Portrait of an LBX

Polite bike shop repairman in Wenzhou who saved me from my own stupidity

In terms of its architecture or style, there’s almost nothing that sets Wenzhou apart from any other Chinese city of its size. Everybody dresses in a primarily black themed wardrobe most of the time, the women leaning floozy, and the men leaning mafioso — especially the ones carrying around their black leather satchels full of money. The only other noticeable feature of the city is its unusually high proportion of churches, which seem to be everywhere. I suppose these are all just signs of the melange of quick wealth, foreign influence, lack of identity and culture, and the overwhelming power of China to “traditionalize” anything.

Very LBX style of church in the middle of an LBX residential block

A very traditional Wenzhou woman taking her son for a walk over a short bridge

We made a very short push down National Highway 104 (the road we just can’t get away from) past three wrecks and a level of insanity in traffic Alexis described as “what would happen if everybody thought an atomic bomb was about to hit” to a rotten little ode to scientific development highway town called Xincheng (莘塍). When we tried to wash our clothes, the old grandmother of the hotel pushed us away from the machine and insisted we’d never get them clean ourselves (你们洗不干净!). So we found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and took plates of the best rice noodles I’ve ever had. While we were eating, a man with his wife struck up a conversation with us that started out cordial but ended up as arbitrarily bellicose as what I’m sure happens when you walk into a Boston bar wearing a Yankees cap. He laid into me about how America makes money through its arms trade, but no matter since we’re going under due to our money mismanagement (he does have a point) but that China will be our boss in 15 years (he just wouldn’t buy that China is Kate Winslett riding on the bow of the US’s Titanic). After all manner of sillyisms (way too numerous and stupid to retell here), he ended by saying, “Your problem is that in your country, you have a say, he has a say, everybody has a say. It’s a mess. Here one person has a say: Hu Jintao. If not, everything would be too complicated.” Then he took off in a huff. It was just more proof that we have to avoid these abysmal manufacturing centers — they warp the mind along with the environment.

The next morning we finally began our penetration back into the mountains. The first part of the day was relatively uneventful save a stop through a town where the locals were out in force washing clothes in a creek and a little further down a group of old women working on piles of Chinese yams (山药).

The creek of this little town outside of Wenzhou serves as public washing facility

Skinning and chopping Chinese yams (山药) on the side of the road. It makes an awful stench.

We eventually needed to stop for lunch in a place called Gaolou (高楼), and as luck had it, a group of camouflage-sporting youths poured out of the farm restaurant we had decided upon. They were an amateur photography club who come into the mountains on weekends (it was Sunday) to take nature pictures and go paint balling (the combination makes sense to me). The restaurant turned out to have rip off prices, so we headed to another little hole-in-the-wall for more rice noodles and the local specialty of bayberries soaked in baijiu (杨梅酒). It was revolting, but at least now we can add one more item to the “do not consume” list of life. On this day, incidentally, we had been woken at 7am by a “gloriously sending new soldiers” parade, and on the road we saw several bus loads of new soldiers being off. I can’t imagine what must go through your mind on the day you join the PLA, but suffice it to say I’m glad I was born with better luck than they.

Photography and paint-ball weekend excursionists out in Gaolou

Finally we passed through the county capital city of Wencheng (文成), Zhejiang’s poorest county and one of the biggest contributors of Chinese immigrants to Europe, where we stocked up on fruit and peanuts for the night. About 45 minutes of climbing up a mountain just before dusk, and we found a campsite for the night, where we consumed our fructuous meal and slowly drifted asleep listening to the radio broadcast echo across the valley from loudspeakers next to a cluster of houses several hundred feet overhead. The next morning we finished off what was left of the sugar cane and tangerines and began ascending again, assuming the nearest village on the map not to be too far and thus not worried about not eating a real breakfast. About 30 minutes into the straight uphill climb, we were flagged down by a car full of Wencheng journalists. They jotted down some details about what we were doing, took a picture, wished us well, and told us to look for the story about us online, which turned up as they promised on their website.

