Human Rights?:
A different view of life in China
by Heather Edmonds

If you turn left at the entrance to Fudan University and cross Zheng Tong Lu, walk past the Korean grocery store and the internet bar and stop across from Xiao Jang's restaurant, you will see it. In a space the length of a city block and the width of a school hallway, hundreds of people bustle about, making their living. Hundreds more stop for a snack on the way to work, pick up a live chicken or fish for the evening meal, or stock up on fresh vegetables and bread products. A walk through Stinky Alley assaults every sense--chickens squawking from stacks of wire cages, fish, frogs, and turtles swimming in red kid-size pools, the scents from cooking beef, pork, bread, popcorn, and vegetables mingling with the days garbage swept to the end of the alley--it knocks you upside the head with the reality and vitality of everyday life in Shanghai, China.

What is more amazing about Stinky Alley is what happens at the end of the day. As dark creeps over the densely packed city of 13 million people, those who make their living in the alley pull in their wares, close the gates of their tiny cement stores and sleep. In the busy rush of daylight it is easy to miss the bamboo mats stretched across packing crates that serve as beds for husband, wife, and child. Many of these people have come to the city in hopes of a better life than what they had in the rural areas and find themselves living and working in 6x12 cement cells lining a busy alley.

Stinky Alley is not an isolated incident in China. As the population continues to grow, exceeding 1.2 billion, housing becomes more and more difficult to find. Other problems are also attributed to the enormous population. A twenty-eight hour train trip from Beijing in the north to Hong Kong in the south reveals several dried-up rivers, unable to survive the pressure of agricultural practices needed to feed so many mouths. The railway weaves through rural areas and megacities, all clouded with the smog from thousands of factories operating twenty-four hours a day to boost the economy.

Here in the United States, we hear a lot of criticism of China's stringent population policies. We gasp in horror at stories of aborted baby girls, abandoned children, and the idea of telling someone how many children they can have. We sign petitions, write letters, and distribute human rights reports. Yet do we understand the implications of rescinding the birth control policies?

A wise Chinese professor told it this way: "You in the United States, in the name of human rights, would have us take back all population controls. For that, we need your help. Perhaps you could take 90% of all the food you grow and give it to our country to feed these children. Or you could send us half of the money you earn so that we could afford food and clothes for them. You could also take these children into your homes, provide for them, educate them, then send them back to China so they might help our country for the future."

Human rights to us seems to mean freedom of choice--where to live, what to eat, how many children to have. Before the Chinese can consider these meanings, more basic human rights and needs must be met. To eat, to have a place to live, to not see countless natural resources dwindle and disappear under the weight of the population--these are human rights to many who live in Stinky Alley and in China.