Incoming typhoon

This morning I got up really early because I went to bed really early last night. I was able to make it to the market with Grandpa Deng. I wanted to buy some veggies for a fish ball curry dish and also for a delicious Guangdong (I think?) dish called Xiao Chao Wang (小炒王). 

Fast forward to lunchtime, I failed again. It didn’t taste bad but it was nowhere near to what I had in the restaurant! Also, no picture because it was ugly.

After we went to the Tangkou market and I couldn’t find at least three of the ingredients I wanted, Grandpa Deng took me to the 潭溪 market on his electric bike. I was nervous because the bike looks so small and cute. But he said that his grandson can stand on the front while his grandson’s grandma can sit in the back. Plus it doesn’t go faster than a normal bike.

It was the 潭溪 farmers market this morning. It’s already been five days since I’ve last been there with Zhenyu and Sonia and everyone else that day. It was a really fun morning that I completely forgot to write about. We even went to visit the banyan tree at the Liyuan parking lot and we practiced sword and Tai chi with the grandpas there.

After the 潭溪 market, Grandpa Deng and I came back and had breakfast. Nobody was up yet. Sleeping early and waking up early feels great!

Thinking about the Chen Family Ancestral Hall, I asked my aunt in Guangzhou about visiting. She sent back a message saying that I shouldn’t come these two days because of the incoming typhoon.

Grandpa Deng said that the first Chinese typhoon of the year has already started in Fujian. He says that there are about 20-30 typhoons in China a year, and that the months of July, August, and September are the typhoon months. The farmers who live in the village behind the Tangkou hostel are hurrying to cut their grains. When a typhoon hits, all the stalks would fall flat on the fields, with the rice grains falling into the mud.

This really sucks! Farming really sucks! It’s such hard work for already so little and then there’s such a huge chance of the weather just taking everything from you! Sometimes a typhoon can uproot a house!

“It’s called ‘eating rice by the will of the heavens!’ You can’t fight the heavens,” said Grandpa Deng.

Going into town!

CJ has a really bad cough, and yesterday he finally decided to get it checked. Tony, Shionyi, and I tagged along so we could go see downtown.

Zhou Sir dropped CJ off at the Traditional Chinese doctor, but only when we were dropped off in the middle of downtown Kaiping did we realise we didn’t know what to do!

It was really hot so we went into a supermarket and looked at the snacks and pet fish selection.

We walked in circles for a long time and then we asked Zhou Sir to pick us up again and coincidentally CJ had finished his exam. Then CJ asked Zhou Sir to take us to the Yu family ancestral hall. 余家风采唐…

Zhou Sir talked to the guardian at the door and he let us all in.

It was gorgeous.

CJ explained that this isn’t open for tourists or any random person because the architecture is not made for withstanding a lot of traffic. Plus, if anyone were to accidentally break any piece of the roof or anything, replacing anything would be the headache of a lifetime. It’s currently being used as a middle school. People have classes in the buildings next to it, as well as inside of the ancestral hall. CJ says that it’s mostly art and music classes in the ancestral hall.

There is a Chen Family Ancestral Hall (陈家祠) in Guangzhou. The day before, Jim had showed me a collection of books in the Tangkou hostel library on the carvings on the Chen Family Ancestral Hall. There are thousands of stone and wood carvings. The Chen family was huge and immensely wealthy. (Though we have the same last name, I’m pretty sure I have nothing to do with this family. My family is way too normal.)

CJ explained, “The Yu Family (余家) was competitive, but they knew that they could not compete with the Chen family in terms of size or wealth. They couldn’t make their ancestral hall bigger, nor could they make it more expensive. So the Yu Family tried to compete by building an ancestral hall with a superior design.”

I was in awe of how thoughtful and respectful it was. In a work of architecture, I feel as if trying to unite Chinese and western elements into one complete and successful work is a really tall order. And yet, there it seemed to stand before my eyes!

This is the diaolou. It had a really big effect on the Kaiping diaolou, especially the diaolou that right next to Liyuan and Cangdong Village. There is a diaolou there that evokes Islamic architecture, and CJ says that its minaret-looking towers were actually inspired by the diaolou of the Yu family.

