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improvement of major roads throughout the province has had some unintended consequences for
farmers, as well. The market price for vegetables has plummeted as the roads have been
completed. Some farmers complain that road improvement elsewhere has made it easier for
everyone to get their market vegetables to urban markets around the province so the price has
collapsed. In the year 2000, vegetables were the most profitable crop farmers could grow. During
my visit in the winter of 2004-2005, farmers were unable to sell their vegetables. It made more
sense to feed the cabbage to their domestic pigs than to sell the vegetables for 1/20 the price they
had received 5 years before.
The completion of a stretch of railway connecting Weining to Guiyang has had more of
an impact for some farmers. While farmers in most hamlets do not see any benefit from the new
railroad station, two hamlets do. These are hamlets involved in the punting of boats around
Caohai Lake. Many of these punters say that the number of domestic tourists now coming to
Caohai has doubled since the completion of the station. These tourists, mostly coming from
Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, come in the summer to see flowers growing in the lake
and visit in the winter to see the black-necked cranes. Punters complain, however, that they do
not benefit from this increase as much as one might expect because the tourist bureau has started
to regulate punters’ activities, charging them a variety of taxes and fees. Recall that there are 89
hamlets in the reserve and 32 are close enough to the lake to have lost land from the lake
restoration. We have two hamlets that perceive benefits from the railway completion while the
rest do not.
There are ways in which local farmers have probably benefited from the Western
Development Project although they do not necessarily perceive these benefits. Between 2000 and
2004, the number of young men and women traveling outside of the region to work in factories
Convention