Hangzhou, China, November 2019 - More than just West Lake (XiHu)

I imagine it would come as a surprise to most people, certainly in the Western world, to learn that during the thirteenth century Hangzhou was almost certainly the largest city in the world, with a population of around 2 millions. Marco Polo, visiting towards the end of that century, called it 'the most beautiful and magnificent city in the world', and a few years later the Moroccan scholar and traveller Ibn Battuta was equally impressed.

I first visited Hangzhou in 2007 and I have just been back for my third visit.  Each time I have become more fascinated with its history and geography.  And I have realised how deficient my Western education has been about one of the great cities of the world - as about so much of the realities of China, past, present and future.  Hangzhou's got a lot of each of those (although expressing them in Mandarin might be complicated in a language without verb tenses).

What do I remember of my 2007 visit?  The guidebook I had bought beforehand put most of its emphasis for Hangzhou on the West Lake, describing it as one of the major sights of China.  I was visiting Zhejiang University (where earlier this year I gave a lecture - at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning!) and the hotel had a magnificent view over the lake.  At night the pagodas around the lake were lit up - a magical sight.  But when I went for a walk along one of the causeways that intersect the lake I was an object of interest - a rare Westerner (although it may also have been because in the high humidity my shirt showed that I was not used to the climatic conditions, unlike all the local people).  I recall walking by the lake to an excellent Italian restaurant one evening (my European colleagues wanted a change from Chinese food) but I also have an image of a taxi I was in being caught up in a swirl of bicycles in rush hour traffic and hardly moving for an hour.

On my more recent visits I have come to understand that Hangzhou is much more than the lake.  As long ago as the seventh century AD it became the southern end of the Grand Canal leading all the way to Beijing, and a few days ago I watched laden barges ploughing their way along what must be one of the oldest artificial waterways in the world.  Other side canals were later added and Marco Polo commented on the way the city resembled Venice.  I have walked by these waterways at night, through beautiful linear parks, with bridges that invite those with time on their hands to linger and chat, leaning on the wooden balustrades that line the bridge parapets.

People lingering to sit and talk on a canal bridge

The Emperors of the Song dynasty made the city their capital between 1132 and 1276 when the dynasty fell, and during this period Hangzhou became one of the most cultured and civilised places in the world, during a period when Chinese creativity and inventiveness was at its peak.  But unlike many Western cities, there are virtually no surviving relics of this period - wood was the predominant building material and fires were frequent: only some of the major pagodas on the city's edge date from that period.

So the old buildings actually only go back two or three hundred years.  But they give character to several of the city's districts.  Not far from the lake I have visited a traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy in the Wushan shopping area and nearby my companion and I have quenched our thirst with a drink made from stripped and pressed sugar cane and lime juice.  On the way back we passed the Phoenix Mosque, one of the four great mosques of China and dating back over 1000 years (although several times rebuilt).  Near the Grand Canal I have wandered along traffic-free lanes backing on to a small canal where the terraces of tiny cafés overlook the water, and where the main product in the shop on the bank opposite our café was its own home-made soy sauce.  I have inspected the personal seals made to commission by a group of craftsmen who occupy an old property on one of the islands in the lake.

Pharmacy for traditional medicine

Pedestrian lane near the Grand Canal

But Hangzhou also has its bustling modern face.  Since I first visited in 2007, part of the lake promenade has been pedestrianised, with the road diving into tunnels that carry it under the water.  There are immensely long new road tunnels running east-west to the north of the lake.  Hangzhou has been awarded the 2022 Asian Games, and 11 new metro lines are simultaneously being constructed to add to the existing 2: and no doubt they will be finished on time.   The new metro lines may assist with the one downside (to me) of the city - the fact that the station for China's high speed trains (HangzhouDong station) is so far out east from the city centre: trying to get there from Zhejiang University a few months ago road traffic congestion forced my companion and me to abandon the vehicle we were in and run for our train, despite the fact that an hour had been allowed for the journey to the station.  Once the metro is completed there are also plans to ban the scooters that have replaced the bikes I remember from 2007.  The 2016 G20 summit was held in Hangzhou, the first in China, in the International Expo Centre on the opposite side of the Qiantang River - a building that has echoes of the 'Birds Nest' stadium built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  I do not know whether Hangzhou has been particularly favoured in recent years because Xi Jinping was formerly a party leader in Zhejiang province (a political appointment since he was actually born in Fu Ping in Shaanxi).  But one thing he did was to insist on the development of a dense network of clean public toilets throughout Zhejiang's major city -  I've never been anywhere that matches Hangzhou in the availability of such facilities.

