"They are not coming back to live here," he said. "Transport is bad [and] they don't want to farm. It's hard work and the money is not good. If you work in the cities you can earn 2,000 yuan (£202) a month." "It is up to our children to pass on the memories and to tell them the story of where they came from," said Pei Huayu, 59, who shares the village's only other occupied house with her severely disabled husband, Qiao Tao. "If they don't, this place will be forgotten." But nostalgia takes a back seat to pragmatism when Maijieping's doomed locals ponders their village's death foretold.