Old men repairing a tile roof on the side of the highway on our big climbing day

The crew of journalists from Wencheng who stopped us for an impromptu interview

After the interview, we kept on going up, and up, and up, in lowest gear with no end in sight for almost three hours, until we finally arrived in a village at 11am. Exhausted and now cold from the altitude difference, we got a snack from a village store, where the villagers laid some great lines on us: “You don’t look like us. Are you from Xinjiang?” “Are you cold (we were still in shorts)? Oh no, I forgot that foreigners have an extra layer of skin.” I guess they don’t leave the village too much. We found a little restaurant and had a much needed giant lunch, yet again centered around rice noodles, from a young guy who played online video games in front of us when not cooking. He had worked in Shanghai for a while, where he had met his young Hunanese wife, before the couple decided to kick the rat race and live a peaceful life in the country, tending the storefront, playing with the neighbor’s baby, and of course, tending the online Kaixin happy farm.

Bellies stuffed full, we headed back out onto the winding mountain road toward Xikeng (西坑), the first village in the Jingning She Minority Autonomous County (景宁畲族自治县), and the first place we were guaranteed to find She. Once arrived in the tiny town, we asked where to find the She and were pointed down a small road into the hills. About half a kilometer from the main drag, we came across a concrete box of apartments in front of which several old people were idly shooting the breeze, which would have meant nothing to us had the red lamps hanging in front not been printed with the character for She (畲). We stopped to get an idea from them what the deal is with their people in the region. Several women and Mr. Zhong, the proprietor of the store next to where we stood, answered our questions. The She, it turns out, lived primarily up in the high mountains in remote villages for as long as anybody can tell, but recently all the youth have been siphoned off to far away places to earn money. “Life here is very bitter,” Mr. Zhong explained. Since the villages lack decent road access, and there are fewer and fewer able bodies to work the farm land, many of the older generation have moved into the recently built housing complex near Xikeng. “There are still some old people up in the villages, but they’re now mostly empty,” said one old woman. The occupation of the drab slab, despite my guess, was not a local government directive, but rather the culmination of pooling of money between members of six different villages who decided to spend their twilight years closer to an economic artery — and food purchased from a store rather than obtained through the sweat of their brow. Other than speaking the She language, which only the older generation speaks well, and a few holidays — like the major She festival on the 3rd day of the 3rd month of the lunar calendar — the She, as they informed us, are more or less completely sinicized (汉化). Soon their old villages and that way of life will be just a memory.

Some of our She friends in front of the She apartments in Xikeng. Mr. Zhong is the PJs and papoose porting man at center.

We left the She apartment complex a little sad, but confident we could find some real minority culture further down the road. As we passed through town, we spotted a man sawing away at a long stalk of bamboo in his old workshop and stopped to talk to him. Mr. Xu, it turned out, was a full-time bamboo-smith, an occupation he had learned from a master when he was 19 years old. He has spent the majority of his life turning the world’s fastest growing plant into useful articles for farm families, such as vegetable drying baskets, general use baskets, fertilizer spreaders, chairs, etc. When younger, he used to go cut his own bamboo, but now he usually buys it pre-cut from the surrounding mountains for about 25 yuan a pole. He spends about an entire day to make one basket (his biggest commodity), which he then sells for 90-100 yuan, making his daily labor worth about $10, not bad for this part of the world.

Mr. Xu in his bamboo workshop, above which is his house

After Xikeng (which means “western depression” in Chinese — something that should have forewarned us), it was another steep, endless climb into the clouds. Around 4, we were still nowhere near civilization when the sky opened up on us with a light but consistent shower that got into our bones after about 30 minutes. Finally around 5, right as the sun was completely disappearing, we arrived in the summit village of Shiyang (石垟). Actually Alexis zipped a few kilometers past it in his anxiety to be out of the cold rain (he later confessed he was actively fantasizing about his old apartment and a hot pizza) and had to climb back up to find me. The owners of the only store in town told us there was no hotel, but that the house on the slope leading to the highway takes boarders. We were ready to sleep in a dumpster at that point as long as it was out of the rain, and so we shiveringly dragged our bikes down a long, precarious staircase to the house. The woman who answered the door was reluctant to let us in, saying that her house was very humble (条件很差) and that we’d do best finding a hotel in Xikeng. After we made her understand we were cold, wet, and on bikes, she relented and gave us the rate of 20 yuan apiece for beds and two meals. Dinner was a giant bowl of noodles, and the boarding was in the farmhouse attic bedroom, a cold, wooden room covered over in cobwebs and newspaper like the rest of the house. All the same it was full of rustic charm and a hell of a lot better than being outside.

