The status quo of Bangbang Army in China
Tags: Introduction, Poverty, China, Sociology, Careers

Wushan, located at the eastern end of Chongqing, is one of the smallest and poorest counties in Chongqing. In this town, there’s a special group of people we call the Bang Bang Army. Just walking distance away from my grandparent’s house is the major part of the Bang Bang army aggregate place. On the side of the road or around the corner, it is common to see men wearing green liberation shoes covered with mud and ash, carrying a meter-long bamboo stick with a nylon rope attached to it, and standing or sitting waiting for a new day’s work. With a face showing the vicissitudes of life, a pair of dark rough hands, a set of twinkling eyes, clothes are worn over and over again; they looked a dozen years older than they were. They are Bang Bangs. The phrase, “Bang Bang” is more commonly known as a porter.

A Bangbang

There are lots of mountains in Chongqing, and it’s hard to use modern machines to reach some places. The only way to do this is with human labor. Thus, the Bang Bang Army is the main transportation of objects of the city in the past and a part of Wushan’s tradition. Every penny they earned was through their effort, and they are symbols of the diligence of the Chongqing people. I am proud of this tradition that has been around for centuries. However, the tradition must be sacrificed by helping them to get rid of poverty. I made up my mind to help them, to get more people to see the problem, and maybe this way can help to improve their lives.

A Bangbang

I am a high school student from Shenzhen, and I decided it was time to take a journey, which investigates and shoot a short documentary for the Bangbang by foot away from the luxuries of my grandparent’s house. I crossed the bridge and met them. Some were playing cards, some were smoking, some were chatting, all waiting for new work. I spent every day with them, from early morning to late afternoon, casually chatting with them, so we built up trust at last. My camera captured the moment of their plain daily life and hard work time. During the interview, they enthusiastic and sincerely answered my questions. I took down their names, telephone numbers, and addresses. Recorded from income to expenditure, from reality to dream. The interview went off unexpectedly successful, and I picked out “Luo” to go to his home for a detailed interview.

It was easy to see that Luo put on his best clothes and specially dressed up his hair. He lived at the back of the church. On the way to his house, we passed a little green linen shed, made of tin and cardboard, which was so black that I could hardly see anything without looking at it very carefully. I could only see a machine that was making noises and shaking, a pool of black water that was slowly spreading on the floor, and columns of black cylinders stacked orderly on a cart. I only saw those black cylinders on TV when I was a kid. They were called honeycomb briquette. And they were used for cooking and heating in the past. However, because the consumption of natural gas is so high that bangbang couldn’t spend thousands of yuan a month. My father told me that this shed was a miniature honeycomb coal factory.

Honeycomb briquet factory

We continue to go forward, passed a row of common the red brick house in the countryside, Luo suddenly turned left into a very narrow alley. I’ve only seen houses and structures like this in movies that tell stories from the last century. I could not believe that this scene was in the 21st century, and I felt like I was in a movie. Because Chongqing is located in the mountains, the road was rugged. The stairs vary in height and edge. The surface of the stone steps has several small areas rubbed smooth by the passing feet. The walls and the crevasses of the stone steps were covered with moss. The top of the walls was covered with electric wires and occasionally could see a white burning bulb completely exposed outside. The two ends of the wire were drawn from a high balcony to a low balcony, which became a clothes rack and hung with lots of clothes. There lived a lot of families. A woman was washing her hair from a basin on the balcony, and her son was standing in the doorway. An old lady was washing dishes from a rusted public tap. We kept going down the stairs, through countless doors and turns, and finally got into a small opening passageway. The corridor was narrow and dim. Although It was midday, the sun was the biggest, not even a ray of light could be seen through the bleak corridor. We were surrounded by bare concrete walls, even the bricks were exposed in some places.

the dim and narrow corridor

When Luo opened the door, a bed occupied nearly half of the room, a big flower quilt on the bed even could not see its original design and color. Beside the foot was a piece of the small tea table, ashtray inserted a few cigarettes ends. Moreover, there was an old black square color TV beside the bed. Pots, pans, and daily necessaries were all piled up on a table, and if there did not have enough space, they were hung up on a few nails from the top of the wall. He found a chair and dusted it with a rag. Then he drew out a stack of paper towels, placed them on the chair, and signaled me to sit down.

Luo was watching the old TV

He has a daughter working in Shenzhen, two granddaughters, a sick son-in-law, and the son-in-law’s father is a pensioner. Thus, Luo is one of the major sources of funds for this family. He dropped out of primary school before he graduated, so he didn’t have much education. He’s been a bangbang over 40 years. Ever since the advent of tricycles, delivery services, and moving companies, there have been fewer and fewer people in their line of work. They earn money only by luck. If you’re lucky, you can earn a little. If you’re unlucky, you can’t see a penny all day. He sighed as he spoke, the ashtray gradually filling up, tears beginning to appear in his eyes, his hand sometimes wiping them.

Luo was carrying a luggage

It was the first time for me to face and touch poverty in my whole life. Through this interview, I want to call the attention of the public to help them– want them to make more money so they can live better. The Bangbang Army is like a breakthrough point to understand the problem from many aspects about the bottom of the social people now facing. Like Economics– the gap between the rich and the poor, Psychology, Sociology, and so on. I will continue to show these subjects in my next stories.

Thanks for reading my story!!!