40% respondents find 'villager' derogatory address

BEIJING - A survey has found 40.3 percent of Chinese people feel that calling someone a "villager" or "from countryside" to be discriminatory, China Youth Daily reported on Monday.

According to the survey, addressing someone as a "villager" still carries derogatory meaning to many, and only 31.3 percent of respondents dismissed the link, while the rest 28.4 percent did not give a clear answer.

The respondents were mainly born between 1980 and 1989.

The paper quoted a Peking University student from a farming family, Liang Xiaoping, as saying that "villager" is a label that he has been striving to shake, and he found it difficult to blend in with students from cities.

"Since I came to city for college, I've been struggling to understand my fellow classmates from cities, because a lot of stuff they talk about are unheard of to me, and I cannot afford to go to restaurants for meals," Liang said.

China has unbalanced development between city and countryside. In the survey, 59.8 percent of respondents hoped that rural infrastructure would be upgraded, 52.9 percent suggested that farmers' income be raised, and 50.9 percent hoped that farmers' education level be heightened.