10: trip to national geographic

gan picked me up from my school gate in his jeep wagoneer; i had chuckled at his choice of vehicles when first i met him, and assumed it went with his cowboy hat and affection for things western. i hadn't thought that it might be a necessity...

our first destination was to be the city of huizhou, about an hour north of shenzhen. the friday evening traffic was dense, but i was enjoying my first foray beyond the city limits. by dark we had arrived at the restaurant where we were to meet some of his high school friends for dinner: a broad, multi-story building on a quiet block with an enormous printed banner that covered the entire facade. the banner was floodlit, and bore an alpine image (surely photoshopped) of mountain pastures and a smiling flock. the discreet english caption, lower right corner, didn't beat around the bush: nice sheep. guess what we had for dinner?

we were a bit late, and his four friends had already gathered in a private dining room on the third floor. an enormous 2-tub hot pot was already bubbling at the center of the table; we were offered the grilled appetizers- kebab things and lamb chops- that they had already started on. and then the raw meats destined for the cauldron started rolling in; trays of razor-thin lamb in rolls and florets, and varieties of sliced vegetables. the 2 compartments of the hot pot could have been labelled "hot" and "really hot"; this was a muslim restaurant, and they didn't scrimp on the silk road spices and peppers that roiled in the brew. meat and vegetables into the pot, swizzled until done; i think i was the only one to venture into the "really hot" side. gan's friends were duly impressed, and brought out the baijiu (clear rocket fuel distilled from rice) to further test my mettle. they all had some english, and were curious about and generous with this blue-eyed stranger that gan had brought along to their regular gathering: no one would let me pay for a thing.

after dinner, they led us to a downtown hotel where they had reserved some rooms for gan and i to spend the night; they were now residents of huizhou. we took a stroll (make that a hike) around the lake that is the centerpiece of city, an ancient pleasure garden of islands and bridges, pavilions and a pagoda, mysterious in the dark, but cheerfully lit with winkie lights and filled with strollers enjoying the evening breezes, and enjoyed some "beer on a pier" before turning in.



the next morning, we were up early and on the road just after 7am. the outskirts of huizhou are now home to many of the factory compounds that germinated in shenzhen and the special economic zone: boatloads of shoes and apparel are ground out from hundreds of grim, walled compounds of multistory production and housing blocks. as we moved further into the countryside, the buildings gave way to the ghosts of what had been agricultural communities: faint outlines of terraced hillsides surrounded crumbling villages of what resembles adobe, with traditional barrel-tile roofing, garnished with stands of banana and bamboo, often rudely punctuated with tall, flat-roofed houses of concrete, faced with bathroom tile in weird colors and patterns. muddy ponds for fish culture ringed each village. there were no real trees to speak of, only a green fuzz carpeted the hills, overlaid with an occasional veil of kudzu; sapling trees- presumably for pulp and fiber- bristled from the ridges.

by 8am, we approached what gan called his home town; a hill on the left, spiked with a pagoda, he pointed out as his high school. we motored down the main drag between new "shop houses": tall concrete rows with commercial space on the ground floor and two or three living floors above. these owner-occupied structures are now ubiquitous in china, and the commercial space can shelter anything from fancy restaurants to toxic waste sorting facilities, cheek by jowl in the same block. at one intersection, a man on the right waved to gan, and we pulled over and parked to the left; time for breakfast; the waver was one of his brothers. after a quick bowl of porridge, seated on low sidewalk stools, we passed thru the nearby "wet market" and accumulated some greens, some peppers and some pork whittled from the hanging carcass; these were for his mom and the lunch she was preparing. we left the brother "in town" and set out for the farm.

the roads had gotten progressively narrower as we got further from shenzhen; just past the village, we turned into a paved lane barely wide enough for a cart. within a few kilometers, the pavement stopped and we threaded up a winding dirt track. soon we were on a single-rut path... the jeep groaned and climbed higher, as we threaded our way up a narrow valley. how in the hell did you get to that school you showed me? he said it was a boarding school, and he only biked this on monday and friday, a long ride nonetheless. how in the hell do your mom and dad get around now? motorbike; they're both in their 70's.

i'd first seen the homestead in the background of pictures gan was showing me of the weekend house he was building. was that a caretaker's house? no, that's where he grew up, and where his mom and dad still live; his getaway was the family farm. about thirty minutes further up the valley, through a crossing of the bamboo-lined stream, it came into view.





