Revolution in a Chinese Village - Ten Mile Inn by Isabel Crook & David Crook

Author:Isabel Crook & David Crook
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0203000986
Published: 1959-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Ten Mile Inn Under Its First Elected Government

A short time after the cleaning up of the Ten Mile Inn Party branch, Wang Tse-yin, who had been appointed village head, was promoted to a post in the sub-county administration. To choose his successor, and at the same time to establish a new village government, Ten Mile Inn began to prepare for its first democratic elections.

The Bean Elections

To overcome the problem of illiteracy, the “bean method” was used. The candidates sat in a row, each with a bowl behind him. Every voter, which meant every man and woman eighteen years of age and over, was given seven beans to place in the bowls of the seven candidates whom he or she wished to form the village government. This method had the advantage of enabling the illiterate voter to be sure he was voting for the man of his choice. The candidates themselves, on the other hand, could not see who was or was not voting for them and so could bear no grudges.

Even this device for securing a fair democratic vote had some weaknesses. When a few years later a better method was introduced, one peasant, in explaining the new improvements, said:

“With the bean method some people who didn’t have any particular preference just dropped their seven beans in the bowls in order. So the first seven candidates in the row always had an advantage over the rest. On the other hand, some people who had very strong preferences, cheated by dropping several beans into the bowls of their favourite candidates.”

Despite such drawbacks as these, the “bean elections” were, generally speaking, fair and democratic.

The result of the first of them was that a former brick-maker and new middle peasant named Wang Hsi-t’ang became village head of Ten Mile Inn.

One of the first tasks which the new village head was called upon to carry out was to shoulder the traditional responsibility of village government – that of collecting taxes. Under Wang Hsi-t’ang’s guidance, despite the continuance of all sorts of evasion tactics by the wealthy, the new tax system continued to work out far more fairly than that of the past. The village officials, though lacking experience in the ways of high finance, proved quite capable of applying the tax-table issued by the Border Region Government. In one case at least they improved upon it. A certain exemption was officially granted to cover the cost of one bushel of fertilizer for every mu of land a family owned. The new cadres, thoroughly imbued with the principle of progressive taxation, decided that this allowance ought to be in accordance with the quality of the land; also that the distance of the fields from the village ought to be taken into account. These modifications were later adopted by the county authorities.

Perhaps as a result of adopting too many such suggestions, the 1944 table was “a great thick volume in red and black print, so complicated that none of us could understand it!” In fact,

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