A long aside: What is the Cangdong Project?

About two weeks ago, Jim and I were buying iced 王老吉 drinks from a local shop, and we were chatting with the shopowner. The auntie asked us if we were tourists from downtown Kaiping, and I said no, we were living at a hostel that used to be the old post office in Tangkou. She then asked us where we worked.

Jim said, “You know the village across from the Li Gardens (立圆)? Cangdong Village? We work there.”

“Oh, I know that village. I live in the next one over. But what sort of work do you do?”

“You know how there are two old ancestral halls? They look kind of like diaolou, really fancily decorated? Well, a professor named Selia Tan restored them. She’s from Kaiping, and she was the key person who helped write the Kaiping diaolou’s application for the UNESCO world heritage list.”

“Hm… Ok. So you do construction?”

“Haha, well, we do a bit of this and that every now and then. But usually, we just have a lot of students from all over the world coming to study at the restored ancestral hall.”

~

Besides Professor Selia Tan, The Cangdong Project is also led by business partners Rocky Dang and Peter Stuckey. They both live in Hong Kong but they both visit Kaiping and Cangdong fairly often. I have only recently met Peter, but what I understand about Rocky is that the Cangdong Project for him is a retirement experiment founded upon the respectable partnership between him and Professor Selia Tan. Their Cangdong Project promotes the common values of cultural heritage conservation, sustainable revitalisation and development, and community empowerment, all based in the particular location of Kaiping.

The Cangdong Project distinguishes its cultural conservation from cultural preservation. Preservation evokes museums and fossilizing concepts. I think that respecting and allowing for the natural continuity of people’s ways of lives is really important for Professor Tan. It’s not enough to clean up old buildings and restore them to their former glory. When Professor Tan first renovated buildings in Cangdong Village back in 2011, she and her students invited local builders and local artisans who still practiced fresco paintings, stucco decorations, and wood carvings to aid with the renovation projects. When Rocky talks about restoring new buildings, it seems to me that the most important question for him is what function would the newly renovated architecture be able to serve for the village, or possible visiting educators and students. And this is also why the China Citic bank’s buying out of Chikan is such a hot topic at the Cangdong Project – because they exemplify the exact opposite of what the Cangdong Project aspires towards when it comes to conservation. I have heard that Professor Tan could talk herself blue in the face about Citic and Chikan.

Sustainable revitalisation and development goes hand in hand with the whole idea of respecting people who still live in the place you want to develop. Developing an entire waterfront town into a tourism neighbourhood to improve the local economy sounds good until we understand that you plan to kick out all the people who live there and you’re going to raise the rent on all the poor shopkeepers who sell super low-price local goods. If a revitalisation project ends up neglecting a portion of the people (and it’s almost always usually the poorest, most wretched class of people) then it is not revitalisation. We call that gentrification.

When we keep treating people like their ways of living are not worth respecting, that their livelihoods are unimportant, well, they might begin to actually think that it is true. Professor Tan and Rocky seem to prefer the translation “community empowerment,” though I’m not sure what the Chinese is.

As young people, we all at one point entertain the thought that we’d like to do some good in the world. Some of us have the privilege of going on break-out trips to inner city neighbourhoods or visiting third world communities in other countries. But if we are critically thinking when we embark on these volunteering opportunities, we could find that our service efforts can be oddly unfulfilling, and may cause us to not only be bothered by our inadequacy to make a difference but even feel deeply disturbed by the simplicity with which we can walk away from people in real and drastic situations after doing basically nothing besides take pictures and eat the local food.

Alright, perhaps I am only speaking for myself. I am thinking about myself from only a couple of years ago. But what goes around comes around, and I feel like the question that I sent out to the universe those years ago has boomeranged back at me this summer. I think that observing the Cangdong Project has shed some light on those uncomfortable and inexpressible feelings that I had back then.

Effecting change on a community seems super important and noble, but if you don’t have the conscious permission and willing cooperation of the said community, you’re ridiculous. You’re not noble and you’re the opposite of important. You’re a just tourist with a savior complex.

How do you get conscious permission and willing cooperation of the community you want to change? Well, you might have to get down and dirty. Learn the Kaiping dialect (or, if you’re Professor Selia Tan, you were already raised to speak it). Live in the village. Make friends with the people whom you claim you care about. And learn about what they want. And help them get what they want, not what you want.

~

I also have to add how endlessly impressed I am that everyone who works at Cangdong Village understands the Kaiping dialect. Nobody at the Cangdong Village besides Professor Tan and Grandpa Deng (and technically me as well) are actually Kaiping people. Rocky is from Hong Kong and Vietnam. Peter is from Hong Kong and England. Nana is from Enping. Jim and Shionyi are from Xinhui. CJ is from Shenzhen and Zhuhai and Chaoshan.

