The highly toxic compound bioaccumulated in fish and shellfish in the bay which, when eaten by the people living around the bay, gave rise to Minamata disease. Now life is good back there.Minamata Bay was heavily polluted in the 1950s and 1960s by wastewater, mixed with mercury dumped into Hyakken Harbour from the Chisso Corporation's factory in Minamata, particularly by methylmercury. “When I was very little, there was a big gap between here and my hometown, but not anymore. “My plan is to save more money, then in the next couple of years, move back home and start my own business, maybe a clothing shop,” says Zhang Chi, 25, who works in a toy factory in Dongguan, which is also in Guangdong province, and is from a village outside the city of Xi’an, in the northwest. Two-thirds of those planning to migrate said they intend to return to their villages. “I will find a job near wherever they go to school.”Ī survey released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in April found that one-half of rural Chinese aren’t interested in moving to the cities, citing their age, the need to take care of parents and children, and unfamiliarity with urban life. “I will definitely not let my future child become a left-behind child,” she says. While Pan’s parents worked in a factory in Huizhou, in Guangdong province, she was raised by her grandmother before going to a government boarding school. “I have experienced how lonely it is to grow up lacking in parental love,” says Pan Guofen, 23, who manages e-commerce orders for the organic vegetables, fruit, and meat produced at Qianlafang. There’s a growing national awareness of the social costs of migration. “My mother and father are too old, so I returned to take care of them,” he says. Now he raises free-range chickens at Qianlafang Ecological Agriculture Development, an organic farm and tourist resort in Luodian County, only 70 kilometers from his hometown, where his parents still live. “You can’t ever earn that much money, and you are far away from your family.” Shi worked in a cloth-dyeing factory in Zhejiang province before moving back to Guizhou two years ago to live with his wife, 5-year-old son, and 7-year-old daughter. “Being a migrant is not fun,” says Shi Wenjian. “Now we think that the service economy and tourism should lift rural China.” “Starting in the 1980s, China’s countryside grew through reliance on manufacturing and processing,” says Sun Zhe, chairman of GoHome, a travel website that helps urbanites enjoy Guizhou’s traditional country life. Under a policy colorfully called “Returning Geese Revitalize Guizhou,” provincial officials are offering returnees free entrepreneurial training, tax waivers for businesses they start, and low-interest loans. The statistics bureau doesn’t track returning migrants, but Guizhou does: Last year 1.2 million returned to the province, up from 520,000 in 2011. “The flood of rural labor has slowed to a trickle and may dry up altogether,” Miller says. Many of the migrants simply go to nearby cities and townships to live and work. In 2016 the total could fall, says Tom Miller, an analyst for the Beijing-based consulting firm Gavekal Dragonomics. Last year the number of migrants from the countryside edged up 0.4 percent, to a total of 169 million, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. “Now our migrants are coming back with new skills,” such as a knowledge of computers, he says. “Before, we relied on planting rice, corn, and peppers and remittances from our young people who went out to find work,” says Mo Bochun, a village official sitting in the local party service center under a huge poster portraying Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping, set above images of President Xi Jinping and his two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. He expects tourists to flock to this out-of-the-way place surrounded by steep mountains and rushing rivers. “I knew that the water was so much cleaner and better here in Guizhou-good for raising fish.” Now that he’s launched his fish farm, he plans to open a restaurant in Binghuacun featuring his mountain-farmed fish. When Mo saw locals running a fish farm near the factory where he worked in Guangxi province, “I decided I wanted to start one, too,” he says. A push to develop interior China had brought high-speed rail and expressways to Guizhou, helping spur economic growth. Factory jobs on the coast were drying up, and he sensed opportunity in his home village. Mo Wangqing left Binghuacun at 18 to toil in the coastal factories, making everything from electronics components to wall paneling. Photograph by Grainne Quinlan for Bloomberg Businessweek
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