Be still, my beating heart.

I was so happy, so amazed. I thought about what Professor Johnson would think if he were to see this. What Professeur Gouvernnec would think! If they liked the diaolou, what would they think of the Fengcai Hall? What would they think of the Chen Family Ancestral Hall?

–

“You have to go to Guangzhou!” Jim had said a couple of days go. I really didn’t want to leave Kaiping even for a moment for my short fellowship. But now, I think he is right! Now, I really, really want to go to Guangzhou.

–

After visiting the Fengcai Temple, we picked up Zhou Sir’s daughter from school and then CJ took us to get snacks… really unhealthy but really tasty snacks. He had Shionyi take down the number of the uncle who owned the stand, saying, “Uncle, next time I buy from you, I will be buying by the pan.”

After we got the snacks, we had congee for dinner at a place recommended by Zhou Sir. Then, we drove by the hospital where I was born! I happened to catch sight of it from the van. CJ had Zhou Sir stop the van so that he could take a picture of me for my mom.

It’s no longer a hospital. Or at least, it’s no longer a western-styled hospital because there was an uncle inside and CJ asked him what they used the building for, and the uncle said that it’s being used for Traditional Chinese Medicine. Across the street, there is an orphanage.

“Wow, I feel really emotional for you all of a sudden! I kind of want to cry!” Shionyi said.

“What? Why are you emotional!” I laughed, “I’m not even emotional!”

“Hm, how should I say this, well, I’ve always known where I was born. I pass by the hospital all the time back in Xinhui. But I think about you, and how you don’t know where you were born, and then you come back now and you are seeing it for the very first time… ah, I just feel really emotional!”

Back in the van, Zhou Sir joked that I should ask my mom clearly where I was born. Maybe she picked me up from across the street. Except I’m pretty sure I was born in the old hospital, because my mom has a Caesarian scar that she used to bring up very often if I was being a difficult child. (“Oh! How much pain you put me through back then! How much pain you put me through now!”) She brings it up less nowadays.

–

After dinner, all of us were really, really full and needed help digesting. CJ dragged us all to this HUGE park in Kaiping called the Golden Mountain Park (金山公园). I think it was actually named after someone, though. CJ said that there used to be a famous Daoist who lived on the top of the mountain. It reminded me a little bit of Buttes Chaumont. But it is even more incredible, even bigger. Way bigger. Buttes Chaumont’s hills are man-made, but the ones at Golden Mountain Park are natural. I had to ask CJ to verify…

“Of course the mountain was always there! What? Did you think somebody put that mountain there to make a park?”

“Hey! I don’t know! People could! … They do it in France.”

“Even if they made an artificial mountain, they could not possibly make an artificial mountain so big! Are you kidding me?!”

I had no idea Kaiping was so full of beautiful things. When Shionyi and Tony and I were wandering around the malls earlier that afternoon, I was thinking, “There is nothing to see in Kaiping, no wonder so many people leave,” and in a couple of hours, CJ managed to completely, thoroughly demolish this thought.

There was so much to see in Kaiping. I want to take everyone to see it all.

When night finally fell, Zhou Sir told us to meet him at the People’s Park because there was apparently a spectacle! There were performances and stuff. Not totally sure what was happening. But it was related to art and culture. I could recognise at least those couple of Chinese words.

CJ ran into Xie Shifu (谢师傅), a master guqin player. He explained he was there to receive an award. CJ also ran into a couple of other official-looking people, people he has to or had to deal with from working at Cangdong. The performances were few and far in between the official speeches that went on and on and on in Mandarin. We baked our buttocks on the hot stone amphitheater, and my mouth felt like cotton. Eventually, it became too late and we became too thirsty. We couldn’t wait for Xie Shifu to get his award, so we left to go home.

There was a short scene from a Cantonese opera. I didn’t recognise it, but I think the male character was named Yang. I’m not really into it, though my grandpa used to love watching tapes of the opera.

All in all, it was a really, really, really lovely and fulfilling day in the county where I was born.

Jim’s Tour Pt. 3/3

Jim took us to see so, so, so much of Chikan. There was so much there. He played at Chikan a lot when he used to work at Cangdong.