~

Some photos of Cangdong people and visitors of Cangdong in action:

Professor Tan giving a seminar on local artifacts to a summer conference of Chinese high school students. She is standing under the sky well of one of the two ancestral halls in Cangdong Village.

CJ observing the progress of Master Hu, a local fresco and stucco decoration craftsman. He was live demonstrating in Cangdong Village’s He Ting (禾厅) for that same summer conference of high school kids.

A group of artists visited from Jiangmen, Guangzhou, and downtown Kaiping to do some plein air pieces on the architecture and landscape at Cangdong Village. I think Professor Tan invited them to organise an exhibition at Cangdong Village in November. Not included in the picture is the Cangdong village head Nuan Shu (暖叔, as in warm uncle!), and his visiting grandsons, all of whom were sitting next to me in the shade, also watching the artists at work.

~

But to be really real, most of the action at Cangdong actually just consists of CJ answering calls from the Kaiping County Minister of Culture asking him to receive government officials’ callings.

~

Disclaimer: This is what I have observed in the Cangdong Project in five-six weeks of close interaction with the Cangdong Project members at the Tangkou hostel. All observations are personal. Nothing I have written was ever approved by the Cangdong Project leaders. I may have misinterpreted or misunderstood things.

~

Updating on myself: the typhoon Nida has passed me by and I have arrived safely in Guangzhou this afternoon. (Or, yesterday afternoon. Eek, it’s after midnight already.) Onto the next chapter of my search for my undergraduate art history thesis slash postgraduate research grant material! I am once again irrevocably behind on updates! I might try to backtrack to write about visiting Xinhui with Tony and Jim, and also my solo visits to Majianglong and Jinjiangli, and also my visit to my mom’s village in Chikan … but the days pass me by faster than typhoon winds!

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. 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.

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.

Zili (自力) Village

I visited Zili Village! Look at these details! The lion carrying a coin in his mouth is from Mingshilou (铭石楼). The stained glass in the bottom middle and the bed decoration on the bottom right are also from Mingshilou. The bed decoration is interesting! I’m not exactly sure what’s going on but it looks like some people are on horses and there’s some construction going on and there’s a pavilion… The stained glass on the left is from the Lanshengjulu mansion (澜生局庐).

Here are some of the references to streamliners in the decoration throughout different buildings in the village.

When I got to the rooftops, I finally got to snap the online Kaiping tourist guide photos of the Diaolou. They really do integrate well into this landscape, don’t they? As the rivulets of sweat stung the skin on my neck in the staircases up and down the Diaolou, I thought about my paltry research question on when the first western inspired Diaolou was and why. I’m glad that I found the Cangdong project, and that they’ve let me tag along their operations… without them, I would not have had such a quick and thorough orientation into southern Chinese village life. And southern Chinese village life is so full, so rich! By rich I certainly don’t mean moneywise… but I mean it is so rich in terms of human connections and traditions and sustainable living. Southern Chinese villagers know how to live with nature. Life revolves around the earth. It’s kind of like The Good Earth except like, I actually like it.

So I wonder if to build architecture that isn’t out of touch with the landscape, you yourself have to first be in touch with the land. I had read in the UNESCO report that the Diaolou were mostly built by local builders that looked off photos or drawings. What do I mean by “in touch with the land”? Well, I’m not so sure. But everyone around here is giving me a pretty good idea: the way everyone has a garden that overflows, the way everyone knows all the plants, the way everyone thinks about their health and how they can be healed by food.

I kind of ran out of time at the end, but I was getting tired of being cooked alive in the subtropical atmosphere anyways, and these kinds of museum-like experiences always take it all out of me.

Zili Cun had a really good documentary that I have to hunt for in their WeChat archives. The girl locking up the exhibit explanation panels kindly let me in to snap a ton of really helpful information panels!

I’ll finish off with this close up of a lotus flower from their pretty lotus lake. Overall, Zili Village is extremely picturesque. But I think they changed a pretty large amount of things to set up the village to be so pretty and tourist-friendly. People still live in Zili Village. Real villagers from before this place was a tourist site. The villagers own “Peasant Family Restaurants” catered to the tourists in Zili Village. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m actually not sure how I feel about all of this. As in, my whole being here, experiencing all of this… it’s hard to think straight.