The International Expo Centre on the Qiantang River, site of the 2016 G20 summit

One day we drove past the headquarters of Alibaba,  one of the top ten companies in the world, founded in 1999 by Jack Ma in his apartment in Hangzhou.  The city was in right at the start of the e-commerce boom and has remained so ever since.

But let me return to the lake.  Any map of Hangzhou is distinctive in showing a missing segment in the  urbanised area.  The lake is just to the west of the city centre, and the opposite shore could easily have been built up to surround the water with housing and offices.  But good sense has prevailed over the centuries - perhaps aided by the presence of a major Buddhist complex, the Lingyin Temple just beyond the western shore.  So the view of West Lake from the city is not blotted by inappropriate constructions on the opposite bank.  Given the vicissitudes of China's history over the last few centuries that is indeed a blessing.  On a Saturday evening, after dark, my colleague and I set out from our lakeshore hotel to walk along one of the lake causeways.  All the trees on the islands were illuminated (although only until 9.30), the moon was almost full and was reflected in the water, and the lights and sounds of the city were some way off.  My 2007 guidebook was right - the West Lake is a jewel in the territory of Hangzhou, and one of China's greatest sights.  But there is much more to Hangzhou than that.

West Lake (XiHu) illuminated and moonlit

Gordes, Vaucluse, France, October 2019 - Tourist growth and change

I have just been in the village of Gordes, in Provence, for the fourth time.  My first visit was in 2007, so I have seen it over a number of years.  Gordes is one of the places that almost all guidebooks provide strong encouragement to visit, but in truth there isn't a great deal to do in the village itself - the main attraction is really the site itself, particularly if one is driving in along the main road from the valley below.

There is more to occupy one's time in nearby Roussillon, where the ochre quarries are of considerable interest.  The Abbey of Sénanque, which must be one of the most familiar images of Provence from calendars, all pictures being taken during the few days when the lavender in front of the abbey is at its best, is a couple of kilometres away (and actually lies within the commune of Gordes although not the village itself).  There is an ancient village of circular stone-built huts in the opposite direction.  Gordes has a small castle, and a number of viewpoints over the valley below, but not a great deal more - apart from restaurants and bars.

Nevertheless, I have been back four times in the last few years, and I certainly find it an atmospheric and attractive location.  But something I have noticed, particularly on my most recent visit, has been that Gordes is changing - and doing so quite rapidly.

Where in 2007, when I first came, one could get an evening meal in the hotels or in two other restaurants at opposite ends of the quality scale, today, in 2019, there are upwards of 10 restaurants operating, and even in late September and early October booking is essential for a table for dinner - and prices are substantial.  The two original places - l'Artégal and l'Estaminet - have been joined by the Bastide de Pierres (owned by the biggest hotel a little down the road), La Trinquette, the Crêperie de Fanny, Le Jardin, the Restaurant l'Outsider and more.  The friendly (and cheap)  boulangerie  near the church is still open from the crack of dawn onwards, but another on the other side of the square has closed.  Some of the bars have become either restaurants or fast food places.  The Cercle Républicain remains a traditional bar welcoming all comers, local and visitors alike, for 365 days a year but makes few concessions to visitors - its plate of croissants and pains chocolats is quickly depleted in the morning and not afterwards recharged. I hope the Cercle can last as it is.

Breakfast in the Cercle Républicain

On this visit I missed the extensive Provençal market held on a Tuesday on both sides of the castle, but I suspect little will have changed at that, other than more stalls aimed at tourists (selling Marseille soap, Provençal herbs, lavender bags and so on) than in the past.

But at all times of the day Gordes is thronged with visitors - among them many from Asia or from Eastern Europe - who are asked to park outside the village and walk in.  Those who don't stay to eat or drink will, I expect, stay an hour but not much longer. They will visit the souvenir shops (where a high proportion of the merchandise on sale, pleasingly, is from the local region).  But they will stay in the top part of the village rather than descending the cobbled paths to the valley bottom where some of the oldest and most interesting properties lie.  One afternoon I spent an hour sketching down there and during that time only two couples passed me, whilst the square up above was busy with visitors.