He took us to the outskirts of Chikan to look for an arch from the Ming Dynasty. He explained some history stuff to Sonia that I had a hard time keeping up with. My Chinese history is nil, so I had no context for anything he was saying. Plus my Cantonese isn’t great, so whenever Jim talks to me, he has to dumb down a lot of his explanations for my comprehension.

I did understand that this arch used to be the entrance to a town, and that a large road would go through the arch. Today, there are two brick shacks that are built right in front of it and right behind it.

“Why didn’t they just tear down the arch?” We were navigating our bikes through a neglected vegetable garden that smelled like manure.

“How could they? It’s an important artifact.”

“…But then if it’s an important artifact, then why didn’t they build further away from it?!” I grumbled.

“Chinese people don’t think like that!” Jim laughed.

Jim then took us to a shop back in qilou-filled streets. There were a lot of birds in cages hung in the doorway of this shop. They were really cute, and they danced and sang upon seeing us. Jim said they really like visitors. I asked him if it was a pet shop.

“Nope! It’s an antique shop.”

There were so many interesting things inside! The shopkeeper was playing Chinese chess with a friend. I recognised a lot of the bowls… Rocky may have purchased crockery from this shop for the Tangkou hostel! They even had the old red Communist arm bands.

The photo on the right are cookie moulds. They’re for making lunar cakes and the like. Jim says, “When you look like someone in your family, in Chinese we have the saying that you both look like you were made from the same cookie mould.” This one I know. I hear it on TVB a lot.

We then visited another shop nearby. We were about to bike past it, when Jim stopped suddenly to point it out. “They sell local merchandise. Look at the palm fans!”

Besides palm fans, they also sold electric lamps, plastic twine, incense and joss paper and other things.

Sonia wanted to buy a palm leaf fan (葵扇). The granny at the store said that the hand-knitted ones were 6 yuan and the machine-made ones were 4 yuan. Jim explained that the hand-knitted fans are actually later than the machine-made fans, and that they were also sturdier than the machine-made ones. Sonia happily picked out a 6 yuan hand-knitted fan.

“It’s so cheap here,” Jim said. “When Citic moves into Chikan, all these little stores will not possibly be able to afford the new rent.”

At every step of the way, Jim talked a little about the China Citic Bank’s (中信) buying out of Chikan to remind us that change is always just around the corner. If we think this is all really peaceful, we also have to remember that it will not always be this way. Along the way, Jim would ask local people if they had any news or opinions about it. He speaks the Kaiping dialect really well.

Earlier, Jim had asked a grandpa sitting under a banyan tree and fanning himself for directions to the Ming dynasty arch. Before we took off, he asked the grandpa if he’s heard anything about Citic, and the grandpa replied with something along the lines of, “Yeah, I’ve heard… but it’s just all talk for now… It’s only rumours. And in any case, they can’t do it. They can never afford us…”

Thinking the grandpa to be very confused about the amount of money a bank is willing to invest for a town like Chikan, I had said “But they can, grandpa! They have A LOT of money!”

“Hmph!” sniffed the grandpa. “A lot of money and where does it all end up? It definitely would never find its way back to any of us!”

–

Jim then took us a little further out in the Chikan township to show us a southern countryside bakery. There were no cookies for sale! This bakery only bakes for weddings.

“No more business!” said the auntie who probably owned the store. She was playing cards with two other people. A grandpa sat off to the side watching TV.

“What? You’ve closed shop?”

“No, no! I mean there’s no wedding! No wedding, no business!”

Jim laughed in relief, “老板娘, so you mean you are just temporarily not selling anything!”

He turned to us, “Usually there wouldn’t any business at this time of the year, because farmers are too busy. At the end of the year is when all the weddings happen. Then the cookie makers would be really, really busy with all their orders.”

“It’s no big deal. A thousand cakes in one day, easy!” The auntie said.

Jim said, “Take a picture and send it to your mom. She probably had these very cakes herself.”

Finally, Jim took us to get a glimpse of this school, the Nanping School (南屏学校). It was locked and covered in scaffolding (“since like a year already”). This is one of the many photos that I took where I forgot the interesting tidbits that Jim must have shared with us… All I remember is that this school is really special because it looks like a diaolou due to all its western-inspired ornamentation. The builders were showing off their wealth.

