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.
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.
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').
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.
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
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