Rain Day

I can switch the display on my mobile phone from Chinese to English, which I do when I need to send a text in Chinese, or when I want to know the date in the lunar calendar. Most of the time the date is simply something like first month fifteenth day (today), but every now and then is a particular date, marking the beginning of a new period in the agricultural calendar. In Chinese the lunar calendar is called the nong-li, meaning farming calendar.

Over the years that we have been living in Chengdu, we have watched with interest to see how the weather changes following the Lunar New Year. The first year, on a chill, damp day about ten days after the holiday I went to buy an electric heater and was surprised when the sales girl told me they had already changed stock and didn't have any left. But it's still very cold I told her. Not for long, she replied, it's spring now. As I left the store I realised she was right, the sun was out and there was a definite feeling of spring in the air. And every year since the same thing has happened. The tenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar is called li-chun, the start of spring, and every year at around that time, the weather takes a turn for the better.

This year was really a test of my faith in this system, as the New Year occurred so early in the year by the solar calendar. Usually it's around the middle or end of February, sometimes even early March, but this year it was at the end of January. But sure enough, by li-chun, the birds were singing and the temperature had risen 5 or 6 degrees. Blossoms are out and, although we've had a few colder days, it feels as though winter is over. I expressed my surprise to Xiao Long that the weather had improved. "Well of course it has" she replied, "it's spring now, look on the calendar!" I realised that I need to ditch my solar calendar assumptions and read more about the lunar version: it obviously works, at least in China. Apparently not in the rest of the world, because at the same time the UK was under two feet of snow.

Yesterday, February 18th, was the 14th day of the first lunar month, called yu-shui, or rain water. Apparently it's a little bit like St Swithuns Day in the UK or Groundhog Day in the US: rain on yu-shui augers good rainfall for the next few months, but no rain on yu-shui means no rain for the next few months. This is bad news for the farmers, especially this year when the winter has been so dry thus far, and the north of China is experiencing a drought. Yesterday afternoon, Xiao Long and I peered out of the windows at the overcast but less humid than usual grey skies and agreed that yu-shui did not look promising.

But, lo and behold, as I left the school board meeting last night at around 9.30, the ground was damp and the air was misted with light rain. The Lunar Calendar comes up trumps again! But maybe not enough - when I mentioned the rain to Xiao Long this morning she was derisive. "Call that rain!" she snorted, "it wasn't even tears! I can cry better than that!"

The Only Problem with Ganzi is Getting There

This is what we decided after our third or fourth day in the car. It's always been that way so long as we have been visiting Ganzi. Once you are there, the sunshine, blue skies and radiant landscape give you such a lift that you forget about the tortuous roads, terrible toilets and thumping headache you have suffered along the way.

But really, I'm not sure what we were complaining about this time: we drove our own vehicle at our own pace and didn't suffer any major delays. Times were, we would sit on a bus for two or even three days waiting for yet another pile of dirt to be cleared off the road over Erlongshan. These days a 4 km tunnel cuts right through the middle of the mountain. Even though the road up to the tunnel is always fog-bound and gloomy, and at this time of year often icy, the weather on the other side is often completely different.

True to form, on this trip we sat around in a double-parked line of traffic, while cars ahead of us stopped in the middle of the road to put on chains, so they could crawl through the snow to reach the tunnel. Local men on motorbikes stand by the roadside with chains for hire. For 100 yuan they will fix them onto your wheels, then ride with you to the tunnel mouth and remove them. As we waited around on the narrow road, fitting in some snowball practice for the boys, I remembered many other long delays on this road, wondering how long I could hold out before climbing up or down the hillside to find a secluded toilet spot. At one point we even considered turning back, as it was nearly 5 pm and we did not want to spend the night on the mountain in the snow. But based on prior experience, we were fairly confident things would be different through the tunnel, and sure enough, once we made it out the other side the sun was shining, the road was clear and we cruised down the hill to Luding.

The trip to Ganzi is about to get even easier, as an airport is ready to open at the top of the Zhiduo mountain pass above Kangding. We drove past it on our way back, a long strip of tarmac stretched out along the rocky mountainside. I remembered a cold foggy hike along the same route 12 years ago, when we didn't see a single person all day, and pitched our tent in a spot that is probably now under the runway. The tourists are coming and I hope the people of Ganzi are ready for them. I fear that few are as prepared as the people of Jiaju.

They're coming: ready or not!

The Most Beautiful Village in China?

