On returning to China after Christmas in Australia, we set off travelling with my brother and Roger’s sister’s family of five. It’ll be an interesting trip as this number of lǎowài are bound to cause a few locals to stare, but the red and blond hair of Roger’s family, and the presence of an 11 year old nephew, guarantee we’ll catch peoples’ attention.We spend a few days introducing our home, Zhāngzhōu, to everyone and then squeeze into a mini bus (our luggage takes three seats) and head inland to show our family the impressive earth buildings. We pass the outskirts of town with its ramshackle markets and road-side restaurants. We pass workers on bicycles, scooters and motorbikes. We pass farmland and banana plantations, and the fertile land that is being bulldozed for factories and massive new roads. As we climb higher into the mountains, we see pomelo plantations, now out of season, orange trees thick with fruit, tea terraces and vegetable plots, and a cement plant so critical for China’s construction boom
We pull into a dusty car park, part complete, and see the beginnings of sophisticated and extensive tourism infrastructure with; new roads, visitors’ centres, tickets with barcodes and electronic turnstiles, plus numerous ticket collectors, accredited tour guides and ‘shopping opportunities’ at every stop. When we first visited the tǔlóu 18 months ago, it was a relatively simple affair; a man at the door with a cap and a book of tickets, and the odd resident selling tea or touting to act as a guide.
Lunch at the tǔlóu cluster in Snail Valley is prepared to order. A yellow skinned chicken is yanked from its pen to be killed, plucked and cooked in soup just for us. With it is served dishes of fresh bamboo and bracken shoots, plus snow peas we had seen growing in the surrounding fields. The television, as usual, plays in the background.
We move on to Tǎxià village with buildings packed densely beside a river. Up on a hill, just behind the thin strip of houses is an ancestral hall with a half circle pond and 22 tall stone posts marking the significant achievements of members of the community. Some posts are decorated with spiralling dragons, some plain, and together they make a powerful landmark indicating the strength of the community. Yet now these villages are largely inhabited by the old and the young, as many of those of working age have moved to urban areas to make money in factories.
We clamber back into the mini bus, wedging ourselves in around the bags, and head to Hóng Kēng village. We wind our way up past round and square tǔlóu strung out along a small river and are met by a young man. He leads us down a rough stone-paved footpath, a stone and earth wall on one side and a three metre drop to the river on the other. We pass through a gateway and the thick earth external walls, the timber internal structure, blackened with age, and the grey curved tiles of Fúyù Lóu our guesthouse, greet us. One family has been living in the ‘5 Phoenix’ style tǔlóu for many generations, and our guide is the current owner’s son. He, with high school English that has been supplemented with his own study, warmly welcomes us to his home and thrusts photo albums into our hands to confirm the delightfulness of the guesthouse and the local environment.
Later, walking along the river looking at the ancient buildings and being charmed by a man taking his ducks for a swim, we’re stopped dead by the sight of a small film crew, all dressed in black, shooting a fight scene between a ‘villain’ and Mickey Mouse. Returning to the guesthouse we check our email on the internet wired into each bedroom. Rugged up against the cold, and ‘test driving’ our new thermal underwear, we eat dinner, cooked by ‘Mum’, in the open courtyard. As we go to bed we find small red buckets in the external corridors to our rooms. These are our chamber pots for the night as the toilets are several flights of stairs down and outside the building.
Our trip highlights the speed of China’s development but also its unevenness, leading to some of the incongruities we have seen. While aging farmers work the land much as they have for centuries, they have cars and motorbikes, mobile phones and the internet, and commercial fertiliser and pesticides to assist them. As the commercialisation of China brings money to rural communities through tourism and factory worker salaries, it makes their homes ghost towns and museums. Is this part of the price of the current leap forward?