After a long, refreshing night of sleep, we were woken by the matron at 7 for breakfast. This time it was a table full of bamboo shoots, pork, pickled cabbage, and other delicacies of the farm village with heaping bowls of rice. The “dining rooms,” really just two smalls square wooden rooms equipped with chairs and tables heated from below by open coal pits, were warm and comfortable, especially with glasses of hot tea in our hands. We tried to tell our matron several times that the house was charming (which it really was) and that the food was delicious (also true), but she vehemently shot down every compliment. “The house is old and beat up!” “The food is not good! We don’t have good food here!” (这个房子很破！菜不好吃，这里没有好吃的！) She kept on telling us the concrete box across the way would be a much better place to live. She was at least very nice with us and spoke surprisingly good Mandarin for somebody of her social status and age.

Our time in the morning also gave us a chance to explore the old farmhouse and talk to Mr. Zhou, the patriarch. On the wall hung pictures of him from years bygone, during which he really hadn’t seemed to change much. He didn’t look like much, and he could barely speak any Mandarin at all, but luckily their nephew, who happened to be in visiting, helped translate for us. He had been a carpenter by profession, and the three-story, split level house in which we sat was entirely the work of his own hands, except for a few big rocks he had to call on friends to help him move. When we told him that his wooden house, which had stood faithfully for over 60 years, was an amazing accomplishment, he simply said, “Oh, but in your countries you have companies to build concrete houses for you. That’s much better.” After several unsuccessful attempts to let him know how impressive we found his self-reliance and how we thought it’s foolish how little we Westerners know about reality, we finally finished our breakfast speaking among ourselves before packing up and heading out.

Just before we left, Mr. Zhou’s wife came out to talk to us one last time. We asked her if they had been apportioned any farmland, to which she responded, “Yes, that old man tends to it.” What do you mean, that old man? Do you mean your husband? “Yes, that old man is my husband.” Why do you call him that? Don’t you love him? Didn’t you just say he provides for you? “Yes, if that old man didn’t go into the fields, we’d have nothing to eat. Our daughter is in Shanghai and won’t support us. But love… I wouldn’t say that.” Didn’t you ever love him? “Love him? When I was young, I was poor and ugly, and nobody would marry me. Then he came along, so I figured, I might as well.” In America we’d say she has a serious complex, but I suppose such things happen to people who’ve lived through as strenuous of times as she has. All the same, I’ll just never understand how a man could build his wife a home, provide for her his whole life, stay by her through thick and thin, and tolerate being deprecated and called “that old man.” Some things remain a mystery.

Mr. Zhou's neurotic wife scooping us out some rice for breakfast. Her cooking was first class, despite her self-appraisal.

Mr. Zhou, 84, built his house with his own hands in his 20's and still goes into the fields himself to grow food for his family. He is an endangered species I am very glad we got to meet. I'm still not sure why they covered their walls with newspapers though.

A view of the Zhou's house from the highway. Only the attic level is visible here.

After leaving the Zhou’s and Shiyang, we shot downhill for a good 8 km (we had only made 50 km of progress the previous day, despite riding for nearly 7 hours, as it was all uphill), where we picked up water and a few minutes later talked to an old man gathering firewood for the winter. After another good hour or so of climbing, we found ourselves in the most breathtaking scenery we’ve seen so far on the trip, pictured below. It just gets better and better the further we get from the cities.

This rice terrace in front of a killer valley was the most awe inspiring sight we've seen so far, hands down. I just wish I'd had my paraglider with me!

Not 10 km from the above dreamscapes we passed through, we found ourselves bottomed out in a new village. About five minutes after passing it, the rain came again, and I insisted we return to town to look for shelter. I saw a house on the side of the road full of people, and I asked if we could shelter ourselves awhile until the rain passed. “Of course you can,” screamed a woman we later identified as Mrs. Liu, the lady of the house. Thankful to be out of the rain, Alexis and I did our best to endear ourselves to the crowd, and Mrs. Liu smilingly handed us glasses of tea. Maybe an hour later, we realized the rain wasn’t playing around, and the group of middle aged people began playing Mahjong as we started reading the various signs around the central space out of boredom. Soon enough, the man of the house, Mr. Cai showed up, carrying huge wooden branches on either shoulder. A few minutes of conversation, and we were good friends with the humble farmer, who turned out to be my favorite LBX of the whole trip. Soft spoken and a little socially awkward, Mr. Cai brimmed over with honesty and useful knowledge — not to mention his openness and generosity toward us.

