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Published: October 9th 2010
Wednesday, October 6
Days like today are the reason we travel. It was pretty close to a perfect day.
John and I plus three friends from the school, AJ, Jen and Ken, headed for the ancient village of Shitoucheng. First we caught the bus from Yang Shuo to Putao. It was very easy since both Jen and AJ speak Chinese. We were let off right at the main intersection so were pretty easily able to find the right road to Shitoucheng. Within a minute, a mototaxi drove up. It is a motorcycle built into a small pick-up. Jen and AJ negotiated a reasonable deal (Y35) so we climbed in. Good thing because it was really too far to walk.
So the five of us rode about six miles up a concrete paved road. When we reached the top we were met by a man who we later learned was Dr. Liao. He offered to be our guide around Shitoucheng. According to the Lonely Planet, “the village was once a garrison town and the ancient gates and walls are mostly still intact.” That is true but it was Dr. Liao who made the trip so special. The two Chinese
speaking members of our group quickly started calling him Baobao which translates to Uncle and is used to address an older respected person but carries a feeling of affection. He is 80 years old, a doctor of Chinese medicine and reminds me of Yoda. He is small, very wise, very wrinkly and very animated.
Shortly after we started walking he started feeding us. First up were apples the size of large grapes. They were tasty. Next, as we were walking through some tangerine (aka mandarin orange) groves he twice walked off into the groves and returned with sun-warmed, fresh-picked tangerines. To the best of our knowledge, he did not own these groves. Next we were passing through many tomato plants and he began picking sun-warmed, freshly picked tomatoes. If he picked one he did not like, he threw it on the ground. Again, we think the tomatoes belonged to a neighbor.
We did, over the afternoon, see three of the gates for Shitoucheng. I suspect they have been reconstructed because the walls were almost piles of rubble but the gates were in great shape for being 1200 years old. We also saw two places where women were washing
South Gate of Shitoucheng
With AJ in blue and Baobao under the arch.clothes in a stream but a stream that had been tamed and included ancient pools. In both cases, there were pipes downstream from the washing carrying water away…hopefully to be used for irrigation.
The valley containing Shitoucheng is actually a hanging valley surrounded by the ubiquitous karst formations. By themselves, they limit access to the valley and with the walls, the valley is almost impenetrable. These days the valley holds many farms with many different crops growing there. There are pathways criss-crossing the valley that are paved with large flat stones from the ruins of the old town.
The weather was quite warm and sunny and Baobao stopped for regular breaks in the shade. During one of these breaks, he suggested we have lunch at his house. It was an offer we readily accepted. After we walked down out of the hanging valley, we entered his town. A typical house is made of stone like a stone wall. Baobao’s house was in two parts. First was a sitting room. It had one bench, a table off to the side and several chairs. It had two rooms off to the side which I assume were sleeping rooms but I
did not peek. In the same building and just down the alley was the kitchen. It had two rooms, one of which was locked. Out back was a small covered yard with a rooster who was tied to a cardboard box. The kitchen was lit by two strategically removed tiles in the roof that were over the working surfaces. It had a stone box full of water, a cabinet that was used as a cupboard, a large, flat stump that was used as a table, a fireplace with a wok and a bench along one wall that was used as a counter. On the bench/counter were two wooden cutting boards, each with a cleaver.
When we arrived, we were seated in the sitting room and Baobao opened a bottle of beer (all beers are the size of a bomber) and a bottle of pineapple juice. When next he came in, he asked if we wanted chicken. When we said chicken was fine, he cheerily replied that he would go kill one. When he returned he had a piece of pork and our two Chinese speakers convinced him to spare the chicken and serve the pork instead. Remember there is
no refrigeration so how he kept the pork I have no idea. At this point we headed for the kitchen preferring to watch and help.
