The Village

While I was in college, the buildup to the all important end-of-year exams was a hectic period, with huge amounts of last minute cramming - this was when I was at my most focused. At the climax you sit down and write for three hours and then - nothing. All the pressure, anxiety and sobriety disappears once the final answer of the final exam has been written - and in the days that immediately follow I found it very hard switch to idle mode - restless, I always felt I should be doing something.

Switching from big-city China (too much to see with not enough time) to miniscule Luotiancun (too little to see with too much time) had a similar effect. I had to slow my brain down to the pace of life I found myself in. After we had sorted our accommodation, we went for a stroll around the village.

After an hour of curious observation, both from us and the locals we came across, we had seen everything there was to see. Freed from the sightseeing pressure that we had grown accustomed to, there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy the snail’s pace.

The scenery surrounding the village was a much needed break from concrete and glass, though the most memorable things about our time here were interacting with the locals whilst living the same way and doing the everyday things just like they did. Our toilet was communal, shared with numerous other households in our vicinity, and consisted of no more than a small shed with a narrow gap in the concrete floor to squat over. Only a few days before, I encountered the most advanced toilet I had ever seen - toilets providing excellent evidence of the huge contrast between city and rural life in China.

Having a shower was the most fun though, with the following routine:

1. Go to shower room to collect bucket.
2. Bring bucket to village well to fill with water.
3. Return to shower room with bucket.
4. Use bucket to wash yourself.

With the well and the shower room a couple of minutes walk from each other, it was definitely the most unique shower routine of my trip.



By the third day I’m certain the whole village had a name for each of us. We were different, but never felt like outsiders, being greeted with smiles wherever we wandered. I grew up in a small town, so perhaps this is one reason why I felt so at home here, so at ease.

Our host, who someone soon nicknamed “hostel mama” (I can’t remember who came up with that), cooked us a delicious dinner on a couple of occasions, but we also tried out the local restaurants. Some of the most memorable interactions with the locals were had here, where, with no menu to speak of, and no common language, ordering ended up with visits to the kitchen to point at ingredients.



With my charades experience finally proving useful, we had to mime how we wanted it cooked too - although at times it proved near impossible to convey to them that we wanted our noodles fried. At one meal Kaisa even supervised the whole cooking process, to make sure they cooked it the way we (she) wanted - though being a passionate fan of cooking herself, I think this was more for her own enjoyment. She cracked the whip quite well, as the subsequent meal was the best we had in our time in the village.

Of course, with the five of us together, there were many many games of bullshit and many beers had too. Somehow it always ended up with Fred and myself retrieving the beer, and we stayed loyal to a single shop for most of our brew supply. The kindly woman that owned the establishment sold more beer in three days than she probably had sold in the previous year - having to restock numerous times, she probably installed a new kitchen in her house after our visit.



Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the picture above is from the very last game of bullshit. Our plans too divergent, we would have to split back into the groups of two and three that we were before that night in Shanghai. We had made the first truly great friends of the trip.



The possibility of meeting Fred again in Vietnam was there, so that made it easier, though we didn’t know if we’d ever see Kaisa again. Such is life on the road. This was more difficult for Gearoid, for whom romance had sprung up with Kaisa. Would they ever see each other again? To find out, you’ll just have to keep reading.

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.