Morning in Jiaju Village

Driving out of the Erlongshan Tunnel and down the steep mountain road that leads into Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, there are a series of large billboards advertising the tourist attractions of each county in the area. Jialong county, for example, proclaims itself the home of Sichuan Pepper, and has a vast picture of the ubiquitous little devils flowering on a bush. Isaac, who had eaten a whole one by mistake in a mouthful of vegetables the evening before, laughed out loud at that and said was one place he never wanted to go. But he did reflect that it would be a draw for most Sichuanese tourists.

Danba County, which was our first planned stop, has a picture of a hillside village with the area's famous stone towers and a sign proclaiming it "the most beautiful village
in China." When we eventually arrived in Danba the next day, we started to look for signs to the village of Jiaju where we had booked into a homestay. On a corkscrew bend of the mountain road we were directed to, we saw the same billboard with the same claim: apparently Jiaju is that village. My pictures don't really do it justice, but I think they have a strong argument.

Jiaju Village







On the recommendation of friends, we stayed at the home of Baosheng, who turned out to be the man responsible for the village's self-promotion. When he retired from his government job nine years ago he was asked to supervise tourism development and he has done a very thorough job. His major achievement must be the paved road that winds a tortuous 4 km from the valley floor up the steep mountainside to the village. Without it, very few visitors would ever reach Jiaju in the first place. I spent a long time puzzling over a similar village on the other side of the valley and wondering how the residents ever managed to leave home. Eventually I made out the faint zigzag line of a footpath twisting across the hillside, but I wouldn't have wanted to stop by there for tea.

When you reach the end of the impressive road to Jiaju, there is a gate and reception center and a formidable-looking man who asks for 30 yuan entrance fee per adult. We said we had booked to stay at Baosheng's place and he hesitated, but then said we had to pay anyway. Perhaps we could have argued around it, in the spirit of our budget-travel youth, but those days are gone: there we were in our large all-terrain vehicle and they had to pay for their road somehow. Later, as we sat on Baosheng's roof terrace drinking butter tea, he told us that five years of entrance fees had almost finished paying off the loans for the road. Up until now, 90% of the fees have gone to road upkeep and repayment, and the other 10% has been shared among the villagers, but from this year they will only need 50% for upkeep and can share out the other 50.

But Baosheng is concerned that they haven't yet figured out a fair way to share the profits among the villagers. He is certain that everyone should benefit from Jiaju's new identity as the most beautiful village in China, but not everyone participates to the same degree. About a dozen families have set up tourist homestays and others staff the gate or dress up in traditional clothes for photographs, but many don't want to get involved, or perhaps resent the intrusion. Baosheng wants everyone to be responsible for keeping the place tidy, for building clean toilets and for maintaining architectural traditions, but he hasn't yet figured out how to do it equitably. It's easy to imagine the kind of disputes that might arise, if someone wants to use their tourist income to build a modern house for example. Jiaju won't keep its label for long if that happens. Baosheng even apologized for the cement roof we were sitting on, saying that he knew it wasn't traditional, but it was very good at keeping the rain out. We agreed that it's possible to incorporate modern technology into traditional buildings and still preserve their beauty.



















The homestay where we spent the night

These aren't unusual issues. Villages all over China, and many other parts of the world, are struggling with similar questions. The fact that the people of Jiaju are asking them, and that someone as capable and thoughtful as Baosheng is guiding the process, gives them real hope of figuring out manageable solutions. What is most impressive is that they are doing it themselves, by their own choice and with the active participation of most of the community.

Several small groups of tourists from Chengdu and Xi'an were also staying at Baosheng's place. It's a fairly intrepid type of Chinese tourist who chooses to spend their holiday driving around Ganzi instead of at home eating and setting off fireworks. It's a bit like a British family going on a road trip through eastern Europe over Christmas. These people were all friendly and pleasant. We exchanged travel stories and road news as we ate our dinner of many different varities of pork. The next morning one guy had to reverse his large car several hundred yards along a narrow muddy track in order to let us out, but you don't make it all the way from Xi'an to Jiaju in the first place to let that kind of maneuver faze you.

As we left, the women from Xi'an were up on the roof with Baosheng's daughters-in-law, giggling as they tried on Tibetan clothes and took each other's photos. The prettiest daughter in particular clearly loved this part, as there was an entire noticeboard of photos of her, presumably taken by guests and mailed back to the family. This was different from the bored women who stand around at tourist attractions with cameras and tired looking ethnic outfits, charging a lot of money to take dress-up pictures. Everyone was having a good time. I hope that continues to be the case for the villagers of Jiaju, and that they can hold onto their proud claim of being the most beautiful, without feeling they have given up too much.















