City-dweller Wang Weiwei and his friends are the main subject of gossip in Xianying, a small village of around 8,000 inhabitants located in Beijing Municipality.
Wang's group, with its trendy and urban style, stands out in a village community that still works everyday in rice fields with donkeys and their bare hands. They are all Beijing university graduates that have accepted an offer to work as counselors in village administrations - jobs that are part of a nationwide plan conceived by the central government to modernize public services in rural areas of the country.
Thousands of university graduates have been sent to the China's countryside as part of a plan reminiscent of similar steps taken under the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). But the Cultural Revolution was a wave of oppression against anyone considered
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