Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

Time to make up a little lost time. After our time in Anxi, we spent some really glorious days meandering around Xiamen, which I swear is China’s most charming city — that I’ve visited — bar none. If we were urbanists and not LBXists, as it were, I’d spend an entire post writing about how we got lost in the old city’s dense, pulsing alleyways the way men lose their souls in a beautiful woman’s long hair. Alas, our quest is for LBXes, and after only three days Alexis returned from his visa run to Hong Kong, obliging us to part from that beautiful city. [Andy's pics of Xiamen here]

On our first day out of Xiamen, torrential rain stopped us short in Zhangzhou (漳州), a rat hole of a city, where successive sicknesses encumbered us for two days. At least it was in Zhangzhou that I got to see my Saints roll to a Super Bowl victory via a friend’s NFL.com subscription (thanks to Weiwei and Travis!). Three days later than expected, we rolled out of town toward the northwest and the land of the tulou (土樓), or as they ought to be called in English, round earthen castles.

Inside the tulou of Xiazhai. Photo by Andy

That day out of Zhangzhou, I lost three tubes to lesions in the same spot on my back wheel (one before even riding on the $@*# thing) before realizing that my rear Schwalbe Marathon XR, “the ultimate expedition tire,” had been ruptured severely. I threw it away and put on my spare, but seriously, I want my $55 back. Needless to say, that cost us loads of time, and we got only as far as the small town of Xiazhai (霞寨鎮), where the following day I was sick to the stomach… again. As I lay in bed listening to the same five Spring Festival songs on endless repeat at max volume (there will be brutal violence next time I hear the gongxi gongxi gongxi ni [恭喜恭喜恭喜你!] song), Alexis wandered out and found a surprise: a tulou right in Xiazhai, way ahead of schedule.

Here I should back up a second. As we entered Pinghe county (平和縣), we saw a sign welcoming us to the land of the sweet pomelo (歡迎來到平和縣，蜜柚之鄉). We didn’t think much of it then, but as we rode in, we noticed the fields were noticeably planted over in citrus trees (I can pick them out easily since my grandpa used to own orange groves in Florida) and advertisements for pomelo wine (蜜柚酒 – stuff tastes ok but is still clearly a Chinese alcohol, i.e. bad) and pomelo fertilizer (蜜柚專用肥) were everywhere. More on this in a second.

Mr. Zhou getting excited about the "goddamned party" outside his tulou. Photo by Andy

So back to Alexis, he found the tulou and was invited by an inhabitant, one Mr. Zhou (周先生, almost everybody is named Zhou in Xiazhai) for the local specialty tea, Qilan (奇蘭烏龍茶) and a chat. Mr. Zhou makes about 10,000 yuan annually on his pomelo trees (everybody in Xiazhai grows pomelos too), which necessitates regular trips to Shanghai and Hangzhou. He had a great smile and graciously let us tour his home in the tulou, which was comprised of two rooms, one downstairs partially unenclosed, and the bedroom upstairs where he stores his rice. In the downstairs portion, rain water falls through the intentional gap in the ceiling onto a slanted bit of concrete with an opening that leads underground to the waste water canal for the whole tulou, allowing for light and air to pass through each home and providing a convenient waste water outlet that is naturally flushed every time a storm comes through. There was also a communal well in the center of the tulou courtyard. The walls of his nearly 300-year-old abode (from the reign of Kangxi, 康熙) were almost a meter thick at the rear, but the inside wanted badly for repair. His wife had to say only that it was “very broken (很破)!”

