Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

Ever since I began frequenting the institution of Shaxian Snacks (沙县小吃) back in Shanghai two years ago, I’ve always had a vague desire to know just what old Shaxian (沙县, literally “Sand County”) is all about. I mean, the little hole-in-the-wall (they all look more or less like this) vendors of super cheap banmian (拌面, mixed noodles), zhengjiao (蒸饺, steamed dumplings), and other dimsum’ish delicacies are almost on every corner (those not occupied by Lanzhou Pulled Noodles, that is) back in the Paris of the East (you heard me, Alexis). I passed two on my fifteen minute walk to work every morning. So it was that as we rolled south from Gaoqiao toward the Mecca of mian meals, I felt like a Bubba who’d spent years eating the Colonel’s secret recipe finally making the hajj to Louisville.

I'm telling you, southern Shaxian is Lord of the Rings stuff. Photo by Evan

Most unfortunately, however, the county city of Shaxian was just like any other county city anywhere else we’ve found, give or take a really gaudy central plaza and a giant, expensive, extra-touristy and double-lame City of Snacks (小吃城). We ate the only meal we could in good conscience eat, of course, and slipped through the city without too much event. However, since leaving, I found this article on People’s Daily about the phenomenon and have since reconsidered the rest of our time in the county of sand. If People’s Daily is to be trusted (you think FoxNews has an agenda?), nearly half of the rural labor force of the county is somewhere else in China operating dingy dim sum dives under the exact same moniker. That’s more than 50,000 people, mostly in Shanghai (over 2,000 locations) and Guangdong province (6,000 locations!). It just made me think how huge a role geographical luck plays in the life of people in China. Born in Huafeng,  you’ll likely spend your life in a coal mine; Jingdezhen, and you’ll probably see your fair share of ceramics; Anxi, and expect some tea in your life; Shaxian, and get ready to fry some noodles etc., etc. By the way, make a note of the last paragraph of that article:

Some outlets are plagued by poor training, or poor internal financial control. For example, the owners of many small outlets are not showing much competitive edge; they tend to use much of their profit to build new houses for themselves and spend little on reinvestment.

It just goes to show that the miserable sycophants at People’s Daily really just don’t get it. What could they possibly imagine drives half the population of a county away from their homes to open little snack shacks? They don’t give a flying turd about promoting a brand name! They, like all the other LBXes who leave to make money, care most about their families back home. Of course, they’re going to build houses for them instead of trying to spruce up the cheap rent cave in which they spend twelve hours a day slaving over a hot wok! It’s just a lucky turn of fate for Shaxian’ers that they can be their own bosses — diminutive though the business may be — under a respected “trademark” rather than having to stitch underwear for export to Walmart in a dingy factory in Guangdong.

One of many similar houses in the valley leading up to Huyuan. Many of them seemed to have been reworked in concrete while still retaining the local flavor -- finally a compromise! Photo by Andy

Returning to the story, we rolled north from Shaxian through what has been some of the most incredible mountain roads we’ve seen so far. I mean this stuff was Lord of the Rings caliber grand, especially once we left the crumbling county road for a tiny, concrete, one-lane shortcut through the south of the county. The villages we passed up in high-altitude valley were the most idyllic Chinese landscapes I’ve seen outside of pictures. Beautiful houses were dotted among rice paddies and other pastures in a rolling pattern. Children, dogs, and water buffaloes ran around everywhere, and old folks were sitting in front of their houses sipping on tea or shooting the breeze. It was like taking a step back in time.

As sunset encroached, we made a final push to the top of the mountain, 800 meters high, whence we landed in a township called Huyuan (湖源乡) just after dark. It took about five minutes for me to realize that Huyuan to me is, in addition to being full of charm, about the ideal combination of town and country — most people live on little patches of farm in rustic, country houses but come into the town center to do their shopping/selling and get their kicks. As we entered, the farm houses got denser and denser until we arrived in the town center, where we found lodging in the only hotel around (and took 2 of its 3 rooms for 10 yuan a pop). Even at 7pm, the little town was buzzing: old people in rooms with wide open doors everywhere smoking, drinking, and most important, playing Mahjong — we saw maybe 50 games running concurrently, all of the tables encircled by excited onlookers.

