China Revisited -- 2013 [24]

In Which He Lost His Memory

Twice in moments of distraction climbing from the back of Edward's BMW, I dropped my camera onto the pavement. It looked OK when I retrieved it, both times, so I did not think much about it until I tried to delete a few blurred pictures discovered I couldn't.  The delete malfunctioned, due, no doubt, to the jolts of being dropped.

I have taken and kept lots of blurry pictures over the years, so the loss of the delete function did not immediately concern me. Apart from this function the camera seemed to operate normally.

As we had a day between our village tour and our trip to Guangzhou,  Edward took us to Splendid China, a cultural "theme park" in the center of Shenzhen. During the four hours we spent walking around the displays in Splendid China, I took over a hundred pictures.

That night we had dinner on the 96th floor of a building with a panoramic view of the sprawling city.  During dinner I mentioned to Edward that the delete function on my camera had stopped working, no doubt due to the drops, and that I was worried I would fill up the memory card before we left China.

No problem, Edward told me, you can just remove the memory card from your camera and delete pictures after you have downloaded them onto your computer.

What a wonderful idea. Why hadn't I thought of that?

When we got back to the family home, I pulled the memory card from my camera and looked for the memory card slot in the computer.  I found one and pushed the card in. It was, I assure you, an exact fit.

Puzzlingly, nothing appeared on the screen to indicate the computer recognized the card.  I tried several approaches with no results. At some point, it dawned on me that I might not actually have found the real card slot.  Suddenly concerned, I tried to retrieve the memory card only to discover that I could not pull the card back out of the slot.  The more I tried, the deeper it went until I lost sight of it inside the computer.

More embarrassed than worried, I decided to ask Edward to get the memory card out when we saw him next morning. He is studying to be an engineer, after all, a tech-savvy guy.

The next morning as we gathered for our trip to Guangzhou, I explained my little predicament to Edward.  No problem, he said.  He went to get his set of really small screw drivers. When we got to the hotel in Guangzhou, he went to work on the computer.  Soon he had a pile of very small screws and a larger pile of various computer parts.

Finally, Edward announced that he would get me a new memory card to get me through the rest of the trip because -- despite the fact that he could see the chip and despite the pile of disassembled parts --  the card would not come out.

Our plan to get a new memory card didn't work either. After buying and trying several memory cards that were "too new" to work in the camera -- Syan jumping out of the car in downtown Guangzhou and meeting up with us later -- borrowing a camera from YuSi's father that had directions in Chinese, we decided to give up finding a memory card. To get pictures, I enlisted the help of various people with cameras or i-phones, exchanged email addresses, and asked for copies of their pictures via email.

So we operated like that for the remainder of our trip -- various people took pictures for me -- and I took the 15 or so pictures every day that the camera's internal memory would hold. We limped through the image recording final phase of the trip. One benefit of this fiasco is that I had learned how to erase the camera memory through the computer while they were wired for downloading, a trick that would have saved all this hassle to begin with.

The end of my story is rather anticlimactic.  When we got back home, I took the laptop to my friend John, the IT guy without equal at Houghton College who fixes these things for me.

Once I had told him my rather long, painful story, he popped the CD drive from the side of the computer, shook out the memory card, and asked me why I hadn't called him.

It took less than 90 seconds and required no tools.

China Revisited -- 2013 [24]

The Town and The City

Shenzhen is a world apart from LuHe.

To drive back into this modern city from the countryside is like driving the hi-way after driving country roads. To enter the gated community in Shenzhen where Edward's family lives, with its huge upscale houses, its trees and shrubs and well-tended landscaping, and its designer golf courses, is another of these "worlds apart." 

We arrived at Edward's house and took off our jackets and sweaters for the first time since we had left. It was warm there, indoors and out.

We spent the afternoon at the Shenzhen house, reading, writing emails, connecting to Skype, although there was no one to Skype with.  Any one we might have Skyped with back in the eastern US was sound asleep. Fortunately Edward had found a power strip with sufficient holes to make an American three-prong plug work, thereby allowing us to charge Donna's laptop.

