Home Town Visits

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Accepting invitations in China is the first step on unknowable adventures. Any expectations should be left on the kitchen table, before you walk out the door.

"Breakfast at my grandmothers house" started at 7am and ended at 4pm. The day included lunch, a temple visit, and a two hour hike to a mountain village peopled with ancient grandparents.

"The landlady has asked you out to lunch" included going to her home town to meet 92 year old grandmother, a visit to the local senior citizens centre and a walk around the reserviour.

"Help my father look at some trees" turned out to be a visit to my colleagues hometown. We walked the streets and reminisced about the village of her childhood, and had lunch with relatives at the restaurant of her sons' 24 years ago babysitter.

Rural villages are being made more accessable through a concerted effort to build roads to all of them. Stories abound about the difference a single, twisting bumpy road makes to the lives of the locals. Families are provided with big new city apartments in exchange for their cold, poorly serviced homes in remote villages, so long as the old buildings are razed to the ground. Other small hometowns and villages are swallowed up by encroaching urban areas, old orchards surrounded by factories, and dilapidated farm compounds abbut newly renovated ones.

All of my visits have been to people's parents or grandparents homes, in fondly remembered rural hometowns. We arrive laden with food and goodies, and leave with garden produce and the local specialty foods. People happily visit their hometowns on Sundays and holidays, but only hardworking farmers and old people live in them.

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