our arrival didn't seem like any big deal; lots of roaming chickens were outraged at the intrusion, but the gaggle of children playing by the outbuildings barely looked our way. no sign of any grownups- mom must be working in her garden; gan says she likes having all the kids around. only one is family, the rest were neighbors who like mom's company, and her cooking. we had a quick look around the old courtyard house, a typical "hakka" dwelling built just before he was born (in the 60's) then moved on to tour his new house adjacent.

while playing on the forms and materials of the traditional house, this one sets off in some new directions: it is approached by a shaded verandah to the south (which mom finds handy for laundry), and instead of a courtyard, the entirety of the structure had been opened up as the central living space.







after sufficient admiration of his work-in-progress, gan asked if i'd like to visit the family shrine. a steep 15-minute walk up the valley behind the houses (even the jeep was useless here), we came to the two rooftops in a clearing. the gurgling stream we'd heard during the climb separated the two structures: an open shelter on our side of the stream, facing into the three-walled shrine on the other.







it seems the shrine had only recently been rebuilt; during the cultural revolution, the zealous village schoolmaster had enlisted some of his students to pull it down as a worthy project. chastened by time, the same schoolmaster was one of the organizers of the reconstruction. as we wound our way back down the valley, smoke was curling from the chimney of the old house: mom was in the kitchen preparing lunch.

gan and i had tea in the big courtyard, while mom did her magic; she brought us a basket of wild berries to tide us over. it seems dad was off on his motorbike to help a daughter with a construction project in another town; with the arrival of the brother from town, we would only be four for lunch.



the lunch table was laid out for the adults in the smaller courtyard that served as a kitchen; giggles and chatter from deeper into the house let us know the kids were eating, too. we sat on low stools as mom loaded the table; a few chickens pecked at the floor, glared up and clucked at us accusingly. the head and feet of one of their siblings draped over the edges of one of the larger bowls, the remains steamed and seasoned with ginger. there were also three small fish, snagged from the pond in front, that were frolicking in a waterjug by the door the last i saw them. there were green beans from the garden, stir-fried with chunks of smoky, fatty bacon that they love so in guangdong. there were greens steamed with garlic, and a dish with the pork that we'd brought out, and i'm sure a few other things i've forgotten. gan let mom know that we's enjoy some of her home-made wine, too; she ladled some out of another crock in the back and brought us a small pitcher of her brew. herbed and spiced, it was similar to the sherry-like rice wine i was learning to enjoy. gan told me later that two snakes that mom had found in the pond out front had been marinating in- and seasoning the crock of wine from which we'd drunk. in a few months, when they were "done", the snakes would make a delicious meal, too.

it was during the meal that gan pointed out two rough-hewn boxes cradled in the rafters over the kitchen door: mom and dad's coffins. the hakka people like to be prepared, and are quite matter-of-fact about death (as the chickens on the floor could certainly attest). while on the subject, did i care to see grandma's grave? she'd died recently, and had just been placed in a new tomb up another valley behind the house. gan had hired some workmen to embellish the site, and wanted to check on the progress while here.

the grave was about twice the distance from the house as the shrine; we took the jeep until the road really ended, and then made another uphill climb. from the cleared site of granny's grave we could see grandpa's on a facing hillside, perhaps a mile down the valley. a feng shui master had picked this spot, in the valley where the gan family had been settled for some 700 years. you could again make out the contours of fields no longer in cultivation, and the sites of abandoned homesteads. population of these hidden valleys is shrinking, as youngsters flee to the cities of modern china.



once back to the homesteaad, gan had one more request: could mom cut him some bamboo? no questions asked, mom gets her wicked knife from behind the door and sets about her business. a few minutes later, mission accomplished:



gan wanted the bamboo for an arrangement in his office; mom then trucked out a number of her crocks for his selection. with this bit of business done, it was late afternoon and time to return to the real world. gan assures me this was not a typical sendoff:



all things considered, i have to say the gan household took me pretty much in stride. cousins further down the valley, however, were another matter. as we stopped at homesteads to deliver moon cakes (for the upcoming holiday) on our trip back down to the pavement, most children could not have been more surprised if a dragon had stepped from the dusty jeep...

as dark fell, we edged back into the "real" world, through the mountains that overlook the bright lights of shenzhen, and it's more than eight million inhabitants...

next: national holiday