Gordes is typical of many tourist villages in France, and more widely across Europe - a stop on a day's touring by car, a 'must see' in the guidebook, a few photographs, a coffee or soft drink, possibly a small purchase, and then on to the next place.  But I have watched the main road into the village in the evening, the one that comes past the viewpoint, and seen that it is almost devoid of traffic.  The rhythm of visits lasts from around 10 until 6.  So do the new restaurants make enough of a living from lunch visitors alone?  But as I've already commented, a booking is needed for dinner.  Where do the diners come from?  And what is happening to the village and its inhabitants more generally?

I have been delving into the available statistics from the French national statistical office, and they make very interesting reading (and, again, are, I suspect, typical of many other places).

There are actually only 164 hotel rooms in Gordes, 45% of them in 5 star establishments and with nothing below 2 star.  This is high class (and expensive) hotel tourism.  The 'best' hotel has recently joined the 'Grand Luxury Hotels of the World' marketing group: after a recent refurbishment it now dresses its staff in mock eighteenth century outfits, presumably aimed at impressing an American clientele.  There is only one camp site (at 3 star), with 100 pitches.  But added to these are 615 bed spaces in rented properties, air bnb, bed-and-breakfast offerings and so on.  Most of these are in the rural areas surrounding the village, and many of them are extensively advertised through English- or Dutch- language web sites.  They are, in the main, up-market properties with a range of amenities including, sometimes, pools, and they are almost all stone-built providing the fantasy, for urban residents from elsewhere in France or Europe more generally, of living for a week or so in an authentic rural setting.  

People have been visiting Gordes for decades, since those parts that were destroyed by Nazi bombardment during the war were rebuilt - among those who came were Marc Chagall and François Mitterrand.  But some who come decide to stay, or at least to purchase a stake in the village.  (There are more estate agents now than there were in 2007.)  In 2011 just over 40% of properties in Gordes were second homes; by 2016 that had risen to 46%.  During the same period the resident population had fallen, by 9%, from 2056 to 1873.  The scope for further growth in second homes is considerable - in 2016 there were over 150 vacant properties in Gordes, although most would require significant investment to make them habitable for prosperous buyers expecting certain standards of accommodation.

And what about the residents of today's Gordes?  They are elderly.  In 2011 41% were over 60: by 2016 that had risen to 49.4%.  By now (2019) over half the population must be in that age category.  And the education level of residents is high - over one third have a degree level or professional qualification.  It seems as if the retirees are of high status.

 Second homes in the lower part of the village

Gordes is undergoing a dual process of growth in the tourist industry, and of a move upmarket in terms of who is attracted to it and the surrounding area.  But tourism is growing not through new hotel capacity - instead it is day visits and self-catering activity that lead development.  What use are day visits to tourist villages?  They create traffic congestion and the amount spent by visitors may be low.  Self-catering may provide an income for landlords, but I have the suspicion that many of these are not local residents and may even be property companies based abroad.  But their tenants do create a demand for restaurants - even if they drive to a supermarket on the edge of a nearby town such as Apt or Cavaillon for their shopping.  The permanent residents are ageing, and the hotels increasingly depend on migrant staff.  The employee that came to check my room one evening was from Moldova and spoke virtually no French or English - and my Romanian runs only to buna seara (good evening) and multumesc (thank you).

Gordes is still very well worth a visit.  But what is going on under the surface of tourist villages such as this poses interesting questions about what the future will hold.   

Alberobello, Puglia (Apulia), Italy, June 2019 - Making the most of historic poverty

It is five years since I was last in Puglia, and the intervening period has witnessed significant change. Puglia now seems to be high on the list of 'must-visit' places for tourists from many parts of the world.  In the UK we see numerous holiday advertisements for tour groups that will take in Alberobello, Otranto, Vieste and Matera as part of a coach excursion.  (Matera is actually in Basilicata rather than Puglia and has risen to fame this year as one of the European Capitals of Culture - more of that below).  Over the last few days I have heard groups speaking English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Chinese, as well as Eastern European languages that I can't decipher.  When I was last here there were certainly English and German tourists around, but the whole world now seems to come to Puglia.