The wife of the local party secretary holds her daughter's (working in Ningbo) baby up for the camera as Mr. Cai looks on from behind. His friends, a constant fixture in the house, do their thing at left.

Rather timid as most sincere country folk are around those they deem more genteel (if only he knew the truth about us), Mr. Cai was very reserved in talking to us, though he was more than generous in deed. Within a few minutes of our expressing interest in his lifestyle, he started talking about his 75+ kg (they measure alcohol by weight) of home made red rice wine, (made from rice they grow themselves, the same as every other family in the area) which he then doled out to us in bowls. While sipping on the sweet nectar, which neither Mr. Cai nor his wife drank themselves but rather saved for guests, we listened to Mr. Cai’s explanations about how life in Zhangkeng (章坑) works. Like most people in the area, he is allocated an area of the abundant bamboo forests surrounding the village. He goes into his lot frequently to cut down mature bamboo, which is subsequently collected by a company that pays him 40 yuan per 200 kg of his resources. When I looked around the village and noticed the bamboo thick as Don King’s hair all over the mountains (except where rice terraces had been cut), I asked him why the villagers hadn’t cut the mountainside bald for profit. He and the local party secretary, visiting from down the street, explained that the plant grows back so fast they couldn’t make a dent in it if they tried. Moreover, they harvest only 3 to 4 year old stalks, since anything younger wouldn’t be firm enough to use.

Otherwise, Mr. Cai tends to his three mu (~.5 acres) of land, on which he’s able to produce, “more food than we can eat.” Most of his take is rice, which he has refined very cheap in town by a local with a machine, but there’s also cabbage, bamboo roots, sweet potatoes, water chestnuts (of which probably 20 kg was hanging from his door frame) tea trees, etc. His tea — very delicious, I should add — unlike that of Mrs. Ye whom we met in Northern Zhejiang, is consumed only by his own family, who harvest it once a year and keep it in a big metal can. He, like most of the families in the village of 700, also raises a flock of ducks, which sleep in his roost but generally spend their days in local rice terraces foraging for food. Mr. Cai also raises egg laying chickens and a pig, which in addition to his two dogs round out his bestiary. When not working or playing Mahjong with his friends, Mr. Cai likes to head over to the local reservoir to fish. As for his outlook on life, Mr. Cai informed us that he’s very satisfied, and that he has everything he needs. He hates the hustle and bustle of metropolises like Wenzhou and prefers to keep to the natural pace of farm life, which is really the only life he’s ever known. Nevertheless, he added, “Life here is very bitter since we have no factories. All the young people leave in their twenties to earn money. There’s no future for them here.” Mr. Cai, now 54, has two children, a boy aged 27 and a girl aged 30, who are working factory jobs in Wenzhou. He hopes both of them, especially his already well over age (by Chinese standards) daughter, get married soon and fulfill their duties in the cycle of Chinese family life.

Their wooden house, which he told us “wouldn’t come down even in an earthquake,” was built by his father, himself, and some hired artisans 30 years prior when his father moved to Zhangkeng from Wencheng to help build the hydroelectric station, the town’s economic bread and butter. In his house live his wife, Mrs. Liu, his 84 year old father, and a middle aged tile layer from nearby Qingtian county who rents his son’s old room and fills the house with booming pop music karaoke when not working. Other than the sleepover crew, the house is constantly full of visitors, friends from neighboring families. The biggest draw to their house is their shiny Mahjong set, which is in use most afternoons and nights in the smoke filled dining room, like Mr. Zhou’s, heated from below by an open coal pit. When we told Mr. Cai his house is beautiful and full of life, he pointed into the valley where the bulk of town sits and said, “there’s a concrete house down there now. Those are better.” I guess you can’t win every battle.

