It’s been a very busy week! We went to Xinhui and came back, and there are currently a lot of summer camp students and teachers suddenly at Tangkou and Cangdong, but the biggest change of all is that I have moved to Cangdong Village!
Shionyi, Tony and I moved out here with Jim because Rocky wanted us to experience living with the villagers for at least a couple of days. It’s not hard at all! When people hear that I’m going to live in the village, people think I am going to live in a cave or something. But it’s really not hard at all. The Cangdong village set up is great. Going to the bathroom is a bit tricky because going alone is scary in the dark and it’s so far, but other than that, it’s really comfortable in the house that they set up. There’s an air conditioner set up in every room. CJ and Jim used to live in the house that we’re living in for like a year, back when the Tangkou hostel wasn’t a hostel yet.
So now I am in the deep countryside. The only way I can get deeper into the countryside is if I dive into a fish pond. I mean, I was living in the countryside already, at the Tangkou hostel. But the Tangkou hostel is so hostel-y. It has a western-styled kitchen and two fridges and chocolate. And Grandpa Deng, the caretaker, takes care of all our meals. Out here, we have to bike to the market early in the morning to get breakfast and our own groceries, and we have to walk out of the house to the other end of the village to take our showers and to go to the bathroom.
It’s been a good time so far. I was so reluctant to move the first day. I wanted to move back after 3 nights. And now I kind of don’t really want to move back at all!
When we biked in the dark to Cangdong Village the first night after a last dinner at Tangkou, Nana and CJ and Grandpa Deng sent us off like our mom and dad and grandpa.
Here’s us cooking our meals on our own.
Or, to be more honest, here’s us helping Jim out where we can as he cooks for us.
A short shout out to Jim, for a) teaching me so damned much about Chinese history, culture, and art on top of everything CJ and everyone else has been teaching me, b) taking me out to see the coolest things in Sze Yap when CJ can’t, c) and always saying the exact right things to me, at the exact right time. Jim and I were born under the same stars, in different years. We are soul siblings.
I hope you all meet Jim. Or someone like Jim.
“What are those little guys, pigs?”
“…Devastating. Really devastating. To be relegated to a pig by you…!”
“What, they’re not pigs?”
“You’re a pig! Have you ever seen a pig with horns like that?!”
“Well, I thought they could be ears!”
“Have you ever seen a pig with ears that stick up like that?”
“…Maybe pig gods might have ears that stick up.”
“You’re a pig god!”
(They’re qilin, by the way.)
A summer in Guangdong 