Looking back to the days when I studied the geography of Italy as part of my degree, this transformation in the image of the region seems astonishing.  This was one of the poorest parts of Italy at the time when the great investment bank for the south - the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno - was set up in 1950.  That investment didn't actually do much of substance other than improve the roads, because a lot of money went into capital-intensive developments such as steel works and oil refineries that did little to alleviate local rural unemployment and poverty.  Just over the border of Basilicata the writer and intellectual Carlo Levi had been outlawed to the desperately poor and backward village of Aliano by the Mussolini regime in the 1930s, resulting in his wonderful book 'Christ stopped at Eboli' in which he argued that these southern parts of Italy had never been visited by anybody except as an enemy or an outsider seeking to extract what little value they could from the region.  Many years ago I was impressed by the Goncourt-Prize-winning novel 'La Loi' ('The Law') by Roger Vailland (1957) describing the scarcely functioning rural society of a part of Puglia near Bari.  And in 1983 Francesco Rosi set his Oscar-nominated film 'I Tre Fratelli' ('The Three Brothers') in the same area.  Characteristically, the three brothers had all left for careers elsewhere, in Rome, Naples and Turin,  returning home only on the death of their mother but then leaving once again. Emigration was the way out of poverty in the region.

I have been staying in exactly the area where these images most strongly applied - the Murge.  It is a  plateau  around 1000 feet high, made up of karst limestone and with a steep drop to the coastal plain to the north-east.  The soil is a distinctive red-brown colour, field boundaries are dry stone walls, and the dominant crop is olives.  Luckily, in this area the disease that is decimating Puglia's olives further north - xylella fastidiosa - has not (yet) developed.  If and when it does it will transform the landscape into a wilderness.  But at the moment, with the exception of the olives, parts of the countryside look remarkably English.

So what has brought about the transformation from the impoverished image of the past to the tourist presences of today?  My last blog was about two UNESCO-listed villages in China, and here once again UNESCO is in part the cause.  Parts of the town of Alberobello are listed, just like the villages of HongSun and XiDi in Anhui, China.  And the general area around is under a number of protective measures.  The reason is the local vernacular house-type - stone-built single-storey buildings with conical roofs also made of stone, with most houses made up of several interlocking circular rooms.

'Trullo' houses

The town containing the greatest number of these 'trulli' houses is Alberobello where whole districts are comprised of this distinctive architecture.  The history of this local house-type is unclear - there appear to be few references to it before the seventeenth century (but then no writer was interested in such an impoverished area before then).  They may date back earlier (on some houses there are plaques claiming a history back to around 1400, but proof is slight).  What is certain is that these were the dwellings of the poor.  

Part of Alberobello

So the historic poverty of many parts of Puglia has now become a factor in the attraction of tourists to the region.  The trulli with their lack of running water, animals and people sharing one property, and poor living conditions (children often slept on wooden platforms under the conical roofs, accessed by wooden ladder) have become tourist attractions.  Most in Alberobello itself are now either souvenir shops or have been upgraded to become Air bnb properties, whilst many of those out in isolated spots in the countryside have been spruced up with the addition of swimming pools to be let as holiday villas.

Trullo converted into a holiday villa

But doing up a trullo  is now an expensive business.  Planning and conservation laws, even outside the UNESCO zone, mean that the cost of repairing a roof has risen ten fold in the last few years, and detailed regulations have to be followed in any renovation scheme.  (Or should I say, there are detailed regulations in existence - although I suspect they are often got round in some way, such is the custom in Italy.)  There are many hundreds, possibly even thousands, of trulli in the area between Alberobello, Locorotondo and Martina Franca that have collapsed or are in total disrepair - a sign of the way in which, during the post-war period, their inhabitants moved out of them as soon as they could.  Many of the older residents of the area must be amazed by the way in which the properties that they fled from out in the olive groves have become the preserve of wealthy northern Europeans, either as holiday homes or holiday rentals, once many thousands of euros have been spent on them (including, of course, the digging out of swimming pools and the removal of huge limestone boulders that lie beneath the thin soil of the area).