After Edward had gone to a bit of trouble finding an unused power strip, I discovered that the standard Chinese outlet could accommodate nearly any plug configuration, making the power strip unnecessary. We had struggled in London getting adaptors to power down 220 electrical supply for 110 appliances. We conducted a similar hunt in Korea.  But the outlets we found in China, at least in the modern areas, were good to go.

We created a new email account because we could not remember the password for Donna's regular account. It was an obvious word, of course, so that in a pinch we would remember it.

Later when the password reappeared in our minds, and we were able to access the original account, we had a bunch of alert messages to tell us that someone in China suspiciously wanted into her account.

Edward went to play golf with a friend. Donna finished reading a textbook she had started on the plane, which made her feel more confident about the impending semester.


For my part, I read from the two books I was juggling, sat outside in shirt sleeves, tried to take pictures over the back wall of golfers on the course, and had a lengthy conversation with Grandma.  She spoke in Chinese, of course, and I spoke in English.  I tried hard to figure out what she was trying to tell me but couldn't. I thought maybe she was talking about the weather, so I did too.  Eventually we both gave up.

On our way up to dinner, I noticed two ducks hanging from a small folding ladder.  Apparently two of the ducks we had seen at the mountain trail head our first day in LuHe had come back to Shenzhen with us.

Like the chickens in the back and the little vegetable garden beyond the wall, these are village traits. We all seem to take some habits from our upbringing with us wherever we go.

At dinner I told Edward about my attempts to converse with Grandma.  Would he inquire about what she might have been saying.

She wanted you to go for a walk with her, Edward said.

That was for me the low point of our trip to China.

Such a simple request and I could not figure it out. I was for a time overwhelmed with what I can only describe as ignorance. A brighter man might have tried more inventive gestures or guessed that she was not commenting on the weather. A more aggressive woman might have simply taken my arm and begun motoring me around.  My own Grandmother would have done that, language barrier or not. She was the most forceful human being God ever packed into a 5 feet 2 inches frame, bar none.


But Edward's Grandma did not take me in hand. I don't know what she thought of my failed efforts to understand, my silly chatter.  I would have loved a walk with her, wherever she wanted to go.

I told him to tell her we could walk another afternoon. 

Sadly, the opportunity did not come again.

China Revisited -- 2013 [23]

Paying Attention: What to See When There is Nothing to See

There are family stories from my childhood that involved me sleeping in the car. But they are not, obviously, things I remember -- I know the stories second hand. I put boredom in the same category.  I am sure that I have been bored at various times -- during  a tedious sermon, perhaps. But I do not remember being bored, ever, actually, and I do not remember sleeping in a car unless I have been sleep deprived and my body shut itself down.

During our return to the States after a good will basketball visit to Russia in 2004, while my teammates slept or watched an out-of-sinc Bruce Almighty, I looked out the window. Whenever the cloud cover broke, I looked down at the expanse of the Atlantic and at the land as it gradually emerged from the horizon. Waves, currents, boats, icebergs, coastlines -- not to mention the subtle shifting of blues, greens, greys -- you get the picture. It was all good. Not only was there something to see, there was much to contemplate, to feed the mind.

On our first morning in LuHe, January 1, I wrote in my notebook, "Praise God for this opportunity!"  We saw a lot in our three days there, everything we had asked to see and more. At the same time, we hadn't asked to see nearly enough. We had not known what to ask for. What we saw raised new questions for us, created new curiosities, and revealed doors I could not have imagined before.

As always happens when we are open to what is there rather than just to what we expect, the questions and possibilities far outnumber the answers. And yet so many answers, so much information!

On the day we left, all we had planned was the trip back to Shenzhen. It was to be, essentially, a travel day.

