{"id":6933,"date":"2016-02-05T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6933"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:50:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:50:05","slug":"the-young-woman-in-wuhan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6933","title":{"rendered":"The young woman in Wuhan"},"content":{"rendered":"

South China, 1992<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

For months I had been editing stories at China Daily about how China’s moribund state-owned enterprises were being closed, disassembled, and sold off in bits. It was part of Deng Xiaoping’s ongoing push for economic reform, which he had just re-emphasized with his tour of South China.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I traveled\u00a0through South China soon after that, I looked for signs of this reform.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>In Wuhan, I found\u00a0a place where old factory inventories were sold. It was a field\u00a0of corrugated metal sheds in rows, each with a different pile of junk. Stacks of steel bars, greasy old machine parts, and unrecognizable detritus. <\/span><\/p>\n

The employees were sitting around, playing cards, eating snacks, men in their undershirts, looking as greasy as the metal that they had no interest in selling.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Then I came upon a shed with just this one young woman. <\/span><\/p>\n

She had a heart-shaped face and smooth, pale skin. She was selling a large machine that looked like a press, painted in the industrial institution green. <\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike her slovenly comrades in the neighboring sheds, she was neatly dressed in a white top and blue slacks. She smiled shyly as I made greetings and spoke in my fumbling Chinese.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>As she stood there, with the natural light falling on her, she filled that ugly shed with beauty. Even the old machine, tired and dirty as it was, gained a graceful pause as she stood beside it. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>It was poignant, this young woman stuck here, knowing that no one\u00a0would want\u00a0this machine, or anything in those sheds. \u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>But even in\u00a0this ugly place, you could find\u00a0some spare parts like her. Parts that would be built into China’s engine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 1992, for the woman of Wuhan. I wonder what she is doing now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South China, 1992 For months I had been editing stories at China Daily about how China’s moribund state-owned enterprises were being closed, disassembled, and sold off in bits. It was part of Deng Xiaoping’s ongoing push for economic reform, which he had just re-emphasized with his tour of South China. As I traveled\u00a0through South China … read more The young woman in Wuhan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,320],"tags":[170,82,119,700,32,229,532],"class_list":["post-6933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-shelter","tag-170","tag-beauty","tag-china","tag-factory","tag-metal","tag-shed","tag-ugly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6935,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933\/revisions\/6935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}