As I was leaving Zili Village along with some other straggler visitors after closing time, some aunties called out to me, selling drinks for 4 RMB and I’m like hecks WHY when I could get a drink for 1 RMB in Tangkou?! But then I felt a sour, distressed feeling and I backtracked and ended up buying some grass jelly from a granny because I felt bad. 4 RMB is actually already so cheap and they work so hard, and they had their village invaded by us. I doubt they had much of a choice. I’ll ask CJ or Professor Tan about it when I can. I wonder if the villagers in Zili Village get paid for this change in their lifestyle. If they are unhappy with the way things are, I wish I could make things slightly less deceitful by buying some grass jelly from them. In any case, I need as much grass jelly as possible. I am breaking out so badly. It’s so damned hot.

~

On one hand, I feel like I have every right to visit where I was born, but at the same time I feel like this world is so removed from me, and we are all so inextricable from our current socioeconomic realities that every move I make feels a bit sour in some way. I have more than everybody here, and yet everybody is still sharing with me. I’m not yet sure how to deal with this. How do I give back? What is the right way to be in this space?

~

The Bodhisattva sits in a lotus flower.

Shang Cun (上村)

This afternoon I went out as Nana was napping. Grandpa Deng also walked back to his village in the Chikan area since the weather suited being outside. I decided to bike to Zili Cun instead of LiYuan. I don’t know, I just don’t think that I would have been as fun of a visitor without Nana chatting happily away in all her dialects. At LiYuan, there would be the singing aunties and uncles and the northerner farmers. Sometimes I am oddly antisocial. I will go back though, it’s just that I decided not to today.

Between Tangkou and Zili Cun, I came across this village. A granny told me that they were the Shang (上村) village.

In the middle there is this bright blue house that reminds me of pictures of that one city in Morocco.

A couple steps further in, you see the Banyan tree and the fish pond, and this:

It’s gorgeous, right?! Like if a street in Amsterdam were built of bones left out in the rain for too many years. EXCEPT. These Diaolou are supposedly really new. And they don’t really even fit the standard of the Kaiping Diaolou.

When you turn your back to the fish pond, you see this house:

An old mister lives here, and he’s the one who told me that the Diaolou across the fish pond are really new, about maybe a decade old. I said his house was pretty, and that I liked the wet paint ceramic decorations. He replied, “it’s falling apart. The architect and engineer and the materials were of bad quality.” His house was built in 1981… I would have guessed 1918. Yikes.

He told me that I could enter the Diaolou across the pond if I made my way back the way I came, and that they sell tickets. He said he went in once and there wasn’t much to see besides some art on the walls. I decided to continue to Zili Village and come back maybe. Seeing Zili Village was one of my goals for the week! I’ve been floating along with the Cangdong Project for so long, so care-freely, but I can’t forget my original assignment!

I remarked that his tree of wampees (黄皮) looked really nice, which is something that I am just copying from everyone else at the Cangdong Project, and the mister picked two branches to give to me!

On my way out I snapped a picture of the granny working on a nice bamboo fence.

Peanuts

As Nana and I were biking back home into Tangkou village, we passed by aunties harvesting peanuts. One of them recognized Nana, who talked to her back when she was planting them. Nana is really good about chatting with everybody, and it helps that she has great command over Mandarin and the Kaiping dialect. The farmers drying grains at Liyuan spoke Mandarin because they immigrated here from the north.

This auntie gave Nana a bunch of peanuts! She came and strapped it all to Nana’s bike rack. Nana offered to help the auntie plow her field but the auntie said she doesn’t need her to plow her fields, she knows how to do it herself.

Here’s Nana riding further into the village with the bunch of freshly picked peanuts strapped to her bike rack. A dog is staring at her. There are lots of dogs around here.

When we got home, we picked the peanuts off the plants and washed them before we ate dinner. Grandpa Deng boiled them for us to snack on later. I was bitten twice more by mosquitoes tonight. After this summer, the sight of small black spindly bugs that fly around will trigger me.

Fresh peanuts for a late night snack!

Drying grains

It’s time to harvest the rice! Every day over the past week in Zhou (周) Sir’s van, I’ve listened everybody remark on the color of the rice paddies. “Ah! It’s so golden! It’s so pretty! It’s time to cut!”

In this one week in Guangdong (广东), I’ve heard many, many things and I’ve seen many, many things. Due to the initial complications of not having wifi at my auntie’s house (or, if I ever did have wifi, I had no VPN, which, in China means having no access to Google, Facebook, or my main email account, WHICH for me meant that I just had no internet) along with the million-watt culture shock, I was not able to blog my first week in Guangdong. I did take sparse notes between my phone and a word document on my laptop titled “blog” but I am irreparably behind on telling you about the bajillion things that happened last week, so I will just skip it all.

Back to Monday June 27! Today!