Winter supplies of dried pork and corn at our homestay

Don't Get Used to It!

"Don't get used to it - we've got to keep moving," was one of the catch-phrases of our recent road trip through western Sichuan, uttered by someone whenever we stopped to admire a view or play in the snow. It's a line from the film Bolt, in case you were wondering. Other lines from that film or from Wall-E provided a narrative for our trip. "Nothing real is real" was one of Sam's favourites, a little mangled from the original line, but highly appropriate for the Buddhist sentiments of the area; "that's one stuck melon" was another, apropos of nothing.

"Hey, I didn't know we had a pool" was top of my list, not just because we ended the trip soaking in the hot springs at Hailougou Glacier Park, but because we had escaped from the cloud-bound city, and our eyes were open the entire time to the astonishing beauty of the plateau.

Happy “Niu” Year

Today is the 12th Day of the Year of the Ox, or niu in Chinese, hence the bad puns appearing everywhere. There is even a visual pun based around the shape of an ox’s head and the currency symbol for the Chinese yuan: wishing you lots of cash in the year ahead, a more than usually heartfelt wish, considering the shape of the world’s finances.

This year we stayed in Chengdu for the holiday itself, then set off on a road trip to the western part of Sichuan, the far eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. More about that later. We choose to depart after the New Year because the few days before the holiday are a bad, bad time to travel; in fact a bad, bad time to go out of doors. I had to go to Carrefour the day before the holiday and it was a zoo. Everyone was shopping their socks off for holiday food and gifts to take home for family and friends, then cramming into cars, buses and trains to get home in time for the big celebration on New Year’s Eve.

Xiao Long and her extended family took the train back to their hometown, but were only able to buy 6 seats between 17 people, so most of them had to stand or perch in the aisle. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the journey had only taken 6 hours as scheduled, but delays added another 11 hours to their travel time, and they didn’t reach home until 3 am the following morning. Xiao Long said the train was so full that you couldn’t even use the toilets: all the cubicles were full of passengers who couldn’t find any other space to stand in.

Meanwhile, in the city, orange tents had appeared on every street corner selling fireworks of every size, shape and possible description. Two years ago when we stayed around for the New Year, fireworks were only sold outside the city limits, but apparently they have been allowed to move into town on the grounds that letting off fireworks is a Chinese cultural tradition. It is a tradition that every man, woman and child indulged in this year, judging from the nightly spectacle visible, and audible, from every corner of our apartment. I have seen many fireworks displays on Bonfire Night in the UK, and on the 4th of July in the USA, but even the display put on over Manhattan only lasts 20 minutes. Here they go on all night, for around 2 weeks. On New Year’s Eve there were multiple fireworks displays throughout the city for hours and hours, culminating in a frenzy of explosions around midnight. It was amazingly beautiful and a lot of fun, but you can only watch the same types of fizz-bang coloured lights for so long and after a while we grew blasé and watched a movie instead. However, there was no getting way from the noise, or the smell.

The next day the ground of our compound was littered with ash and dead fireworks. One chubby ten-year old boy we met playing outside commented that the marble-floored stage area usually used for rollerblading and bike-riding was so dirty you could play baseball on it. Then he calmly took a cigarette lighter and a bunch of firecrackers out of his pocket and started lighting them and throwing them into the ornamental pond. The attitude towards firework safety is different from what I am used to. All the orange tents bear signs saying that fireworks must be let off at least 10 metres away, but no-one takes any notice. Under the cultural park underpass, a couple of guys were buying rockets from an orange tent, then crouching down to let them off on the busy street corner a few feet away, with vehicles passing in four directions. They explained that the rockets were sending all of their misfortune from the past year up into space, clearing the way for better luck in the coming year. Fair enough, but it would have been really bad luck if one had veered off into the path of an oncoming vehicle, or worse, into the back of the orange tent.

On the second day of the New Year, when the roads were quiet because most people were at home eating, or visiting friends and relatives nearby, we set off on our trip. As we were packing up the car at the entrance to our compound, three children were setting off firecrackers and little rockets in the gateway, where cars come in and out. I judged the children to be aged 6, 7 and 9. There was no adult with them, so they were lighting them by themselves, then rushing off to the orange tent on the corner to buy more. The gate guards looked on indulgently and cheered when each one went off. In my mind, the potential for horrible accidents was so great I could hardly watch them, but perhaps I just don’t get it. Probably the parents of those children would have considered us irresponsible if they had known we were packing up our car to set off over icy roads and mountain passes for a holiday at 4,200 metres above sea-level.