Art Village: A Year in Caochangdi
“Caochangdi is a microcosm of 21st-century China. Rural migrants come from the provinces — historic Hubei, impoverished Anhui, subtropical Sichuan — in search of opportunity in the big cities, but a lack of marketable skills and the inability to gain an urban hukou, or residency status, limit their access to housing and prevent them from obtaining social services like education and health care. They can’t afford to live in the expensive new neighbourhoods in the center, so they live on the margins, where they remain in a legal gray zone until money and luck run out, or the demolition trucks roll in”. Continue reading.
