who can read. My daughter loves learning.”

She reminded me of my old friend Ms. Yang Ying—a woman from southern Fujian Province who said she is uneducated because she had only four years education. Her dream was to earn RMB20 a month as a XMU professor’s maid, so that she could send RMB10 a month home, but today she owns international schools across China, a biotechnology company, and has donated hundreds of millions for education and to help fight poverty. Like Gerile, Yang Ying claimed to be uneducated but I know many highly educated people who have far less culture, and heart, than these two ladies.

“Policies are very good now,” Mrs. Gerile continued. “My husband and I are both over 60 years old, we receive a monthly pension.” She also explained that the state had restricted grazing because of the degradation of the environment, but provided them a subsidy of RMB5,000 per person per year. “At least our basic needs of food and clothing are met, though I am doing other things to supplement our family income.”

Her daughter has finished graduate school and is married to a man working at China National Radio (CNR) in Beijing. “He was a shepherd from west Inner Mongolia,” Mrs. Gerile said. “And he had just started working in Hohhot’s Federation of Literary and Art Circles when he was recruited by the CNR. He passed the exam and was accepted.”

“You are living on the grasslands this summer but where do you live in the winter?” asked Dai Ying, our school’s Party secretary.

“We live here all year round now,” she said. “We have kang stoves to keep warm.”

“What do you eat in winters?” Dai asked.

“The town is only four or five km from here, we can ride there on a motorcycle if snows are light. If it snows heavily, I can’t drive the car — I’m 60 now. But we store plenty for the winter — potatoes, radishes, noodles and beef and mutton. Chopped meat and potatoes make a tasty stew, and we boil noodles, steam buns or bake cakes. I think that nowadays we eat as well as you do! We can even eat rice and stir-fry — though our dishes may not be as tasty as yours.”

But as we discovered at lunch, she was a superb cook—which should not have been surprising given the popularity of her homemade inner Mongolian treats.

“I was 23 when I came here, and we were so poor that no one had any money, and people got used to eating from the ‘big pot of rice’ [iron rice bowl]. At least we weren’t starving. But when I was 25, households were contracted to raise over a dozen sheep, though we could no longer just graze them anywhere as in the old days. In summers we grazed them a few dozen miles from here in Xiayingpan. Some people were worried when they started the household system. Each person in a family was allowed three sheep, and our family of three had eight or nine sheep on a few acres. We had no tools nor money to buy any. We could only borrow from each other. A family with a cow would help a family with a plow. And as we worked together, things improved each year. Then I started making traditional inner Mongolian snacks from milk and promoting them myself, including giving free tastes to sightseeing groups. But then some tour guides asked for a commission.”

“Did you pay it?” I asked.

She laughed. “I told them, ‘Some customers make purchases, but many who eat my free samples buy nothing. If I give you a commission, who should I ask to pay for the free samples? If you give me money for the free samples, then I will give you a commission!’”

Although Mrs. Gerile’s products are handmade, they are highly regulated and packaged professionally to ensure quality, hygiene and safety. “Supervision is very strict,” she said. “I make snacks because of the restrictions on grazing. In west Inner Mongolia people can still live a nomadic lifestyle on the vast grasslands, but our grasslands here are much smaller, and we have had nine droughts in the last 10 years. So grazing is limited lest the grasslands are destroyed beyond hope of recovery. Here, we still rely on the sky to eat. If it rains, we have hope, but none when it does not rain. Even though our grassland is small, there is no way for us to manually irrigate it.”

Fujian photographer Mr. Zhu Qingfu said, “Grassland desertification is very serious in some parts of Inner Mongolia. How about here?”

“Since ancient times this place has been pastureland, not desert,” Mrs. Gerile said. “But it is not as good as it used to be when we had fewer people and livestock — some 30 households and 1,000 sheep in a township. Today, each household has 80 to 100 sheep, which is far more than our limited pasture can sustain, so the state gives subsidies to compensate for restrictions on grazing.”

“How much can a sheep sell for now?” asked Mr. Zhu.

“I’m not sure,” Mrs. Gerile said. “Sheep and cattle are very expensive now. Last year, some of my sheep sold for over RMB2,000 each. I only have a few dozen sheep now — those corralled just outside my front door. I rarely sell them except to my daughter’s XMU classmates. They don’t like the taste of lamb raised in pens and given commercial feed. They think ours taste much better because they are free range.”

“The US is like this too,” I said. “Animals are pumped full of hormones to speed their growth and pumped full of antibiotics to prevent disease in the cramped, unnatural environment. Modern meat is full of chemicals.”

“Yes, that’s why my sheep are so popular. Last year, one of my daughter’s classmates wanted to buy some mutton, but I’d run out of it. I called my daughter’s mother-in-law, who also raises sheep, and she sold one of hers.”

Mrs. Gerile gave us a tour of her modern, spacious kitchen and then whipped up a lunch fit for a king—or a khan. And as we drove off, she stood on her porch waving until we were out of sight.

I was deeply moved by how she’d sacrificed to put her daughter through high school to XMU and even graduate school, never letting on that they were virtually penniless. I’ve interviewed many students and, without exception, their stories are also inspiring. I’d love to compile a few dozen of these dreamers’ tales into a book.

I’m thankful to spend so much time with China’s youths because this generation is helping to bring about the Chinese Dream. But that dream may have been stillborn had it not been for the sacrifices of selfless and courageous people like Mrs. Gerile.

In closing—a quick word about the nomadic lifestyle. Many foreign media reports have bemoaned the changes in the nomadic lifestyle across China. And yet the very same media also criticizes China’s environmental degradation which is largely due to over-grazing—especially in the highlands of Tibet, home to many of the world’s greatest rivers, and it can take decades for a patch of grass to regrow. This problem is not uniquely Chinese, of course—nor is it new.

In the 1800s, people wrote of the US state of Arizona’s vast grasslands, with grass as high as a horse’s belly. But over-grazing transformed it to desert. Until recently, scientists thought such desertification was irreversible, but nature is resilient if given half a chance. Grassland has recovered—but only after banning or at least restricting grazing.

Even though the cultural impact on the nomadic lifestyle is unfortunate, there is no choice. I met Mongolians who persist in their nomadic lifestyle, but the land is dying, their livestock are dying—and their children are leaving for better pastures.

Fortunately, China has tried to find ways to protect both the environment and livelihood—and culture as well. In Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and the deep valleys of west Yunnan, home to the musical Lisu tribe whose slash-and-burn agriculture had devastated the environment, the government has hired tens of thousands of the very people who helped destroy the environment and taught them how to protect the environment as forest rangers or river conservationists.

Flora and fauna are both making a comeback—including many endangered species that were thought to be beyond hope. And these former nomads are not only thankful to have a more comfortable and secure life but also feel pride in becoming “environmental experts.” After all, although these nomads led simple lives, they were not at all ignorant. They could see for themselves that, especially with climate change, their lifestyle was not sustainable. Today they take pride in protecting their ancestral lands while at the same time giving their children a happier and healthier future.

In my eyes, this is win–win both for the people and for the planet.

China has made mistakes, of course, but thanks to its systematic approach to problems, whether environmental, economic or health, it learns from mistakes and presses forward. Hopefully, the rest of the world can learn from China’s experiences.