Broken though it may be, it was full of life. Kids ran around everywhere, men sat on benches outside their doors drinking tea, and women washed clothes together in front of the communal well. As for the life, Mr. Zhou is happy since the “goddamned CCP (他媽的GCD),” which pretty well screwed everything up before, has become less rigid and “taken away taxes on farm products (免了農業稅).” Alexis asked him if he didn’t like them due to corruption, to which Mr. Zhou gave a most cutting answer through his iffy Mandarin. “They buy houses worth millions of yuan in Xiamen and Shanghai. Where do you think they get that money? Of course, the money comes from the laobaixing! (他們在廈門、上海買幾千萬塊錢的房子是用什麼錢？當然是用老百姓的錢!)” *thanks to Alexis for writing down in long detail his spirited discussion with Mr. Zhou in French and Chinese here [Andy's pics of Xiazhai here]

The tulou of Zhongteng as we saw them from the road. Wouldn't you stop to go in too? Photo by Andy

We left Mr. Zhou and Xiazhai the morning after my day of disharmonious stomach, direction: ancient town of Luxi (蘆溪鎮). Fewer than 15 km into the ride, we stumbled across an even more impressive sight: three huge circular tulou in a row against the backdrop of prolifically pomelo’ed mountains. Of course, we had to stop to investigate the little village, named Zhongteng (鐘騰村). The buildings, a certain Mr. Huang told us, were built during the reign of Qianlong (乾隆帝, 1736-1796, see date carved into wall here), but have fallen into disrepair. We had picked up on the disrepair bit ourselves, seeing as the roofs had collapsed in several places, and the outer adobe (土坯), where not scrawled on with silly propaganda, was cracking badly.

Mr. Huang and his two grandsons at the entrance to their 300 year old tulou home. Photo by Andy

As we winded around the concentric corridors (同心走廊) of the three buildings, it was hard not to stumble upon local courtesy. Andy and I split off and were invited nearly immediately for tea by an elderly man, also surnamed Huang (黃, you guessed it – the big name in town). Mr. Huang sat us down in the downstairs room of his dual-room tulou condo and pulled out a box of some black tea that he had produced himself, a rough tea full of stems but tasty in an earthy way. As we chatted, his two young grandsons fiddled with the DVD player which was at the time playing a cheesy Chinese war drama. Their father, he told us, is a laborer (工人) in nearby Zhangzhou. The room, which was laid out very similarly to Mr. Zhou’s right down to the adobe walls and the gap in the roof through which rain water fell, was dark and smelled of old wood, but felt strangely comfortable to sit in, like a furnished cave.

Mr. Huang, who grew up in the two rooms of the Chaoyang Building (朝陽樓) where we sat, found his dwelling — predictably — to be very humble. “It’s very broken! Soon it will fall in! (很破啊！快要倒塌了!)” Nevertheless, he has no plans of moving out or fixing it since his pomelo revenue isn’t sufficient. Why not fix it up himself? “Who knows how to fix this style of building? People don’t fix these; they move out and build new concrete buildings. Most of my neighbors have moved out of the building and just use their old homes as storage space. (誰會維修這種房子？現在這裡的人不修，他們搬出去蓋水泥房子。外面很多房間都留空著的，人家只是在裡邊放東西的).”

The locals, he told us, are waiting for the government to fix up their tulou and, he hopes, make it into a tourism center like the famous tulou of Yongding (永定縣) and Nanjing (南靖縣). Isn’t he afraid that it will become a circus atmosphere once opened for tourism? “I don’t mind tourism since it brings revenue to our small place. (他們要開發旅游業，我不介意，因為這樣子我們的小地方就有收入了)”

As for survival, the 63 year old Mr. Huang supports his wife and himself solely on pomelos, having ripped up all his rice paddies and vegetable fields years ago. “It doesn’t make sense to grow rice. We make so much on pomelos that we can buy rice and vegetables from elsewhere. (種稻子不合理啊，種蜜柚可以賺很多錢，我們的大米和青菜都是從外面買過來的)” After a long talk, we thanked him for his kindness and praised his tea, at which point he poured the entire tin of it into a plastic sack for us to take with us. You really can’t beat Fujian for hospitality.

