The Rat People

A Journey through Beijing's Forbidden Underground

Patrick Saint-Paul, David Homel

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English

Arsenal Pulp Press
15 June 2020

Social services & welfare, criminology

In a relatively short amount of time, China has become the secondlargest economy in the world and is soon poised to overtake the US. In 1978,when China introduced its economic reforms, its GDP was $214 billion; in 2019,it is estimated to increase to $14 trillion. But the country's rapid growth wasachieved on the backs and shoulders of its workforce, many of whom were peasantfarmers turned into the mingong,urban migrant workers, celebrated by Mao and credited with helping Chinaachieve its economic miracle. Now, a million of them and their descendants liveunderground in Beijing under inhuman conditions, where there is no light orwater and little sanitation.

Author Patrick Saint-Paul spent two years living among the 'ratpeople' (shizu) of Beijing, in anetwork of deep tunnels and 20,000 former bomb shelters built during the ColdWar. The mingong come to Beijing fromall parts of the country, in search of jobs and a better life, but they areunable to afford their own homes on their meager salaries. For them, China'sdream of prosperity for all is a bitter fallacy.

In The Rat People,Saint-Paul brings the individual stories of the shizu to life, creating ashocking cautionary tale about the lengths to which people will go in search ofa better life, and the human cost paid in service to the modern economy.

By: Patrick Saint-Paul
Translated by: David Homel
Imprint: Arsenal Pulp Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions: Height: 228mm, Width: 150mm,
ISBN: 9781551528038
ISBN 10: 1551528037
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 15 June 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Patrick Saint-Paul has been a correspondent in China for the French newspaper Le Figaro since 2013. Over his career he has also covered assignments in Sierra Leone (which won him the Jean Marin Prize for War Correspondents in 2000), Liberia, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Germany, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Rat People is his first book. David Homel is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and translator, and the author of seven novels. He has translated many French-language books into English and is a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation.

Reviews for The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing's Forbidden Underground

An astonishing expose of China's literal underbelly. Who knew Beijing's glittering towers lie above an Orwellian Airbnb, tomb-like catacombs home to millions of migrant workers and despairing university graduates. Even as China becomes the world's largest economy, popular unrest looms. Investigative journalism in the tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. --Jan Wong, author of Red China Blues