I don't see this as voyeuristic tourism because the holidaymakers are not here to see or experience poverty.  Something a little different is perhaps present in Matera, referred to earlier, where the big tourist draw is to see the 'sassi', the houses carved out of rock faces (effectively caves) where people lived until they were (often forcibly) relocated to social housing in other parts of the city from the 1950s onwards.  I visited Matera in 2014, and there was a frisson in seeing the amazing conditions in which whole families once lived.  But the area of the sassi has now become chic and hotels have since been created in the old caves. It still baffles me, however, as to why the city was chosen (along with Plovdiv in Bulgaria) as one of the two European Cities of Culture for 2019.

Tourist developments in inland Puglia and Basilicata have probably created more employment than the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno ever did, and spread across a wider area (at least in the trulli zone of the Murge plateau). But there is another way in which the past poverty of the region has become a selling point - through its cuisine.  I notice, though, that what was advertised in 2014 as cucina povera ('the cooking of poverty') has now been reimagined as 'authentic Puglia products' - but the ingredients are the same: the use of rough wholemeal flour, brown pasta, dried beans, biscuits (taralli) made with a little white wine and olive oil.  Today's food fashions make such simple products sellable.  Last night in a restaurant I ate lampascioni  - grape hyacinth bulbs treated with oil and vinegar and tasting a little like shallots.  Puglian cooking, traditionally some of the most basic in Italy, is now all the rage.  I'm not always impressed with it.  Five years ago, at a time when it was still being sold as 'cucina povera', I chose the menu bearing that name in a side street restaurant in Lecce (a city that has always bucked the trend of regional poverty, with some of the most stunning baroque churches one could find anywhere in Europe): it was one of the most boring meals I have ever had to pay for.

So the economy of Puglia has traded on its history of poverty and is now creating new images for the region and attracting new activities to its inland areas to supplement the coastal tourism that has been present for many decades (principally driven by the demands of Italian families).  Data for 2017 show that gross domestic product per capita in Puglia is now ahead of that in Campania (around Naples), Sicily, and Calabria - although it is still at only 65% of the average for Italy as a whole.  There is some way to go, but Puglia is doing better than much of the rest of the Italian South.

My previous blog was also about UNESCO-recognised villages - but in China.  Both in Italy and in China I saw distinctive house types - as well as witnessing a history of poverty.  But there is also one great similarity between the various villages I have visited.  Sitting in a pizzeria near the start of the main street in Alberobello, three groups with 30 or so people in each make their way past me, each group led by a guide holding a flag on a stick; they are clearly making the ten minute trek up from the coach park on the edge of the village.  In HongSun I waited several minutes to cross the bridge over the South Lake into the village while a number of tour groups, each led by a person carrying a flag on a stick, hustled past me: I didn't see their tour buses but they must have been somewhere near.  Recognition brings tourism, and tourism so often means groups.  What do such groups get out of visiting historic villages?  There were large numbers of school parties in Alberobello, just as in HongSun and XiDi, each group distinguished by a common cap colour or some other uniform.  Most children were more keen on talking to their friends or, for older children, taking selfies and group photos than in listening to their teacher or guides explain what they might see.  What do school parties actually learn from a visit to a historic site?  Souvenir shopping was also a dominant activity in all cases: at least that would have an economic benefit.  But mass group tourism brings its own problems.  Could Alberobello ultimately become a less attractive destination because it is too crowded with groups?  In China, might visitors to HongSun turn instead to LuSun?  If I come back to Puglia again in five years time what further changes will I see?

Anhui villages, China, April 2019 – A glimpse of rural life and history

I first visited China in 2007 but until now heavenly seen the life of some of the big cities - Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and so on.  I have just returned from a few days spent in and around some of the villages of Anhui province, which remains economically backward compared to the other provinces of the coastal south-eastern region of China (despite the fact that it is only three hours by high-speed train from Shanghai).  Over three days I have been in Lucun, HongCun, GuanLu, NanPing, PingShan, and XiDi villages, all of them probably over 1000 years old.  Two of them, HongCun and XiDi, are UNESCO World Heritage sites and very much on the tourist map.  But the others, although certainly visited by a few outsiders, are much quieter and still dominated by the traditional activities of the residents.

So what have I learned through these visits? Apart from the obvious contrasts with Shanghai, where I was based on this particular visit to China, I reflect that spending time in these villages has demonstrated something about both the tangible and the intangible legacies of China's history and the ways that both are present in the contemporary rural scene.