Here is a picture of dried rice stalks being burned to (I think) re-fertilize the fields!

“Around this area, we have a saying about The Three Treasures of Guangdong: mandarin peels, aged ginger, and dried rice stalks!”

广东有三宝：陈皮，老姜，禾杆草！

CJ said that it’s really rare to see, because burning dried rice stalks is actually illegal now due to the already-red levels of air pollution in China.

Jim’s Tour Pt. 2/3

Finally, I was able to look inside the Guan and Situ libraries!

This is the front garden of the Situ library. The tree in the center was imported from Southeast Asia. Jim said that overseas Chinese families really liked to import things from out of the country. They even gave it a name: Dragon Tree (龍树).

“Because its stature resembles that of a dragon,” Jim explained.

Between the Situ library and the Guan library, Jim took us to Chikan streets that I’ve never seen before.

Here, there are thirteen qilou. Jim said people called this area the Thirteen Qilou (十三骑楼). It used to be similar to a Red Light District, but as we can see, it’s in ruins now, similar to most of Chikan.

“Though their occupation was always looked down upon in every culture and in every time period, prostitutes are still people with emotions and values and dreams. There’s a story about how when the Chinese began its resistance against the Japanese, the prostitutes of the Thirteen Qilou gathered together and donated their jewellery and personal savings for the war effort.”

By this time, I was almost melted on my bike seat. You could probably have fried an egg on my face. I desperately needed to cool down before listening to more history. So Jim took us to eat tangshui (糖水) at the most famous sweets shop in Chikan. My strongest memory from this day was probably at this sweets shop. ^_^ We shared a red bean and sweet potato tangshui, a mung bean and coconut milk tangshui, and a milk grass jelly tangshui. There were ice flakes mixed with the two bean tangshui and grass jelly is already chilled, so it was SO REFRESHING.

After the tangshui, Jim took us to see more of Chikan. Here, he pointed out an old church that’s currently being used as a spot for drying fish…

Just around the corner, there is a really good breakfast place that’s open during the Chikan farmer’s market. We need to hurry up and teach Tony how to master bicycling so we can go to Chikan’s farmer’s market soon!!!

And I finally have a picture of the waterfront market!

And I also finally can show you a picture of the Guan family library. (The Situ library is here.) People were reading and cooling with the overhead ceiling fans. Upstairs, the librarian was asleep.

I also saw a cool photo up there! The four big words on the bottom left is a poetic line that means something like “Freedom Flight.” This photograph won an award at an international photography competition. Even though the award winner’s surname wasn’t mentioned, we think it was probably a Guan family member since this was hung in the Guan family library. I asked CJ if it was New York and he was pretty sure it wasn’t. And then I made him search through Chicago architectural books, his US travel photos, and baidu images of Canadian cities to try to find the one.

He was like, “We’re searching for a needle in the wide, wide ocean…”

If you know where the photo was taken, let me know!

 

 

Jim’s Tour Pt. 1/3

On the 7th, some government officials from Jiangmen came and CJ had to go to Cangdong Village early in the morning. Nana, Shionyi, and Tony all went to help. Jim, being really used to government official visits, really didn’t want to go, and asked if he could just stay behind. So, Jim and Sonia and I took a slow morning and then headed off to play on our own.

Jim took the long greenway route from Tangkou to Liyuan. This route is breathtaking but there are a lot of thorny plants that get in our way.

He stopped us at this pavilion on the river and explained that it played a role in funerary processions. The night before the funeral, the family members would come here to pray and get some water from the river to bathe the deceased.

“It’s called buying water (买水),” Jim said. “It’s similar to the river styx in the west. In both the east and the west, we have this belief about bodies of water as gateways into the underworld.”

As I was writing this, I had to ask Shionyi which “mai” was the “purchasing” character.

“Oh!” She said, “That makes me think of something! When I was little, and I was thirsty, my mom wouldn’t let me say the phrase, ‘I want to buy water (我想买水).’ She said that I should never say that unless my dad passed away. She said that if I really wanted to say that I wanted some water, I should say, ‘I want to buy a bottle of water (我想买一瓶水).'”