Nevertheless. The raw data in my notebook for this travel day reads as follows:

"7 a.m. [wake up] call for 7:50 departure [It was cold every night but by this last morning it felt less

Breakfast -- same restaurant as yesterday [around the corner from the Zhang "town house]

3 or 4 kinds of noodles -- soy drink -- fried bread  [outside the restaurant, two women are repairing a hole in the street. One is wearing a red jacket; the other, black. Beside the hole in one direction is a pile of sand; in the other direction, a two wheel hand cart filled with what I take to be bricks. On our first short trip to the Zhang village we had seen something similar: two women screening gravel to mix with powdered cement in the mixer they were operating.]

Head back to Shenzhen       litter everywhere     poverty mixed with prosperity   side by side     families on scooters, kids/old people on bicycles
[the common American impression that Chinese streets are clogged with bicycles is no longer true]

scooters    /car garages next to restaurants, steel (rebar) sellers and stone cutters next to food shops, half built houses between/next to old houses and, new houses

much rubble/ red plastic trash bags, clothes hanging on lines from hangers, here and there vegetable plots (always neat [as I have noted often]) or larger fields (rice terraces [easy to spot now that I know for sure what they look like]), cows grazing [on stubble] in last year's rice paddies, stacks of product from bamboo to bricks to wood posts to rebar to building materials -- cement bags   boxed cases of whatever [not being able to read Chinese],   soy jars, dried plant material

[there is a lot of litter and litter is a problem, but I think litter is a problem nearly everywhere. the questions is what to do about it. the solution will, I think, require the cooperation of everyone]

from a distance the square buildings look like Soviet era buildings in Russia, women laboring alongside of men, digging trenches, working in road despite traffic [a Soviet era building is essentially a square or blocky concrete structure with a somber, grey, aging utility to its appearance]

household goods, chickens, cats, stray dogs (all tan) [am I missing something?] pens with animals, police stations and walled government buildings, lots of concrete, all farm roads are raised, most fields systematically scoured with irrigation trenches

[firearms, I think, are illegal (no second amendment here. But three times along the road between settlements I saw men carrying crossbows]

so far I am handling the food OK . D less so.

Duck ponds with hundred of white ducks [around the edges and in the water]

Once we got back on the big hi-way, the view changed. Like American interstates, the farms and towns and backroads are hard or impossible to see, the details harder to absorb. To the west in the distance rise the mountains; to the east somewhere beyond the shrubs and trees growing up along the route lies the sea.


My conclusions about what we had seen and what that might mean are still tentative, subject to reconsideration and new information.

At some point in the years after I stopped napping in the car and forgot how to be bored, I adopted a life principle that has served me well.  It has served me well.

It is simply this:  pay attention.

China Revisited -- 2013 [22]

Village End-notes

Note 5: The Hot Spring Bath

The last night we were in LuHe it was decided that we would go to the Hot Spring Bath Motel, a spa built over naturally occurring hot springs.

Some time after dinner, three noodle dishes and two vegetables I can't name, we headed out in two BMW's toward the Hot Springs.  Edward's mother drove the lead car with her sister and brother-in-law, while Edward, with Yujia, Donna, and me in the other, gave chase.

I have written about these driving adventures before, noting mostly how we negotiated road hazards and the intricacies of full throttle dodge-em in daylight.  This drive to the spa took place at night -- a very dark, moonless night. On roads without lights.

Edward worked hard to stay within sight of his mother, who not only handles the car with practiced skill but with Edward's skill for finding the third lane and split second decision making as well. She has, we might say, nerves made of something harder and more durable than steel. This was the same trip on which a passenger bus, the Chinese equivalent of a Greyhound, chased us for close to ten minutes, blasting its horn and flashing its lights, before shooting out around us on a corner.

One of the interesting aspects of night driving in China is that the cars have a special feature -- a kind of rapid, intense flashing of the headlights.  These are warning strobes Americans see only on police cars and emergency vehicles.  They are blinding. And I think they are used at night the way horns are used in daylight, as a signal to say, "I'm coming around, move over!"

