Stories from Inner Mongolia: My first Urben centre meeting

By George Scott, Wokai fellow

The night we arrived in Youqi we met and had dinner with Mrs Cao, the director and Ms. Han, the branch accountant from the Youqi branch of Chifeng Zhaowuda Women Sustainable Development Association (CZWSDA) our partner MFI, and the branch with which I was going to be spending the next month. Having been travelling for much of the last 24 hours, none of us were in the mood for much conversation, but even so I got the feeling that the welcome wasn’t the warm Chinese welcome to which I’d become accustomed. Pleasantries were exchanged and letting the Chinese conversation wash over me I put any such thoughts behind me and tried instead to force a few more mouthfuls of food into an already well over full stomach.

The following morning, after a Chinese breakfast of fried noodle, salted vegetables and bouzi, a meat filled dumpling we made the short walk to the branch office. The office is on the third floor of a small soviet-esque building overlooking a small deserted square, and home to the four ladies who work at the branch, Director Cao, Ms Liu and the two loan officers Ms. Han and Ms. Cuo. They have one semi working computer between them and after an embarrassed shuffling of the feet asked if we had or knew of anyone in Beijing who had an old computer they weren’t using and might be willing to donate to a good cause. I made a promise to enquire and being the sucker for four women in need donated my old one, I warned them that having been previously donated to me, it wasn’t in the best condition, but they seemed very grateful all the same. After that brief welcome we were taken to our first an urban centre meeting.

One of the great innovations of microcredit is the ability to make loans unsecured by any conventional form of collateral. This is done by making loans to individuals as members of a group. This way the group of 8-10 members are able to support each other, encouraging and helping the other members of the group to make payments. In some systems if one borrower defaults on their loan, the entire group can be penalized and barred from taking any further loans. More importantly though, it provides support to each of the members. It was a meeting of one of these groups that we were being taken to attend.

Myself, Zhangsheng and a group of borrowers at the tea house centre meeting

The meeting was held in a tea house that served a local form of salted milk tea. Although it might sound and taste strange at first, it is, but once you get used to it, it’s actually very nice and I’ve now had it at breakfast every morning since. The tea house itself was set up using a microloan and inside were a group of 9 ladies who comprised one “peer” group. The meeting is a chance for the group all to catch up as well as for them to make their biweekly repayment as they sit around chatting and sipping on the Mongolian salted milk tea. Two of the women I spoke to were repaying RMB 130 each, about $20, from a loan of a couple of RMB 2000. One lady I spoke to was the head of her village of about 140 people, 45 of whom were already microfinance customers and many of the others were waiting for their opportunity to take out loans. She had already borrowed three times before, using the money to buy and rear dairy cattle. The other ladies used their loans to fund many different enterprises, including small commercial enterprises; shops, restaurants and tea houses, like the one we were in, as well as rearing sheep and cattle.

A pot of Mongolian “pot” tea, complete with butter and milk tofu in the bottom left of the picture.

As a first venture into a meeting I was a little uneasy, especially when I was asked to stand up and give an impromptu speech to the group about what I was doing in Youqi and where I had come from, all in Chinese. I’m not sure whether they all understood but they gave me a small round of applause at the end, which in retrospect I should have taken as a “didn’t understand a word he said, but at least he looked like he was really trying”, instead of the congratulatory appreciation I mistook it for. It was nice to talk to some of the ladies and begin to understand just how microcredit actually works on the ground.

Comments

[Leslie Forman]

This is great, George! I love the stories and fotos. I look forward to meeting you when I get to Beijing. I'm sure you'll have lots and lots of stories by then, along with a keen understanding of the day to day practice of microfinance!