Boating in the water town village

The burgundy coat

Xiao Wen's village, May 2013

My good friend in Bedrock, Xiao Wen (not her real name), lives in a village. Like many villagers, she works hard to make a good home life for her husband and children, taking on dirty jobs no one else will do and paying no attention to her own needs. They don't have much, but they seem happy and are always thankful for God's provision.

The other day, a professor at the university where I used to teach (I'll call her Jen, also not her real name) drove out to Xiao Wen's village, and told her that I had asked her to go to the village to pay her a visit. Jen gave her a beautiful warm, burgundy winter coat. I don't know if Jen told her the coat was from me, but Xiao Wen thought the coat was a gift from me since I was the excuse for the visit.

I wish I had thought to do so, but I had not asked Jen to go to the village, and I had not given Jen any money to buy Xiao Wen a coat. She had done it all on her own, out of the goodness of her heart.

The two women only know each other through me. Their lives are very different and they wouldn't normally associate with one another due to being in different social-economic levels.

Both are women of faith.

I love how they are looking out for each other though, even all these years after I, their common friend, has left. I love that Xiao Wen has a warm beautiful coat she would have never bought for herself, and I love that Jen went to some trouble to make sure Xiao Wen had something special to keep her warm through the bitter winter cold of Bedrock.

I feel weird knowing I got credit, but a third party, a woman who first made me aware of the situation, is going to clear up any misunderstandings in a culturally appropriate way. (For those who might know, D is the third party.)

Truthfully, I'm just thinking how this whole burgundy coat story has me feeling warm all over. :-)

Water town

Right next door to where I live, with a fence separating the two properties, is a small Buddhist temple (not pictured, but I'll show it to you some other time). On the other side of the Buddhist temple is a village, part of it along a canal. Like Venice maybe.

The above picture, therefore, was taken within a 3 or 4-minute walk from where I live. If there was no fence, it would be a faster walk. Psychologically, the fence keeps me from going there often. In four years, I've only been that way three times, the third time being this week.

I tend to think of villages being out in the countryside. But, in fact, many are in the middle of big cities.

The villages have been there for generations, and then the cities expand and build all around the villages, swallowing them up. Eventually, someone wants the land to build, and the villages are torn down and replaced by modern buildings. The villagers are paid enough to purchase a small home in a high-rise. But many miss the quaint village life when that happens.

In this village, I saw some of the tiniest dwellings I have ever seen in a village. Many village homes in the countryside are huge. But I saw some rooms in this village only big enough for a single bed, a half sofa, and a tiny table for eating. The rooms were smaller than my bedroom. They had no kitchens (they used the alleyway area to cook on portable stoves), and no bathrooms (nice public ones are built in the village though).

I forgot that such dire poverty existed so close to where I live. People inspected me, to see if I had come there to mock their lack of fortune. Many of the things that might have been interesting to photograph had to be relegated to my own memory instead of my camera memory card. I do not want to mock their plight. The tables could have been turned. It could have been me in their place and them in mine.

The canal water, for the record, is filthy.

These retired folks are playing cards (or maybe mahjong) outdoors near the canal on a pleasant fall day.

My favorite little village

On the outskirts of Bedrock is a little village where I've spent more time than any other village in this country. My dear friend XW lives there.

 Here she is coming to greet me. She broke into a run as she saw me approach.

Here's her husband. He took the day off work because I was coming to visit. Yeah, really. Very humbling.

Here is XW and another friend DY. DY is 77-years-old and speaks perfect English. She speaks it better than some people who are native English speakers. DY lives in the big city, but accompanied me to the village since we both know XW.

 This is inside XW's village home courtyard. They have steps that lead up to the flat roof.

We asked her not to make lunch for us, because she always goes to so much trouble. She had fruit, snacks and tea for us instead. (Actually, she had lunch for us too. She had it hidden in the refrigerator, hoping we would agree to stay. We did.)

 A cup of Chinese tea in a Chinese village home. Perfect.

Seen in the village

Tree blossoms in a village.

Motor bikes and motor trikes -- suitable village transportation. Check out that hat...straw hats are still worn by village manual laborers in the Middle Kingdom.

They're gone

Gone, gone, gone.

I went to visit some people in a village that I met some months back. I regret not returning sooner, because the village is gone. Demolished. Wow. I hate it when that happens. I'll never see those people again.

The buildings still standing have been gutted, awaiting their final destruction.

Pretty soon this corner of the country isn't going to have any villages left. *Sigh* I love villages. I mean, I like to visit them, soak in the ambience, talk to people, take photos, etc. I don't want to live in one. 

My friend's wedding, part two

Here is my friend, the bride. It is traditional for brides to wear a red qipao (chee-pow: slim-fitting Chinese style dress) for their weddings, though many modern brides rent a white dress for the day or have a change of several outfits. This bride wore black. I didn't expect to see this.

Most weddings have some kind of comedic ceremony prior to the banquet, but if this wedding had one, I somehow missed it. It was suddenly time to eat.

The entire house was filled with tables, saw horses, and wooden tables covered in thin red plastic table cloths.

The bride and I share a group of friends, but none of them were there at the wedding. This confused me. I sat at a table with total strangers, none of whom spoke a lick of  English. They treated me like an old friend though. One woman was a travel agent. She had her grandson with her. At one point she took a plate of rare and delicious pecans, and asked me if I wanted one. When I said no, I meant "not right now." But when she dumped the entire plate of pecans in her handbag to eat later, I realized that I had missed my chance.

They passed around the thermos of hot water as the dishes kept coming one after another. There were probably 20 dishes total, most of them unrecognizable (and I've been in this country a long time, so you would think I had seen it all by now).

