George Scott
The branch office in Youqi is responsible for some 1000+ borrowers, and comprises of the branch director Mrs. Cao, Accountant, Ms Liu and the three loan officers. It is the loan officer’s responsibility to issue the loans and collect in the repayments from their customers, sometimes travelling long distances to their villages in order to do so. The loan officer I’ve been shadowing, Ms. Tu, Tu Ye, travels to a few villages a month so far from Youqi that it’s impossible for her to make the return journey within a day and she has to stay there for the night. Usually the loan officers make a few visits to their customers a day working in the field from Tuesday until Thursday and spending Monday and Friday in the office completing paperwork. Loan officers are paid a salary with commission according to how many loans they make and repayments they receive, and can earn anything from RMB 700 – 1000 a month, which is equivalent to about $110 - $150 per month. Tu Ye herself has around 300 customers most of them in rural areas outside of town. In the summer months she’s able to get around fairly easily on her motorbike, but once winter snow comes and the roads ice over, it becomes impractical and in many places simply too dangerous. Instead she has to make use of what little public transport there is, changing buses many times, or taking taxies, all paid for out of her own pocket.
The first morning I accompanied Tu Ye on her customer visits, it was the morning of the first snow fall. To me this meant the chance to take “artsy” photos of the bleak landscape that had taken on quite a serene beauty after the snow, but to her it meant that there would be no bus services in operation. We had two visits to make that morning, both to centre meetings for groups of rural borrowers, one in a village called Dushi the other in its neighboring village Honqi. Both about a forty minute drive east out of town and since there was now bus service in operation that day, we had no other choice but to take a taxi. Tu Ye has a friend who drives a taxi who was able to drive us. Since the villagers can’t afford the luxury of taking a taxi, they’re villages aren’t regularly served by them so in order to ensure we had a way home, our taxi driver sat patiently outside waiting for us.
An hour and a half later, once Tu Ye had completed her duties, we were back in the taxi on the way into town. Even with the discount, because of the distance, the wait and the snow, in total the day cost Tu Ye RMB 60, only $10, but when you consider she might only make as much $120 that month it’s quite a considerable amount. On the drive back in to town we gave a lift to one of the group leaders, Ms. Du. As we drove through the snow covered grasslands toward town and away from the white mountain peaks behind us I asked her what there was to do at the weekend that might be fun, she laughed at me saying we don’t have a weekend, weekends are only for people living in the city.
Since it was us that ended up picking up the tab, taking a taxi provided a welcome break for Tu Ye. I’m still trying to get my head around the bus services, but it seems to be made of middle and long distance coaches, with only some agreeing to take short distance travelers, others I’m sure would take you if it looked like there was no more potential longer distance travelers around. In the winter, on good days, much of Tu Ye’s time is spent changing between buses on the various routes across the area she covers. She has done well grouping meeting so that villages in close proximity to each other have meetings on the same day, but it’s still hugely time consuming especially when compared to the freedom she has in the summer months on her bike.
The snow covered village of Dushi , the morning after the first snowfall of the year.
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