Climbing the mountain that leads to Huyuan. Photo by Andy

After a dinner of rice noodle soup and pickled cabbage (酸菜米粉汤), Alexis and I headed out into the city to try to try to pick up a game of Mahjong, since it seemed like the thing to do. We walked into a general store of sorts (杂货店) where a middle-aged man Mr. Chen (陈先生) was sitting alone at his electric Mahjong table watching CCTV and smoking. His response to why he wasn’t playing: “Oh, usually I’d be playing, but these days most of my friends are out collecting winter bamboo shoots (采冬笋) or running [Shaxian Snacks] restaurants. In a few days I’ll have my regular partners back.” His wife came out and offered cigarettes and tieguanyin tea, of which we accepted the latter. Mr. Chen surmised pretty quickly that we were looking to get into some MJ action (not to be confused with similar action in San Francisco), and so he called a few buddies up, who arrived one by one on motorcycles. While we were waiting, we gathered a few tidbits about his life, which I thought were worthy of sharing here.

Mr. Chen, a native of Huyuan, had spent many years of his life in Guandong and southern Fujian working in and eventually running his own Shaxian Snacks restaurants, a lot like many of his friends apparently. Contrary to what I would have expected, he said he loved being on the outside (在外面) since he could travel and have adventures. Since his son was now getting to be school age, he returned home to be with his family and see his son raised right. Even though he loved his adventures, he loved being in Huyuan just as much, since it was “full of friends, quiet, and cool in the summer (朋友多、很安静，而且夏天很凉快，因为海拔很高).” He invested the money he had made in the snacks trade into his little general store, in the first floor of his house, where he sells “anything that makes money (什么能赚钱就卖什么),” shoes, clothes, dried food, sheets, cigarettes, booze, and much more. On the side he used a machine to re-fluff old cotton blankets (打棉被, since the blankets become less insulating as the cotton gets compressed over time). He basically runs his little store as a means to make money to support his family and use the rest on Mahjong, booze, cigarettes, etc. — or what I’d call living the good life, Shaxian style.

A vendor of fengan (粉干, rice noodles) in Huyuan's morning market. Photo by Evan

Once we had been joined by his first buddy, a 50-plus-year-old, short-mustachioed man with a giant smile, it was game on. First they tried to catch us up on Shaxian rules, which were different from the Guangdong rules we had learned in Jiangle in several key ways –16 tiles instead of 13, a wild tile (金牌, this really threw me), and crazy rules for discarding. After only one practice round, Mr. Chen said, “Now we gamble, but only five yuan per hand, so don’t worry!” Lord have mercy, but those men were fast and ruthless. Alexis and I were swimming trying to keep up — I mean Mr. Mustache could hu (和, win) just from looking at his hand without even rearranging his tiles into sets. Mr. Chen was no chump either, and so after 15 minutes, I had won a grand total of one hand, Alexis none, and our wallets were lighter 50 and 65 yuan, respectively. Alexis said it was unfair of them to insist we gamble when we didn’t even understand the rules, but I pointed out that every time I’ve initiated somebody to Texas Hold’em (德州扑克), I insist they gamble after the first test hand too — since I’m with them on the philosophy that there’s no point to these games of chance unless you’ve got something riding. Once the other buddies showed up, we excused ourselves to the spectator position and then a while later said goodnight to the men, who had gotten so fired up about the game they they seemed to have forgotten their initial fascination with our foreign-ness.

The time in the mountaintop town of Huyuan was especially valuable as it gave us inside perspective on the Shaxian Snacks phenomenon. It was like observing for years a colony of ants slaving away, carrying several times their body weight back to the mound, and then shrinking down to follow them into the nest to glimpse their private world that makes all that labor worth their while. The next morning we checked out Huyuan’s bustling morning market, passed the old houses on the other side of town, and made a giant plunge downhill and southward toward Minnan (闽南, Southern Fujian), one of the destinations we’ve been most excited about seeing since leaving Beijing. More coming on that in the following post.

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