Jim showed us so much and taught us so much! This is why I have three blog posts for July 7th…

When we biked by these two pretty buildings, Jim explained that it was really common for houses to have a little pond right next to it. And usually, it would be a crescent-shaped pond.

“Is it for feng shui purposes?” I had asked.

“…Close! But think of a more practical reason.”

The common materials for houses of this time were qing bricks and wood. And it would not be uncommon for the house to catch on fire during cooking! Thus, fish ponds were actually there to put out fires…

Here are pictures of two funny things that Jim pointed out along the way. On the left is a notice for a lost cow. It’s described to have wide horns and no rope. On the right, in the decoration above the door is the pinyin XINGFU, or the words “幸福,” which means fortune or happiness.

Ahhhhh Jim showed us so many things and there are so many pictures that I look at now, and I remember that I took them because Jim told me something interesting about it, but I have already forgotten what he said!

Here, he is standing in front of an old cafeteria from the Communist era. Anybody and everybody could eat here. Jim pointed out how much it evokes Soviet architecture, with its fierce and geometric rising suns, mighty birds…

Since Sonia came all the way to Kaiping, I couldn’t let her go home without having tried Clay Pot Rice! I wanted to take her to Chikan, but Jim took us to eat apparently the best Clay Pot Rice in Kaiping. It’s still in the Chikan township, he explained! Sonia ordered the Eel Clay Pot Rice. She is very brave.

I took a picture of this sign that says “開平风景碉楼好,” which means “The sights and diaolou in Kaiping are great.” On another door post, there was a sign that read “關氏佳肴味道香,” which means “The food of the Guan family is delicious.”

We continued our way to Chikan town, because I wanted to visit the Guan and Situ libraries after lunch. It would be my first time being able to go inside, because the library hours are 10:00-15:30, and I always miss its opening hours.

Along the way, Jim explained the abundance of bamboo trees. “Villages are surrounded by bamboo because when bamboo grows, they grow in thick and dense groves. They serve as a defensive wall for the village. All of those dark leafy trees are bamboo.”

Here is Jim pointing out a village enceinte of bamboo.

 

An aside on the insects of Kaiping

The mosquitos are really abundant and horrible, but the butterflies are the size of birds in Kaiping. When you come to Kaiping, you have to bike on the greenway. The greenways are often lined with these hot pink flowers, and they’re really popular with the butterflies.

On a different note, last night I saw a spider the size of my palm. It’s still somewhere in the hostel.

So behind!

I was already behind when I updated the Tony-falling-into-the-rice-paddy story, and now I’m really, really, REALLY behind. Which is a good thing because that means that a lot of things are happening every single day! I’ll try to learn to be brief.

So the day that my friend Sonia arrived from Hong Kong, Shionyi and Zhenyu also came back. There was also a group of friends of Cangdong from Guangzhou stopping by. That night, we had a huge feast of a dinner. It was really fun.

I’m going to call Zhenyu his English name “Jim” on this blog, even though we all call him by his Chinese name 震宇. Jim used to work for the Cangdong Project, as well, but he left about half a year ago to work on his own project in Xinhui (新会). He is so knowledgeable about Chinese history and culture! He should have been an art historian. Or an archaeologist. So Sonia came back at such a lucky time! All of us were really lucky to have Jim be our guide. I learned so much from following him around.

Last May, a master luthier from Yangzhou (扬州) gifted a handmade guqin (古琴) to the Cangdong Project. The guqin lives at Tangkou, and since I’ve arrived at this hostel I have heard many, many people pluck its strings and play on it or practice on it. However, since Jim arrived, it’s the first time I’ve heard it sound so pretty. So that’s what the guqin is supposed to sound like…

And I think he is actually even better at the erhu (二胡)!

Alas, Jim has left to go back to Xinhui. But he left me the most wonderful parting gift in the form of a fat folder of English and French language PDF books on Chinese art.

Looking forward to when he comes back to work for Cangdong again!

Friends

I’m having a great time. I’d have an even better time without mosquitos.