I could be wrong, of course.  It seemed like there were lots of cars flashing their lights when the pack got dense and simple jockeying didn't open a lane.  Nearly everyone seemed to be using the flashers.

It was particularly jarring when lights started flashing from the car riding your bumper. They lit up the car's interior like an operating room. I wanted to ask Edward about them but thought it wise not to disrupt his concentration.

Forty-five minutes of this intense road racing later, we pulled in at the Hot Spring Bath Motel. We were all wound up tight from the ride, so the bath sounded promising.

The Hot Springs Bath Motel is laid out like any one story American motel, with an office at one end and then several long arms of side-by-side rooms. There were dim lights over the doors of the rooms, but no windows anywhere. Everyone but Donna and me
went into the motel office to make arrangements; we stood in the empty parking lot decompressing, trying to imagine what awaited us.

Soon the others emerged with the manager and an assistant carrying an armload of towels.We walked to the second arm of the motel, where the manager opened a solid metal door and handed us towels.

Edward turned to Donna and said, " Do you want a room of your own, Mom?"

Donna grabbed my arm and pushed me through the door ahead of her.  "Not a chance!"
 
The room was a concrete box lit by a single dim florescent lamp near the door. Its walls were painted cinder block.  There was a wooden bench near the door at the high end of the room. At the other end, down a gently sloping floor, was a stone jacuzzi big enough for five or six people. As instructed, we turned on the water that poured into the tub through a three inch pipe.

We folded our clothes on the bench, slipped on the rubber flip flops, and shuffled down the slope. The water was indeed hot. We stepped in rather carefully and gradually submerged ourselves. Once I was seated with hot water up to my shoulders, I noticed that the ceiling overhead was actually open to the night air, no doubt to keep the room from becoming a steam bath.  Two or three feet above the opening was a pitched metal roof to keep rain out.

In no time, the hot water had done its magic: we were cooked inside and out and had to climb from the tub into our towels. Steam rising from our bodies looked quite spectacular in the pale florescent light.

When we came out maybe a half hour later, the parking lot was nearly filled with cars.  Gradually everyone from our group reassembled and we drove to a restaurant to eat.

Perhaps the traffic was lighter on the way back. Perhaps the adrenaline rush of competitive driving had been soothed away by the hot waters.  Clearly the high point of the evening had already been reached.

Whatever the reason, we drove back to LuHe much more sedately than we had driven out to the Motel. At least it seemed that way.  Even the flashing strobes lighting up the car's interior did not disturb our sleepy contentment.

China Revisited -- 2013 [21]

Village End-Notes

As we prepared to drive back to Shenzhen and the visit Guangzhou, there are a number of items I have not yet fit into stories. For these, all worth mentioning, I will offer a series of notes.

Note 1: The Great Uncle

On our first visit to the Zhang village we met Edward's grandfather's brother. He came out to greet us. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he was brought out to greet us.

He is a tiny man, short, thin, and a bit fragile; but he stands very straight, with a strong handshake. It is the handshake of a man who has spent his life doing physical labor. He was wearing what I have always thought of as a Mao hat, the short-brimmed Army cap with the single red star that everyone wore in the pictures of China I knew growing up.

Memories of pictures of China from that long time ago are hardly helpful in thinking about modern China, yet it is just such fragmentary images and impressions that often shape our understanding of places we have never been. Our perceptions are fixed on a sliver of something much larger, more complex, and changing.

I did not see another hat like that during our time in China.

We exchanged the "Welcome/I'm glad to be here" sentiments, but we did not have time to sit down to talk over tea.  And we did not have an opportunity to ask questions. Maybe he is no longer capable of extended conversation even if we had sat down and our interpreter had not been eager to shoulder the work of such translation.

But what I wouldn't give to spend an hour with this man, listening to what he has seen and done, to be inside his head.

