Ruixing village

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James’ aunty drove us to Ruixing, which was nice to not have to do the public transport thing, and also interesting to see how a woman can make it as a driver in these chaotic cities too! She had a flash car, James’ uncle is a doctor.

Ruixing village is one of many down a little one lane, well made and maintained, concrete street. Kind of what we might think of as a driveway with lots of houses off it, its just got lots of very self contained, defined, villages off it, with farmland (vegetables) between. I was surprised that all the villages are very regular in their form. The houses are laid out in a rigid grid pattern, rather than an organic little village with houses all higgledy piggledy like I was expecting. So when you enter the village you come to a rectangular concrete front shared courtyard/parking area/rice drying area, with a rectangular pond in front, and a line of house edges with footpaths between to go back to the rest of the houses. See the photos, hard to explain!

James’ uncle and grandmother still live in the village... so he was going back to visit the grandmother who is now 92 (?). I think I was a bit of a novelty (apparently the second European person to stay in the village). Since Pete can’t speak their language (similar to Cantonese) we communicated through sign language and with smiling!

It was late afternoon by the time we had arrived and said our hello’s, and James had done all the arrival formalities, so James’ uncle gave us a tour around the village. He showed us his different vegetable plots. All the villagers have their own vegetable spots, although not separated by fences they know where their zone is. He has a few different areas, for his personal vege garden and for his crops for sale(currently chillies seem to be the crop of choice, they were everywhere, like strawberries in nz with plastic covered mounded rows). Then he also has a banana area. The village families have areas for their chickens, geese (there were alot of these- funny birds, they follow each other around even more than sheep), pigs, and water buffalo. James said his family used to have animals when they lived here too, but not that its just his uncle and grandmother i guess it’s not worth it anymore.

In the downtime, and when its cold, there isn’t a whole lot to do in the village, so while James was doing family things and having conversations with his grandmother we played cards. “Big 2”, a card game similar to scum but with poker hands, and popular with the Chinese, was a winner, as James’ uncle knew how to play and really enjoyed having us around to play with!!

Some family friends in the village do alot to help James’ grandmother, she is not very mobile anymore, so doesn’t cook etc. The family friends cooked for us, and we all ate together, about 9 of us, so after some kufaffel about finding enough chopsticks, we were full and ready for an early night.

-Hannah+Pete

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