                  

Interior courtyard in wood - Lucun

         Inside Lucun village - stone-built properties

The two most immediately obvious tangible elements of the villages are, firstly, the fact that the houses are constructed of stone with no windows at ground level – all the light coming via courtyards hidden behind the high and fortress-like walls of the properties. And the second element is that the interiors of the properties make considerable use of intricately-carved wood from the local hills. The solidity of the exteriors is therefore dramatically contrasted with the intimacy of the detailing inside the houses.

These are elements of a local architectural style, reflecting wider aspects of local culture in the district known as Huizhou (and extending as far as language – at one point when two local young people were talking together my colleague from Shanghai turned to me and said “I can’t understand a word they are saying”.)  The roof beams of the houses are finished off in a flamboyant gesture locally known as a ‘horse’s tail’. 

                                               

Alleyway, NanPing

Water supply was clearly crucial in the establishment of these villages, and each has streams running through, or close by, or has created artificial ponds to supply the needs of the residents.  In HongCun (one of the UNESCO sites) the village is centred around the ‘Moon Pond’, reputedly planned by the wife of the village leader during the later Ming period in the early seventeenth century, with a second lake providing a possible defensive barrier immediately to the south of the village.

Moon Pond, HongCun

  South Lake, Hongcun

 Lake and gateway to the village, XiDi

LuCun village surrounded by fields of oil-seed rape

To a European, there is one tangible element of village-scape that is missing.  Whilst the church (or churches) dominate(s) the external view of almost all European village centres, such a focal point is missing in the Chinese case.  Viewed from afar, these villages all appear low-slung and relatively formless (although certain of them have central squares of some kind).

There are many other noteworthy features of these villages, but they are too many for a blog such as this. One element worthy of comment, however, is the narrowness of the lanes within the villages – generally too narrow for even a cart and thus producing a dense and intimate feel to the settlement suggesting that all space is seen as privatised in some way.

But the intangible elements from these villages are as important as their physical characteristics.  The UNESCO listing of HongCun and XiDi is doubtless part of the reason for the presence of large numbers of school parties and organised tours, but these are also there not just to look but also to learn about the ways of rural life in an era of extended families and clans, of Confucianism (and Taoist influences), of earlier village educational expectations, and respect for ancestors: in short to learn about traditional ways of social organisation, expected behaviours and ‘living the good life’.  Past norms of behaviour are constantly being referenced by the guides in these villages, and by the artefacts and furnishings to be found in the buildings – many of which are open to the general public who are encouraged and licensed to enter private houses to explore their features while the residents quietly sit and watch the visitors. 

Alleyway in NanPing

                                                                   Alleyway in HongCun

Several of the villages remain dominated by the extended clan of an individual family.  In GuanLu, for example, a much-visited feature consists of the eight interlinked houses built by brothers of a merchant family – the Wangs – during the early Qing period (late seventeenth century): the Wang family can actually be traced back to the Song dynasty (around the first millennium) and is still dominant in the village today.  Most residents of NanPing are members of the Ye family who built ancestral halls here in the Ming period (1368-1644): in these clan power over family is exercised by elders in the presence of the spirits of their ancestors. Some of the finest of these family ‘temples’ were used by Ang Lee as the setting for scenes in his Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which also took location shots in HongCun).  XiDi is still dominated by the Hu family (from a branch of which President Hu Jingtao, with ancestors in Anhui province, came).  LuCun takes its name from the Lu family who still make up the majority of its inhabitants (Cun means ‘village’ and is pronounced with a soft 'c', like an 's').  

The interlocking houses of the eight brothers in GuanLu

Ancestors hall of the Ye family, NanPing

Particular spaces within the buildings were reserved for particular groups – for instance for women, for male elders, for servants, or for children’s education. Schoolrooms existed for whole families. Places of honour were located either side of the table in the principal room.  And on that table a particular arrangement of a mirror and water jar with a Buddha (or more recently a clock) in the centre was deemed to bring good luck. I was instructed on these matters in a house in LuCun originally built by the merchant Lu Bangxie but more recently refurbished by a member of the Wang family from nearby HongCun.  And in several buildings the importance of feng shui in the design of spaces was emphasised.