Our first task was to wash the rice bowls, chopsticks and serving bowls. The chopsticks were new out of a package. The rice bowls were pretty china and the serving owls were imitation silver bowls. The scrubber was a dried bitter squash which grows like a squash but when peeled looks like a sponge. We washed the dishes camping style using cold water from the water box, dish soap and two plastic tubs.
We watched in amazement as he made four different dishes. First was the pork with lima beans. He chopped the pork, bone, fat and all, into bite sized pieces and washed the lima beans. Next he built a fire by simply putting the ends of several long sticks and small logs into the three sided fire place. This is the same way the Africans build a fire…no tedious chopping of wood and it makes controlling the fire easier because each piece of wood has a ready-made handle. He then put the wok on top of the fire and let it
Kitchen
With Ken heat.
When it was hot, he added the pork, lima beans, a few chili peppers and soy sauce and let it cook for quite some time. In the meantime, he cracked about a half dozen eggs into a bowl and chopped a large handful of what looked like grass but was called spring onion. This he added to the eggs with a little salt. When the pork was done, he fried up the eggs and spring onion like an omelet. The third dish was smoked fish with pickled bamboo shoots and was pretty spicy because of the chili peppers. Finally, before he cleaned the wok, he made a simple soup with bok choy. Then he went into the locked room and brought out an old rice cooker filled with steamed rice that obviously had been active while he was cooking.
We then took all of the food and the bowls and chopsticks back into the sitting room where he had moved the small table into the middle of the room. The table was less than two feet off the ground and around it were several small chairs and stools each about 9 inches tall. We sat down, were
Baobao on the Phone
It was very incongrous to have an 80 year old man from a small village in China answer his cell phone amidst 1200 year old ruins. served the rice and quickly dug in.
The polite way to eat is to have your bowl of rice in one hand and your chopsticks in the other. You then reach into the serving bowl and select several pieces of food with your chopsticks and place it on the rice in your bowl. You eat the food and, when there are bones, just place them on the table. This worked fine for everything except for the fish which had many big bones and I had to resort to using my hands. I was the only one so I must have looked like a barbarian.
So we sat around the table eating a delicious meal. Periodically Baobao would add more food to our bowls encouraging us to eat more. After lunch, he told us he was a doctor of Chinese medicine and brought out many sacks of dried plants. He sprayed a concoction onto AJ’s bare legs saying it would help refresh them after the walk. AJ said it was cold and tingly. John asked him to look at the bug bite on my ear but he must have been unsure because without even looking at the bite on
the outside of the ear he wanted to put eye drops (yes, eye drops) inside my ear. I did not let him so he sighed in exasperation and then laughed.
Finally we were full and the beer was gone. Sadly, we had to return to Yang Shuo. We paid him far more than the agreed on guiding price but it was still a bargain. To paraphrase an advertisement, “Airline ticket to China: $2000. Taxi fare to small mountain village: $7. Lunch with Baobao: Priceless.”
AJ called the mototaxi driver while the rest of us helped clean up. Ironically, the scraps were given to the chicken that was originally scheduled to be the main course.
After lots of pictures and hugs Baobao led us back down the road and we met the mototaxi coming to get us. I will always remember the image of him waving good bye with the village and the mountains in the background.
Riding in the mototaxi is rough and noisy but quite an experience. Part way down the mountain we came across a spectacular view of a valley of rice fields with layers of karst formations fading into the distance. We stopped
for several minutes taking pictures. When we got back to Putao there was a bus to Yang Shuo sitting there. Knowing we needed to be on that bus, the mototaxi driver cut across traffic and stopped in front of the bus effectively stopping it from leaving. We were all quiet on the way back pondering the events of the day.
That evening we had English Corner at the school and the conversation ranged from differences in child rearing to how to conduct business in China and the west to the differences between Australian and American English. We ended the evening at the roof top bar called Monkey Jane’s with a spectacular view of the beautifully lit karst formations surrounding the town. It was a perfect day.
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Ling Li
non-member comment
Wow!
Wow! What a wonderful experience!