My friend Sonia, my shijie (师姐) from Williams came. Shionyi came back with an old Cangdong member named Jim. They’re all great. There was a big dinner party.

(Photo by Jim)

But I currently have 26 active mosquito bites. As in, not counting all the ones that have finished themselves off.

Sonia came just in time for Jim, the best Kaiping countryside tour guide.

While biking on our way home only two days after his first time learning how to bike, Tony fell into a rice paddy today.

I’m horrible, I couldn’t stop laughing. Laughing at Tony wasn’t even fun anymore. And yet I couldn’t stop. Accidentally replaying the memory of watching him from the distance and seeing him suddenly drop into the reeds just makes me reflexively laugh.

“It was actually really soft.”

He’s a great sport.

Cang Xi (仓西) Village

The Cangdong Project is named after and based in the Cangdong Village, but if you ask people around here, nobody actually knows where Cangdong Village is. This is because Cangdong is actually a part of Cangqian Village (仓前村). Cangqian Village is made up of an east half and a west half, and Cangdong (仓东) is in the east.

Today Rocky took Tony and I to the Cangxi, the western half. It seems that the western half and the eastern half of the village don’t really get along with each other.

The western half is a lot bigger than the eastern half. There were a lot more people. We climbed a gorgeous but dangerously slippery pathway covered in moss and leaves, surrounded by bamboo, and we dodged loud dogs to make it out to the geese farm so that we could get a glimpse of their diaolou. They have two diaolou taken over by a geese farm. In this picture, the second diaolou is hidden by the other one, though you could see the second diaolou’s swallow’s nest peeking out.

After we left Cangxi, Rocky took us over to glance at some construction going on behind Liyuan. Here’s a photo of Rocky from a distance.

Then we went back to the Cangdong Village to spend time with the villagers. The Cangdong Project is expecting a gift of a modest lump sum from somewhere I forgot, and Rocky needed to discuss with villagers extensively on possible plans and wishes for their village, such as building a fence around the fish pond, refurbishing the community center next to the entrance of the village, and adding a spectator pavilion next to the basketball court. There was a lot of debating going on at Cangdong Village. And then when we came back to Tangkou, Rocky and CJ and Nana continued debating some more. They consider deeply everyone’s wishes, and they work really carefully. I have never seen any of these people do anything half-heartedly.

Here is a close up of some grains near Cangdong today.

World’s Granary

Grandpa Deng went back to Chikan last night. He’s taking a couple of days off. Here he is taking off on his blue electric bike after dinner. He looked so cool with his matching helmet… Even his shirt was blue!

So this morning, Nana and I got up early to get to the market to buy vegetables for lunch and dinner. We had breakfast at a modest little breakfast place in Tangkou. I ate 4 shrimp dumplings and 6 mantou for 2 yuan! After we came back, I had a huilongjiao, (回笼觉), which is when you go back to sleep not too long after waking up in the morning. Nana says that this is Cantonese vernacular and it does not work in Mandarin.

When Rocky came back from Hong Kong, he also brought us a Purple Clay Pot for making soup, and Nana decided to make LINGZHI soup. She is very ambitious.

I made half-caramelised onions with a green bell pepper. It was a success! These are seriously the prettiest onion caramelisations I’ve ever done in my entire life.

“Your entire life? 你一辈子？It seems a bit early for you to use such a phrase!” Nana laughed.

I have come a long way from the burned onions that I made for Beth in North Adams almost two years ago when she first taught me how to caramelise onions.

After lunch, Rocky and CJ took Tony and I to visit the World’s Granary (天下粮仓) in Tangkou, a relic from Mao’s Great Leap Forward. It was half-heartedly made into a museum. When I looked inside one of the granary thingies where they kept all the grains, it oddly reminded me of the Pantheon. But, you know, like… way different. For one, it doesn’t open up to the sky, though it was apparently painted blue.

I wonder if I had grown up here first, and then I went off to Europe to study abroad, and I saw the Pantheon, I wonder if I would have thought about how much the Pantheon reminded me of the World’s Granaries instead. And yet, I am very doubtful that I could have made it into Williams if I grew up in Kaiping. I might never have been able to see the Pantheon to compare with Mao’s Granaries anyways.