Notice the red plastic on the wall behind the men. The hosts are protecting their white walls from food stains. Notice also that everyone is wearing their thick down coats, because the house was really cold inside. I had dressed for a hotel, not a village, so I was shivering from the cold.

I've sat on saw horses in churches here before. Imagine sitting through a two-hour sermon on one of these things.

I actually recognize this dish, but I've never eaten it before in this form. I grew up in a desert and we didn't have much seafood. When I was older and got around seafood, I already had developed a negative opinion towards it. Who wants to eat that ugly thing?

The groom sat at a table with some other guys who were making him miserable. Apparently it is a sport to humiliate the groom on his wedding day. They are trying to make him drunk, and he has to play along or be considered rude. He looked seriously unhappy all day.

The drinking games are noisy. 

The entryway had beautiful traditional furniture. It also had thin red carpet to keep the floors protected from the guests.

            

Each guest was given a heart-shaped box with little wrapped chocolate candy pieces. I was glad for the calories, because I didn't get enough from the expensive, unfamiliar food on our table.

While they were still bringing dishes to the table, my ride announced that the wedding was over and it was time to go. Fine with me. We walked out of the village home towards the car, and on the way saw two other mansions packed with people and decorated for the wedding. They had used three homes for the wedding party. 

And then, I about fell over in shock when I found out that today was DAY #5 of the wedding! Today had the most people (by a little), but this was the fifth day of wedding banquets. Maybe our group of friends had attended on another day? Is this why there was no lighthearted ceremony? Is this why the bride wore black (she wore different clothes each day, I found out). 

They must have fed over 1000 people in the past five days. I can't imagine even wanting to do something like this unless it was a hunger relief project or something. I've never understood the desire for big weddings. In any country.

I had a wedding gift in my bag, but forgot to give it to the bride before I left. I sent her a message a few days ago telling her I had something to give her. She said she had just returned from a trip to Thailand (honeymoon, I presume). 

Well, there you have it! All weddings are different. I've never been to one quite like this one before, and probably never will again. So glad I saw this one.

A friend's wedding, part one

I was invited to a wedding a few weeks ago. A friend of mine called me on a Sunday afternoon and invited me to her wedding the following weekend. I didn't know she had a boyfriend (none of the others in her group of friends knew either). So we were surprised. But it is not a surprise that we were surprised. People around here keep things to themselves. Even big things like that.

Since the wedding would be in her hometown an hour away, and she didn't want me to suffer on the public bus that would manage to make the one-hour car trip into 2-3 hour bus ride, she arranged a ride for me with one of her friends. 

I was worried her friend would drive too fast. He didn't drive fast, but he did stop in the middle of a highway a couple of times -- even backing up once -- because he wasn't sure which exit to take. Nearly had a heart attack when he did that!

I expected the ceremony to be held in a hotel like most of them are. There are two broad categories of weddings. City weddings held in hotel banquet halls and village weddings held in the home village. I was surprised when we drove into a neighborhood that looked like this.

Turns out, this is the girl's home "village." It was a village wedding.

Here is the gate to her village. The two "scientists" (one an engineer, one a lab worker) with whom I rode to the event are about to enter. 

 Here's the view from the front gate.

The big black cauldrons sat outside the front gate. The multipurpose food cookers/glove warmers look a little out of place in the fancy neighborhood. Looks a bit Granny Clampett-like. Made me smile.

I hate the mere sight of these firecracker strings. It portends future discomfort for my ears.

Water sloshed all over the entry walkway is a clue that despite the luxurious exterior, this really is a village. I found out that the government took the valuable land these farmers owned and in exchange built them these huge houses. Made of concrete with no insulation, the houses are just big empty concrete vaults. The furnishings inside are generally not up to the same standard as the house. Look how closely together this concrete mansion is to the next door neighbor's. You may or may not be able to put a 12-inch ruler between the two.

This kitchen is right by the main gate ... not inside the house itself. In Chinese villages, it is typical to have the kitchen separate from the main house. And to leave the energy efficiency sticker on the refrigerator forever.

When I got inside the house, the bride's mother decided I should walk up to the third floor to see the bride's bedroom. I'm not sure why that was so important. Maybe because I was the only foreigner at the wedding, I would be less of a distraction tucked away on the upper floor.

So here's the bride's bedroom. The bedding is a gift (probably from the groom's family to the bride, I'm not sure). Those big dolls wouldn't likely be a part of an American wedding. 

Here are a few cold dishes that would be served during the wedding feast. There were 40 tables with six people each, or so I was told. I didn't actually count.

This is the room on the 3rd floor where the bride and groom's parents would eat the wedding banquet separate from the other guests. The furniture in this room was exquisite and expensive. The rest of us sat on saw horses. After all, this is a village wedding, and no one expected them to have 240 individual chairs for their guests.

The symbol for double happiness was cut out of red paper and pasted on the windows. Double happiness signifies a wedding.

On the third floor was a living room area where some women and children waited for the festivities to start. They watched Winnie the Pooh or some such program on the flat-screen TV up there near the bride's bedroom.

Here are photos of the bride and groom in hard-bound photo books that they had published prior to the wedding. These wedding photo shoots remind me of Glamour Shots, because the photographs look nothing like the actual people. When I finally met the groom, I didn't recognize him -- except for the build, he looked totally different than this photo of him. He had eyeglasses, a different hairdo, and different clothes as you might imagine. The clothes used for the photo shoot are borrowed from the photographer. The bride does not have a white dress for her wedding, it's all for the photos.

I'll tell you the rest in part two, coming soon.