Note 2: Strawberries

When we first arrived at the Luhe (town) house, the daughter of Edward's uncle, the one with the four year old who was frightened of me and the one Edward referred to as "my sister -- that cousin brought along strawberries she had just picked when she came up to visit. They were great strawberries. In fact, they were so good, I ate my share quickly, then part of Donna's share, and then perhaps, well, more than I had a right to eat.

The next day on our way back from the visit where we had met his great uncle, Edward drove us to a strawberry farm at the edge of town where three of us -- Yujia, Edward's mother, and me -- went into the fields to "pick our own" strawberries.

The field was very well set-up and cared for, like all the cultivated fields we saw.

The plants grew on raised beds in long rows, growing through black plastic ground cover. The three of us took bowls and went down the rows. I picked as quickly as I could but I was no match for Yujia.  Apparently all those memories of my strawberry picking chops are not accurate; maybe I have gone rusty in the years since I last picked professionally.

Yujia cleaned the whole lot in very cold water at the kitchen sink once we got back to the house.  These berries were, if anything, even better than the ones we'd eaten the day before. And in January no less. This was my very first experience picking strawberries on New Year's Day.

Note 3: Do they? Don't they?

Donna lay down for a nap almost as soon as we got home, still feeling tired from jet lag, and she missed dinner.  Dinner was at a restaurant with Edward's mom's family.  The family had gathered, not to celebrate the New Year but because someone in the family was moving. I met a lot of people I couldn't talk with, including an uncle who had been a doctor and another uncle who had been a farmer.

There were a lot of toasts, which I gather concerned the move, the new house, good fortune and all that.  Among other things we were served dog meat and cow's stomach soup.

The soup spoke directly to the great American do-they/don't they undercurrent about the Chinese.  We, of course, generally find the idea troubling. More troubling is what to do when it comes your way on the lazy susan. Can you just say No without giving offense? Our Korean kids always told us people make all sorts of allowances for Americans, so bad manners won't matter. Funny kids.

Hypothetically at least, we want to experience culture to the extent we can, we don't want be excused because we are Americans, and we certainly don't want to give offense. But the soup was real.

Edward solved the problem for me.  He was kind enough to explain what was in the dishes as they were brought to the table -- a "heads up" for the squeamish American -- which also gave me a way to sidestep. At the end of our time in China, Vicky, a classmate of Edward and Yujia's, confirmed for us that it was OK to pass up some things. "I don't eat organs," she said during a conversation about "interesting" dishes. It was a welcome endorsement for our selective American appetites.

Note 4: Chennault

The day of the celebration for Edward's father, as we sat around the table under the trees, the visiting businessmen asked us about an American airman who had helped China during WWII. Did we know Chennault? Had we heard of him?

We consulted. Hmm, maybe? No?

Regrettably, we had never heard of Chennault.  It was a humbling moment. These businessmen said Chennault was a great man, a good friend of China, a great American.

Later I looked him up.  Sure enough, Major General Claire Lee Chennault, was a legendary leader of the "Flying Tigers," architect of the Chinese Air Force, and leader of Chinese efforts in the air war against Japan beginning in the 1930s. I had heard the name "Fighting Tigers," of course; boys of my generation would have grown up with any number of catchy, daring names like that. But I had never attached it to anything specific. The "overseas" I  learned about was, primarily, Europe. Countries in Asia, across the Pacific Ocean (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, "Red China"), are notably remembered in terms of specific wars and little else -- in terms of mystery more than history.

So Chennault was new to us, his part in history largely forgotten in America, but clearly not in China.

If I had that hour with Edward's grandfather's uncle, the man in the Mao cap, I would like to ask him questions about Chennault, that American friend-of-China from a lifetime ago.

China Revisited -- 2013 [#20]

Hakka Village

After the celebration for Edward's father, we returned to the family house in Lehu. Edward's cousin was there to meet us. We had tea and tried to converse. He teaches geography in a junior high school in town. And when Edward's parents are in Shenzhen, he takes care of the top three floors of the building. After several exchanges -- basic questions, short answers -- we focused on our tea.