After dinner, Mrs. Liu brushed us up on our Mahjong skills, and we proceeded to lose repeatedly to these old men (who couldn't speak Mandarin) until finally our luck turned

When the rain finally gave signs of breaking, we loaded the bikes to go, but Mr. Cai stopped us, “It’s 8 km to the next city, 6 of which are uphill. I doubt the rain will stop long enough for you to make the distance. Stay with us tonight.” He laid out all his sentences just that matter-of-fact. Obliged as we were by his generous offer, we accepted and promptly headed into the village to buy him some thank you cigarettes (since he had already told us he doesn’t drink). Around 5 Mrs. Liu served up a five star farm meal, featuring all home grown or gathered vegetables and rice, with only the pork and fish being bought from a market. Accompanying was several bowls of heated red rice wine, enough to get us a little loopy (since they make so much of it at a time of it and don’t ever drink it themselves except for a little in the cooking, they love giving it away). The father prefers to drink baijiu, of which his glass was never lacking. Apparently he’s got a reputation in town as the local wino — he drinks it at all times of the day, even with breakfast! Throughout the meal he intermittently toasted us in unintelligible dialect with a huge smile on his grizzled face and repeatedly burped, farted, and spat huge snot globs onto the floor (reminded me of my own grandpa a little). In fact, nobody at the table had any sort of urbane manners at all, the kind we had been treated with in big cities with government officials, but really that only added to their charm. Not a thing they did or said was disingenuous, and everything they had, including their life stories, they shared freely. If some old man loogies and farts are the only price to pay, then so be it!

After dinner another 80+ year old man showed up, and it was Mahjong time, betting in units of 1 yuan represented by a stack of playing cards divided between the 4 players. Alexis and I were both acquainted with the rules but needed a refresher before jumping into the game ourselves. With Mrs. Liu as our coach, we ended up losing several times — from not being able to keep up with old men’s lightning pace — but eventually our luck turned and we broke even.

t

Walking around Zhangkeng city was like stepping into a different world

After hours of Mahjong, we finally retired upstairs to the daughter’s room and passed out. The others continued their game until well past midnight. When we woke up in the morning, Mrs. Liu insisted that we eat a big breakfast with the family before we leave, “since it will be very tiring to climb the mountain and go the distance to Jingning.” Yet again, it was a knockout meal, and way too big for us to finish half of. We made one quick tour down the steps into the valley where the main town sat, past countless little vegetable gardens among old clay roofed wooden farmhouses tucked into the slopes, across the covered bridge to the government center (a relic of the Cultural Revolution, imprinted with “Long Live Chairman Mao” at the top). The place was gorgeous and resplendent with charm, but like everywhere else like it, full of nobody but old people, babies, and ducks (oh so many ducks). The She aren’t the only ones whose culture is slowly dying. Once Mr. Cai is too old to plow his fields, he’ll most likely have to abandon the life he’s built for himself in Zhangkeng and move into an apartment with one of his kids in Wenzhou. In 20 or so years, probably almost nobody will be left, and the self sufficient, proud, happy lifestyle we witnessed will be nothing more than a page in history — assuming that page is even allowed to be written. Herein lies the greatest value of this trip to us — to be able to witness the last hours of a dying, beautiful culture being choked to death by modern development-minded insanity.

Shot of Zhangkeng from up on the mountain as we were leaving, just gorgeous

Finally we thanked our hosts many times over for their generosity and took our leave into the brisk mountain air. A solid three hours of riding, and we had arrived in the market town of Jingning, where Mr. Cai comes to buy anything he can’t procure for himself and from where I compose this post. We had originally come to the city to find more She culture, but it turns out that the town is almost entirely Han. All the She, we were informed, live in the smaller villages in the outlying mountains, coming into town mostly to sell rice and tea.

Even though it’s not what we had expected, the town is quite charming. People here take it easy and appreciate that their town is surrounded by lush green mountains and blessed with clean air. We even met a family from Shanghai who relocated here to run a restaurant and get away from those “cheap Shanghai’ers” and the bad air. We spent some time last night hanging out with the only Uighur in town, with whom we discussed the differences between life in his home of Hotan, where I had visited 2 years prior, and here. Then it was yet another rice noodle oriented meal in the Laobaixing Noodle House (literally 老百姓面馆), this time accompanied by several kg of red rice wine and some home distilled rice-based baijiu, the pride of the farmer/restauranteur. You’re probably getting the impression that we’re becoming alcoholics out here, which is probably justified, but the truth is you just can’t be a guest anywhere in China without having booze politely forced on you.

Now that we’ve spent some city time resting and writing, it’s time for us to head West again, back out toward whatever interesting people lay ahead of us in our journey. So for today, that’s it from Jingning. Merry Christmas to all who’ll be celebrating.

We passed hundreds of houses in this style throughout the day, all wooden with clay/brick bookends on either side and signature tile roofs - beauty and simplicity in architecture during the age of concrete box mania