Half the Fun

What do Chengdu, Xian, Beijing, Qingdao, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou all have in common? Answer: they’re all huge (Qingdao is by far the smallest of that set, but still has a population of 1.6 million). We knew there had to be more to China then concrete blocks and swathing masses, so I was tasked with finding somewhere more rural for our next destination.

And that I did. Luotiancun is a 1120-year-old village in the middle of nowhere northwest of Nanchang. It gets a passing mention in Lonely Planet as a possible day trip if you’re in Nanchang, which itself isn’t worth visiting (due to it’s staunchly communist past, and the fact there‘s nothing of note in the city). Once we arrived by train in Nanchang, bar the five of us, there was nary a westerner in sight.

An unpleasant walk through industrial and traffic-clogged streets took us to the bus station, where we played the ‘match the Chinese symbols’ game (there was no English anywhere) to board a bus to Anyi, a provincial town and a link on our journey to the village. With the help of some bemused locals, we eventually found the bus station for local destinations. Now we had to get to a place named Shibi, and from there it was a simple matter of hiring a sanlunche (three-wheeled motorbike) to the village. Easy!



All eyes were on the out-of-place whiteys as we marched with our backpacks into this most rustic of bus stations. Every attempt to point out our destination (in Chinese characters) in our guide book ended with a local browsing through most of the book with a look of fascination on their face. After a few minutes, where not one word of English was understood by the locals, and not one word of Mandarin was understood by us, we were herded onto a rickety old bus. As is common across Asia, the bus didn’t leave until it was filled - with weathered-faced farmers, various agricultural produce/equipment, the five of us, and our backpacks.

Our bus journey into the unknown terminated in a remote village square. I made the natural assumption that this was Shibi, and that somehow we had to find and arrange a lift to Luotiancun. Empty stomachs meant one of the pair of restaurants bordering the village square would have to be frequented.



We ordered using the “point and shout” method. I pointed at the uncooked leg of a pig that was dangling next to the vegetables - some pork would fill me up nicely I thought. After an interminable wait for our food (in which every Chinese diner, even those that arrived after us, were taken care of first), the food began to arrive. What I got was the pig’s leg - sliced up into large chunks, hair, claws and all. There was no meat to speak of, just bone and hog-fat. A step too far in the strange food scale for me (and everyone else). At least Fred and John enjoyed their eel and fried frog respectively.

Luckily the Chinese meal custom means everything is shared, so I didn’t go too hungry. Now it was time to somehow get to our destination. Asking a few different groups of locals, none of them seemed to understand what it was we wanted to do. We cursed our lack of Mandarin. After running around in circles, the penny dropped. What each local had been trying to tell us is that we were already in Luotiancun. We had bypassed Shibi somehow. Great! Now we had to find a place to stay.



Pointing to the word for ‘accommodation’ in my phrasebook, the first local I asked took us to a friendly woman in a small shop. We followed her as gestured, wandering down narrow little village laneways past numerous ancient yards and homes - eventually making our way to this woman’s house.



The two rooms were basic, but we could hardly expect anything else given where we were - this wasn’t a hostel, it was someone’s home.