Serfdom with chinese characteristics: No Way Out -- In China’s Medal
Factory, Winners Cannot Quit / NYTimes
The New York Times
June 21, 2008
In China’s Medal Factory, Winners Cannot Quit
By JULIET MACUR
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/21/sports/21athletes_650.jpg
Agence France-Presse ― Getty Images
Yang Wenjun, right, and Meng Guanliang won the gold medal in the C-2
500-meter flatwater canoeing race at the Athens Games.
FENGCHENG, China ― As a reward for winning an Olympic gold medal in
flatwater canoeing four years ago, Yang Wenjun ― the son of peasant rice
farmers ― was handed the deed to a three-bedroom apartment here in a
neighborhood called Sunny City.
The local government bought and decorated it, hanging giant scrolls in
the living room that announce in Mandarin: “Yang Wenjun won gold in the
Olympics. It brings good luck here.” But his mother, Nie Chunhua, said
Yang had been anything but lucky. She wiped away tears with hands dark
and swollen from farming.
