This last week I was in China, visiting family. Most of the time was spent eating with my dad’s friends and visiting his hometown - a small village, maybe even a hamlet. I didn’t get to visit many tourist spots, but I still got a few interesting pictures. All of the following were taken with a phone camera, so they’re not the best; nevertheless, I figured I’d share. Click to see full-size, as usual.
A service area, basically a rest stop, on the way from Beijing to Jinan. They are much larger than most in the US though; along with the normal restaurant and restroom, this one also had a gift shop, convenience store, gas station, and a large truck stop.
Typical group of old gaffers on the street, playing chess or checkers. This shot was taken basically in the middle of nowhere, at an intersection, but it’s a fairly common sight.
I arrived just in time for corn drying season in China. My father’s hometown is in a tiny village. From what I gathered, they still use many old harvesting techniques; the ground is turned, fertilized, and planted by hand. They do use harvesting machines and huskers, but they still rely on the tried-and-true method of drying corn - leaving it out in the sun for a while.
Sometimes, though, the corn drying gets in the way of modern life.
I’m not even sure what that mountain is made of. Corn something, certainly, but it looks too liquid to be kernels.
A typical formal lunch in China. You might be able to see the table in the middle, with the glass circle in the middle. It can be spun, making it much easier for everyone to reach their food. Instead of asking “please pass the pork”, you just spin it to yourself.
Despite being Chinese-American, my father never really taught me the rules of formal meals in Chinese society, which are still enforced very strictly. They seem to be considered part of the rules of society, like saying “please” and “thank you” in America. I saw them in my previous visits, but never really paid attention because I was younger. Where you sit matters a lot; it seems that the host sits in the innermost seat, with the guests of honor on his left and right. He is obliged to serve the guests of honor. Importance goes clockwise from there.
A lot of the higher society (government officials and so on) have drivers, or chauffeurs. I used to think this was just part of holding a high position. However, it seems there’s a more practical purpose to it, too; being able to drink as much alcohol as you can. In China, alcohol consumption at meetings is practically mandatory.
I found this gem at the restaurant from the previous picture. You might be tempted to think that the rest of the restaurant was similarly themed, but no; this was completely incongruous. The restaurant was filled with old TVs, fine china, round tables… and this.
China is apparently going through one of the worst droughts in recent memory. This entire thing is supposed to be a river. Ironically, the county in which this picture was taken is named, literally, “famous waters”.
These pictures are of an ordinary village home. I wish I had gotten some wider angle shots, but I’ll work with what I got. The top-left picture is of the main door, literally in chinese “big door”. Entering the door, you come into a large courtyard, pictured at the top-right. Many old homes in China have this feature. From this courtyard branches out a few rooms, varying by the house. Typically, you at least have a living room, a bathroom and a few bedrooms. The bottom picture is of my aunt’s kitchen and storage.
After leaving my parents’ hometown, we went to a tourist location, Zhu Jia Yu, or “Zhu home valley”. It’s built around a very old village, though only the second picture here is actually of the village itself. The rest was built to be the set of various chinese films and TV shows. The top picture is a shot of the entrance to the location.
The last picture shows the true nature of the place, and, it seems, of many of the tourist locations in China today. “5D!” the billboard shouts boisterously, in front of a majestic stone structure. Inside is a Disneyland-like display of “future-tech”. It’s supposed to be an overview of the journey from the gentle south to the forbidding iceland of the north, but at some point it forgets to be serious and turns into a farce halfway through. Attractions include: a projection of a lumberyard, powered by a kinect, that allows you to “chop wood”; a boat ride in a domed theatre that actually sprays you with water; and a harrowing 3D (glasses) escape from an icy village that includes no less than four 200-meter drops from cave openings, in a dog-pulled sled. Through the ride, the dogs and sled don’t even acknowledge the drops as a matter of course, continuing to run as if nothing happened. I didn’t bother to take any pictures of the interior.
I don’t even know if I can even attempt explain the shirt this guy was wearing. He certainly couldn’t. This was taken at Shandong train station.
We eventually returned to the village. Pictured above is my uncle’s bathroom. No, I’m not kidding, and this is the entire thing. You stand/squat on the slats and do your thing. It actually is a lot less terrifying than it used to be; you see those shovels and buckets and stuff? That used to be all open space into the defecation pit. The previous times I visited, there was very real fear of falling in.
A somewhat more modern bathroom, in another uncle’s house. Of note is the showerhead. It’s very common in China for an entire bathroom, including the toilet, to act as the shower. I don’t think I saw a single tub in my time there.
A market, selling everything from duck eggs to fried bread to fresh vegetables, of a scale unrivaled by any farmer’s market that I’ve seen in the states.
The bearded guy in the picture here seems like an interesting guy. I say “seems” because we were only with him with an afternoon, but seriously… Just look at him! In this picture, he’s serving us tea. Apparently, he is something of a connoisseur. He is the owner of a company in China called - no kidding - “Big beard modeling”. As in, modelling for watch ads and such. This is his office. Behind me, not in the picture, there are lots of jade rocks and chinese artifacts - you can see a few in the shelf behind the desk. Through the window, you can see the rest of the department-store-style building this is situated in.
The Chinese fear of germs is somewhat rational; cleanliness there is definitely not up to US standards. Really, though, a remote control?
The last location we went to; the “Reed Flute cave”. They had signs scattered around that said what various things looked like; for example, “Sea grapes”. Nearly almost all of them had strange typos, like someone had hand-written all the sign titles and then the person that actually typed the titles out couldn’t read individual letters. The two above are some hilarious examples of this.
Maybe I should have been paying more attention to the cave, but honestly, it was nothing much. The curators had lit the entire thing with garish colored lights, and paved all the cave floors, leaving me to doubt how much of it was natural.
Pictures of a town specializing in kiwi fruits, just outside the Reed Flute Cave. The top picture is of a kiwi farm, with some cabbage. We went there to pick a few after finishing up at the cave. The bottom picture was taken at the edge of the farm. The village is situated next to some really beautiful natural cliffs.
I was astounded to discover how much of the culture I’d ignored the last two times I visited. The atmosphere there is very different there than it is here in the states, both literally and figuratively. The hospitality there is so great that it is overbearing; the capitalism is the same. All in all, it was a fun trip.