A view of the outer tulou, covered in propaganda from various time periods. The pomelo farmer Mr. Huang lived in two rooms inside one of its inner corridors. Photo by Andy

During this time Alexis had been invited for tea by two different pomelo farmers, and while Andy was off on a photographic odyssey, I was invited again too, this time by a 30-year-old woman into a concrete house on the edge of the tulou. After a few minutes of chitchat about how concrete houses are bigger and better lit than tulou over tieguanyin tea and a home-grown giant pomelo, the young Mrs. Huang’s husband, Mr. Huang, entered wearing nice starched pants and a dress shirt. “I love bicycling! Have lunch with us! (我也愛騎自行車！跟我們吃飯吧!)”

This Mr. Huang, it turns out, works in the Industrial and Commercial Bureau of Pinghe County (平和縣工商局) and had just motorcycled in for a day to see his wife, who teaches elementary school math in their native Zhongteng. Young Mrs. Huang’s mother, also Mrs. Huang, who speaks no Mandarin, quietly served us giant bowls of fried rice noodles, pickled mustard greens, and three types of meat: pig liver, fatty pork, and pork balls (to Alexis’s Jewish delight!).

Us with the young Huangs in front of their mother's concrete home in Zhongteng. Photo by Andy's gorillapod

While the women took their food in the kitchen (I do love China), we men ate at the table and as men are wont to do, discussed fruit. “If not for pomelos, the farmers of Pinghe would be poor like in the old days! (平和農民要是沒有蜜柚就會像以前那麼貧困!)” Basically the county had always been known for the big yellow citrus, but only recently have residents of big cities like Shanghai had the extra income to afford the fruit en masse.

It doesn’t hurt that pomelos are widely believed to be very healthful. Once the county government realized its future lay in pomelos, they launched enormous campaigns to promote the cultivation of the fruit, even promoting unusual uses of it, including grinding the skin down to make medicine and  — as we knew — making alcohol from the pulp. At one point, the very energetic Huang even tried to pimp Pinghe pomelos to us. “You should sell them in your America and France. They would sell very well. They’re much better than apples — those are too sweet! And grapefruit are too bitter! Just call me, and we can do some pomelo business! (你們應該把我們的蜜柚拿到你們美國和法國去賣，一定賣得很好。蜜柚比蘋果好，蘋果太甜了！胡柚也太苦了。你們只要找我，我們就做點柚子生意吧!)” His long “shady (曖昧)” pitch, a he confessed to being accustomed to making due to his job, was not too out of the ordinary for what we’re used to, except that it seems like bad business to put down apples so callously.

While we talked, the mayor of the village (村長) came in, said hello, and was fed noodles and pig products as well at another table. We continued as though he and the man accompanying him weren’t there, and after about thirty minutes they left unceremoniously. At the end, we finished the huge pomelo started during tea, truly the sweetest, most delicious I’ve ever eaten — especially impressive considering it had been picked four months prior in October (we are missing the prime season for just about every agricultural product we come in contact with, with the exception of tangerines). As we left their concrete box, the twitchy young village party secretary (村黨委書記) came up, shook our hands, and also entered the house to eat noodles. I still have no idea what was going on between them and the local leadership. We said goodbye to our very benevolent hosts, and after pictures all around, pointed our bikes back in the direction of Luxi.

A look over Zhongteng's endless rows of pomelo trees from the top of the mountain. Really makes me want to head back for flowering season in a month. Photo by Andy

The rest of that day we fought ferocious, unfinished, rocky roads up and down more mountains verdantly veneered with… — are you ready? — pomelo trees. Incidentally, Mrs. Huang told us before leaving that at the end of March, the trees all flower simultaneously, filling the region with sweet fragrance for weeks. If only we had come a month later, but alas. Anyhow, we ended the day with my sleeping bag lost on the road (the bungee must have been bounced free, and the subsequent one-hour search proved fruitless. Some LBX saw a huge red bag (大紅包), assumed since it was Spring Festival, it must be full of cash meant for him, and took it home, or so I imagine), arriving quite late in Luxi under rainfall, only two days before Spring Festival.

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