The inner place of honour in Lu Bangxie’s mansion in LuCun

The retired village schoolmaster and the author of this blog in the seats of honour in a HongCun house

Tourist visitors pretending to attend the old village school, HongCun

And everywhere within the houses and in the public spaces there are black and white paintings as well as a plethora of texts and writings – poetry, sayings from the old writers, rules dating from pre-Communist times admonishing residents in how to be virtuous, door surrounds in red to bring good luck.

Posters around the door of a tea house and Airbnb in XiDi

But to end this long blog, with its many images, I will turn back to the overall meaning of a visit to villages like these.  To the urban population of today’s China such a visit tells of a past way of life, of traditional historic patterns of existence, of continuity, of value systems that date back millennia, of the meaning of family in a world where the domestic unit, in an era after the one-child-policy, has shrunk significantly from the sizes that once dominated in these country places.   A trip from contemporary Shanghai to these Anhui villages also demonstrates something about inequalities in contemporary China. Residents in old houses here sit under the eaves of their courtyards, receiving a bare income for allowing visitors to enter, while the rain drizzles down into the open space in front of them with no sheltering wall separating them from the elements.  I see people washing their pots and pans in the stream. Chickens run in and out of houses. Turning a corner in one village we come across an old woman almost bent double with age, putting fodder out for a cow and calf tethered in a corner of an alleyway.  These are some of the realities of rural China, inequalities that President Xi has vowed to combat.

This doesn’t necessarily mean sweeping away the old.  The past can be remodelled for present and future use.  HongCun and XiDi villages have become tourist meccas, with much of what that entails all round the world in terms of souvenirs, local (and some non-local) crafts, and eating opportunities.  I spent some time with a research student from HongCun who is intent on creating sustainable and planned tourist growth for her village.   I was impressed by the local entrepreneur who has invested vast amounts of time and money in restoring the Lu Bangxie mansion in LuCun.  But one of my lasting memories will be of the hotel bar in PingShan where four of us sat drinking Swiss-style hot chocolate and eating Belgian waffles in a long discussion about conservation policies in China and the UK – a bar and hotel in a building re-assembled from the wall of a derelict ancestral hall and the addition of a reconstructed family temple in wood, brought together by a film director, Zhang Zhenyan.  Here lay a homage to the cultural past of the region sensitively adapted to create a facility for rural employment and revival for the future.  I would like to go back in a few years to see how it’s doing.

Interior of the hotel bar in PingShan

                                               

Madeira, Portugal, March 2019 - Virgin land, settlement and slavery

I have just returned from a first visit to the island of Madeira.  Politically it is a constituent part of Portugal but geologically, as I was told by Ronaldo, the driver  I hired (not to be confused with his more famous namesake, the footballer, who also comes from the island) it is part of Africa.  In various places I saw signs marking the 600^th anniversary of the discovery of the island in 1418 by two Portuguese mariners, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vex Teixeira.  (The first landing happened the following year.)  Dates of ‘discovery’ can, of course, be disputed, and it now seems likely that Vikings visited the island (and its small surrounding archipelago), and it is possible that Pliny knew of it even earlier.

It dawned on me after a few days that there was something very distinctive about the history of Madeira. This was the very first place I had visited anywhere in the world where there had been no inhabitants prior to the arrival of European settlers – which happened within a year or two of Zarco and Teixeira’s report back to Henry the Navigator in Lisbon.  Madeira was genuinely a terra nullius – or unoccupied land, unlike other parts of the world (particularly Australia) where that epithet was inaccurately accorded in order to eliminate any native people’s claims.

I have visited every continent except Antarctica, and everywhere I have learned of histories of contact between Europeans and already-resident populations.  I have been to certain West Indian islands (for example St Lucia and Barbados in the Lesser Antilles) where European settlement was preceded by Caribs and Arawaks.  The Smithsonian Institution has an ongoing project showing how there are continuing legacies of these people in the islands today.

There were Algonquin peoples in what is now New York a thousand years before the Dutch settled the site, and the curious line of Broadway, cutting across the grid pattern of streets of today’s Manhattan, is a legacy of the native hunters’ Wickquasgeck  Trail. (The name ‘Manhattan’ is itself of native American origin).  In San Francisco I have heard about how thousands of native Americans were killed in an apparent policy of genocide or ethnic cleansing in the mid nineteenth century to make way for the new settlers of the state of California.  Throughout Canada I have been impressed by the way in which the ‘first nations’ of that country are now celebrated and their history commemorated, providing some form of atonement for previous persecution of these groups.

