Encountering the Dragon - Hukou

Anyone aware of what “Hukou” is.

So for the benefit of all the UNAWARE it is basically a resident permit issued by the Chinese government, allowing one to stay in China even if you were born there. It is issued on family basis. Every family have a Hukou booklet that records information about the family members, including name, birth date, relationship with each other, marriage status (and with whom if married), address and your employer...

Everyone in China has a Hukou.

Now this booklet is very important. One is expected is stay where they were born and stay there until there demise. One cannot move around. One can travel but then there is no access to jobs, public utility services or food. It is just like visiting other places with a B-1 (business) type of visa - you can visit, but cannot work there (it is illegal), cannot go to school (not accepted), cannot go to hospital (without a hukou, you are not treated). For food, in those old days, you cannot buy food no matter how much money you have. You need to use Liangpiao (The currency for food) with money together to get food. Liangpiao is only issued by the government of the place your Hukou is registered.

The worse is when it comes to travelling, If you travel without a hukou, you don’t exist, you’re a non-person. If you go to Shanghai, or anywhere else, you’re treated as an illegal. No place to stay, no licence to work, no assured pay, even if it’s a few grains of rice a day.

China very rigidly manages the flow of people from one place to another and one cant just travel upto Shanghai or Beijing. He or she would have to have a Hukou.

That then has to be stamped by the local Party commissar in your city and also stamped by someone higher up in the Party in the city you want to go to. Then and only then do you get to move.

All the trouble to move around we Indian’s would have gladly stayed at home, but then China being China passenger rail transport is one of the principal means of transport, with 1.456 billion railway trips taken in 2008.

But we don’t need to have a Hukou to move around in India. The trains keep on moving rather chugging and the bogies are always full. The “mango people” like to travel and we do so with aplomb. Along the journey we ensure that we crib and curse on and at the system which runs the railways. Are we justified to do so, well there does not seem to be a reason for that much of it comes to us as a BIRTHRIGHT.

But lets be kind to the “Mango People” and paint a picture of the so called “Ordeal” of travelling on the Indian Railways. This would include getting into a general compartment, stow your meager luggage, and then hope for the best that you’re not kicked around at three in the morning when you’re trying to sleep sitting on a hard wooden berth shared by four other uninvited co-passengers. And on the upper berth, callused feet, dangling, kicking you around the face.

All this time though people inside would try and wage a futile war to keep the door shut against the tide of people trying to rush in and as always - since the will of the person trying to catch a train than the one inside being more strong – the numbers inside the coach would increase.

The bathrooms in all the bogies always malfunction which seems very strange. Either there is no water or there is a leak in the flush which eventually drains the tanks out into the bogies much to the distaste of the passengers. The aromatic sewage from the loo spilling out and lovingly wetted the pants of the unfortunates crowded there and the curses flowed.

But we would be on the same train the very next time we needed to be. Why so?? Well the answer is simple. This was the cheapest ride back home for the “Mango People”. One did not need a ticket a mere bribe and the stamina to endure the above mentioned would be enough to get you to your destination. AND we did not need to have a HUKOU.

The general compartments’ are filled with our so called “Mango People”, people who would be responsible to take the country forward. The best diamond cutters in Gujarat come from Bengal. Going home, we experienced really free migration first hand: the poorest of the poor, our co-passengers, would do anything to migrate for work to a better place, paying just 10 rupees to the TTE.

To get a Hukou in China is tough mostly so to control the flow of migrating workers. But then the rigidity would not help the Dragon in times of a downturn.

But then “The Mango People” will travel and business will prosper.