But over dinner the mood is somber as talk inevitably turns to how much harder life has become in the past year. When he married Mei in 1994, they bought new furniture, a stereo system and a refrigerator. When officials confiscated his farmland for a new road last year without compensation, he gave up building a planned second story. Now he runs a makeshift grocery out of the house, selling eggs, toilet paper and candy mints. Like most other villagers here, Minsheng saves two-thirds of his earnings.
Desperate times call for desperate, and often illicit, measures.
Over dinner, Minsheng and his friends describe the risks some of their peers now take to earn a living. One of them distills bootleg moonshine from potatoes and sells it on the black market. Another, using a homemade rifle, shoots seagulls for the hair-thin baby eels sometimes found in their bellies. But in a country where even air guns are contraband, being caught means hefty fines or imprisonment. A more lucrative path is through the resurgent local underworld, where gangs run everything from brothels to gambling and drug dens, social vices once wiped out by the Communist Party.