While in Beijing, my delegation visited the Great Wall of China. On the way to the Great Wall, we passed dozens of peasants' villages, and eventually persuaded our guide to let us stop in one.
Peasants make up a large percentage of China's population.
In Shaanxi province, the largest province in China, farmers make up 80 percent of the population. Of the 34 million inhabitants of the province, some 2 million of them live below the poverty line. At least 50 percent of these people are illiterate. Most peasant villages have no running water, but for a spicket in the center of the vilalge, and their houses have no central heat or air. Each family is given a narrow plot of land, which extended from the wall you will see marking the boundary of the fields out to the back of the fields, seen in the background.