Trip to rural Jiangsu Province

Following our few days in Beijing, Bryan headed home, but Dave, Jocelyn, and I didn’t quite come back to Changzhou. Dave had arranged for us to visit one of his students, who lives in central Changzhou. We weren’t exactly sure where we were going, but there wasn’t anything close to a city in the area, so hopefully the trip would give Jocelyn (and us) a good chance to see the way that half of China lives. This is the half that doesn’t have laptops, cars, $200 cell phones, etc. Now, Jiangsu is one of the wealthiest and most developed provinces in China, but it still has its fair share of rice farms. We met Sally, Dave’s student, at the bus station in Baoying, and visited her high school (which was quite nice and very large) and then met her father. Her high school, like many in China (according to what my students tell me) had a few dormitories on campus. This is the common practice at the rural and semi-rural schools, because the daily trip is either too far or too expensive for the students, part of the necessity might also rise from the fact that many high school students (including her) have ten or twelve hours of class each day, this usually includes some weekends as well. In a kind of unique situation, her father and younger brother live together in a room they rent out during the school year. Her dad hurt his back working, so he is free to stay with her brother, and then they go back to the village on weekends and holidays. After Dave got his haircut and I got a well-needed shave, we took a taxi to the town near her village.

Sally and her mother proved to be wonderful hosts, her mother and grandmother great cooks, and her house a very good example of the way that close to half of Chinese people still live, and the way the entire country lived until about 30 years ago. Her house consisted of one main dining room, and then two bedrooms, each on one side of the dining room. The main dining room wall was covered in three posters of Chairman Mao (as he is known here) and some of his famous poems. There was a pretty nice TV in her parents’ bedroom, and her grandmother said that they have had electricity for more than 30 years. There was the obligatory barrel of rice in the dining room. The facilities were in an outhouse about two houses down. Her mom and grandmother (who lives in next door) did the cooking in a cookery in front of the house. In a contrast of old and new, her mom cooked the dishes on a gas stove, but kept them warm and boiled the water over a kiln like oven, which was fueled with rice stalks. It was an absolute joy to walk around the villages and rice paddies, breathing the clear air, enjoying relative silence, seeing untouched creek beds, and best of all, seeing the middle aged woman dancing on the town square at night. Once again, the hospitality of the Chinese people was bounteous and kind.