This morning I moved from Auntie Sim’s house at Helenbergh (海伦堡) in downtown Kaiping to the Cangdong (仓东) Education Project’s youth hostel in the real Kaiping countryside about a 20 minutes’ drive away. I brought my one medium sized suitcase which I had thought was humble in size for a summer’s cross-Pacific luggage but I am always somehow the most ridiculous and superfluous American tourist-looking kid around the block. I also brought the bamboo sleeping mat and mosquito net that I bought the supermarkets that I walked to in downtown Kaiping. I had chosen the cheapest ones, which were 104￥ and 46￥ respectively, but still. Around here, I am always ridiculously extravagant. There are already plenty of mosquito nets and bamboo sleeping mats available at the Cangdong hostel. They even have hair dryers. Anyways, I am really pumped and ready for the countryside.

The Cangdong hostel is located not in the Cangdong village but in the Tangkou (糖口) village.

This morning, a group of government officials from the Guangdong province level came to visit Cangdong village. They arrived around 10 AM in a small bus that I assume is also air-conditioned. It’s really hot here. Blisteringly hot and humid. In Cantonese, we’d say that rivulets of sweat “scratch” down your skin. Well, that’s sort of the translation. Anyways, the government officials went into the ancestral hall, got some tea, and listened to Professor Selia Tan deliver a PowerPoint presentation about the Cangdong Project. Then they discussed some stuff, which I didn’t really pay attention to. They all spoke Mandarin. I only know how bad my Chinese is after coming to China. All of my Chinese. My Cantonese, my Mandarin, my Kaiping dialect, it’s all embarrassing. My Chinese is perfectly adequate, but I mean, I only know now how unimpressive it is…

So the officials toured Cangdong village for about 1 minute and then around 11am they entered their bus and left. Rocky and CJ explained to me that the government officials were mainly talking about their economic concerns for Cangdong and their questions about why Cangdong isn’t more ambitious about attracting tourists.

Rocky then left for Hong Kong for a couple of days with his sisters and niece, CJ went to city center and then it was just Nana and Grandpa Deng (邓伯) and me. Grandpa Deng is the caretaker of the hostel. Nana is like the social media assistant manager… CJ is another assistant manager who was also super involved with all the architectural restoration projects. I think that if I just sat with nobody but him the entire summer with questions about the Diaolou, I’d have a pretty solid report for the fellowships office. He’s actually working on some serious design projects, and he showed me stuff on SketchUp, stuff he’s been working on for at least two years, like a seed research facility nearby, and the Tangkou library and new hostel restoration across the street from the current hostel. He lives here too, except I think he just went home tonight and I don’t know when he’ll be back. I don’t even really know exactly what’s going on. I’m surprised Rocky invited me so much to everything going on with the Cangdong Project. I tag along like an extra intern, or a special visitor. Although, on that note, Rocky did explain that the Cangdong Project is pretty invested in sharing this area’s culture with overseas Chinese (华侨), since this is where we all came from. I feel really lucky to have come across this non-profit group researching the cultural heritage of this area.

Ah, it’s late but I’ll try to make things short. In the afternoon I had biked to Zili Village (自力村), but I had forgotten my student ID at Tangkou so I didn’t enter. Though it feels like everything is really cheap here, I remember what Mallory said about the Czech Crown when she was studying in Prague, “You feel like everything is really cheap but you have to be careful. You could actually end up spending more than in the United States because it all adds up!”

I wanted to watch The Grandmaster (一代宗師) in Cantonese with Grandpa Deng, since he’s never seen it and he’s from Chikan. Wong Kar Wai filmed the Grandmaster in Chikan. Though I’m fine with watching Mandarin, Grandpa Deng said he doesn’t understand Mandarin that well, so I tried really hard to find a Cantonese version. But! I couldn’t find a Cantonese version! The closest I found was renting on Amazon and it was the original sound, meaning only Tony Leung spoke Cantonese while the rest of the cast spoke Mandarin… errrghhh if it’s filmed in Chikan, Guangdong, and produced in Hong Kong, how could they not have a more accessible (AKA easy to stream for me) Cantonese version!

Then, Nana took me for a bike ride around five o’clock, because she wanted to swing by Liyuan (立园), or Li Gardens. There were farmers drying grains there, working hard under the scorching sun, spreading the grains out with these hoes that look like combs. A bag of grains from that point on is sold for about 100 RMB. That’s so little.

We helped them a bit on gathering the grains for the evening — tomorrow they still have to finish drying.

Piles and piles of grains are laid out over as much sunny road as there is available. Don’t ask farmers what happens if it rains! It is inauspicious!

“粒粒皆辛苦” is something my grandma and mom said a lot when I was younger, because I’d never finish my rice. “Each grain of rice is earned through suffering.” They’d also say that for each grain of rice I leave behind in my bowl, that’s going to be a pimple on my future husband’s face!

Here is a stray grain that flew into the grass. Look at the little rice inside the peeled open shell.