In Australia I have participated in conferences where, at the start of proceedings, there is formal recognition of the so-called ‘aboriginal’ group from whom the land for the conference building was taken.  And in New Zealand I have seen, and commented on in earlier blogs, the ways in which the whites (pakeha) and Maori came into contact, generally to the disadvantage of the latter. And no one with the slightest knowledge of South Africa can be in ignorance about the issues of contact between European settlers and original populations.

These examples are all drawn from places I have visited outside Europe.  (I might add that within Europe I have also heard of the effects of contact for the Sami peoples of northern Scandinavia, told to me while sitting in the house of a Sami man in northern Finnmark.)  I am excepting China and Japan here, both of which I have also spent time in: in both of those cases European travellers were faced with societies of similar levels of development as themselves. 

In every one of the other cases the arrival of Europeans brought upheaval, disease, the expropriation of land (or the disavowal of the rights of earlier peoples to use it), and sometimes genocide.  The role of Christian churches and their insistence on a ‘civilising’ mission of conversion was particularly profound, dismantling existing societies and belief patterns and often prohibiting practices that had tied peoples to their land for generations.  Through almost every other country I have visited there have been long-term effects that have hugely damaged not just the ways of life of ‘first nations’ peoples (to use the Canadian term, which I rather like) but in most cases have also drastically reduced the viability of their societies and decimated their numbers. (Again, I except Japan and China from this generalisation, although contact in 19^thcentury China and the Opium Wars were not exactly beneficial episodes in China’s history).

So was Madeira a paradise where European settlers found virgin territory and were able to establish an economy and a society without destroying something that pre-existed it?

Ronaldo, the driver, took us on a tour of the Eastern part of the island.  And for an hour or so we walked alongside one of the levadas or irrigation channels (from the Portuguese ‘levar’ – to carry) that run along the contours of the mountains to bring fresh water from the heights, particularly in the north, down to the fields below and to the lower-lying towns. There are no underground water sources on volcanic Madeira, so the use of surface water was essential.  There are between 1400 and 2000 km of levadas in total, although some are in disrepair. They are one of the great joys of Madeira, providing easy walking with stupendous views surrounded by plentiful wild flowers.  We were accompanied on our walk by local Madeiran chaffinches.  

 

A levada walk

A Madeiran chaffinch

Most written and web materials on Madeira and the levadas use the passive tense in describing their construction: ‘they were built’, ‘they were constructed’, ‘a network of levadas was created’ and so on.  But by whom?  Some sources are more explicit – they were built by Arab and African slaves who were brought to the island in the later fifteenth century to work on the sugar plantations set up by the Portuguese and to construct the all-important water channels that supplied the irrigation water.  Constructing the levadas along the precipitous mountainsides was dangerous work, and slaves were suspended from above to cut the channels with hand-tools.  The first slaves on the island were recorded in 1452, from both North Africa and from the Canary Islands (the Guanches – indigenous peoples: unlike Madeira, the Canaries were already inhabited by non-Europeans).  In 1614 the population of Madeira was enumerated as just over 28,000, of whom 3,000 (11%) were slaves.  But the sugar plantation economy collapsed later that century in the face of Caribbean competition.  And Portugal abolished slavery in 1775.

So although Madeira is unique in my travels as a territory where the first European settlers faced no indigenous populations whatsoever, subsequent history reflects so many patterns elsewhere – of the exploitation of an ethnically and culturally different population – in this case through the operation of the slave trade.   The South African media company IOL describes Madeira as ‘The Portuguese island with slave roots’.  And it is true that some of the most distinctive tourist attractions of the island – and therefore the basis of one of the three pillars of the island’s contemporary economy of tourism, Madeira wine, and bananas – are the product of slave labour.

Every place has its elements of uniqueness, but beneath these there are always general patterns of historical, sociological and economic evolution that respond to wider forces.  Despite its unique origins in terms of European settlement Madeira shares its history of the exploitation of ‘non-European’ populations with other European powers’ colonies around the world.