Late in the afternoon we climbed into Edward's car and followed his cousin, who was weaving in and out of traffic on a scooter. More than once I imagined chase scenes through tight, crowded, decidedly foreign streets as in the Bourne films. He would dash through small spaces between cars and then have to wait for us to make a bigger opening.

He led us to an "old" abandoned Hakka village somewhere at the edge of town, so we were only dodging traffic for maybe 20 minutes. Still, it seemed a world away.  The village compound is near a development of new, essentially middle class homes -- two story boxy structures made of concrete and brick, softened with tile where Americans would use shingles. The new development is still being built; but it is difficult to know how old the Hakka village might be.

My initial impression, based on what we learning in this preserved village, was that the Hakka are a distinct people group within China, one of about 56 people groups that are recognized and "protected" by law. That impression is not correct. They are a branch of the majority Han peoples but have a distinct language and history. Edward describes the Hakka more as a culture than a race.

Not here, but later in our visit, we detected a measure of irritation (resentment?) toward "privileges" that accompany this protected status. It did not seem to be directed at any one in particular, but I felt it was not all that different from feelings one hears in America toward perceived "special treatment." The impression that such protections are unfair or undeserved must be universal.

Whatever an accurate read of these feelings might be, the government clearly has decided that some of  old China -- what we might call China's diversity -- needs to be preserved.  This preservationist model is not consistently applied, however, as we know from the destruction of traditional neighborhoods in Beijing to make way for construction of Olympic venues in preparation for the '08 Games.

While this Hakka village on the outskirts of Lehu is deserted, it remains intact because of this protected status.  We saw no evidence of current habitation and some structures within the walled compound are falling down (below), yet whatever may have already been bulldozed for the nearby development, the village does not now appear to be losing ground. And there are signs that parts of the compound are still used.

The walled compound would have been home to 400-500 people.  People didn't live exactly "on top" of one another, as might be true in modern cities like Hong Kong with its crowded hi-rise apartment buildings, but they did live at close quarters.  Basically, they would have slept indoors and conducted their day-time activities -- cooking, talking, trading, discussing business, and so forth -- in the open areas. This pattern is identical to what we found in the two family villages we had visited earlier in the day.

There are (or were) nine courtyards in this Hakka village, and 18 halls, which were used for worship or meetings.  The structures that served as homes lined the walls of the courtyards.  A literal translation of the Hakka word for these courtyards is "sky well."

Quite apart from the practical logic of this term, which becomes clear when you see the structures, it is such evocative language.

One enters each courtyard by way of tall doors decorated with fierce warriors. We saw these warriors everywhere. They serve to keep out misfortune, bad luck, harm. For this gate, one fierce warrior and one gentle warrior,Yujia, in a Minnie Mouse t-shirt, guard the gateway to the sky well. Inside, beyond the high threshold and across from the gate is one of two halls, this one now barred by a locked iron fence. To the side of the hall entry were "greens" left to dry in the sun.

The hall behind the locked iron gate is an ancestor hall, with its altar, symbolic paintings, incense sticks, signs signifying various prayerful sentiments, and food brought to show respect for the ancestors.  The orange objects on the table in front of the incense stick urns are, in fact, fresh oranges.

All these things -- the dried greens, the oranges and the recent red door frame panels, the cloth hangings and lanterns that are still vividly red -- are evidence of continuing activity in the village.

I poked my camera through the bars and took a long shot of the ancestor hall. Edward's cousin tested the gate for us just to see whether we might gain entrance, but the lock held.

To the right of the door beside the window is a marble plaque noting the special characteristics of the architecture.

I must confess that I had never heard the name Hakka before we arrived, and I had to ask Edward to repeat the name several times before I got it straight. His family is Hakka by ancestry.



Often, of course, I found myself lost in reverie and separated from the group. I strayed to take pictures of things that interested me and things I just wanted to remember.






The gate house we had come through to get into this compound is itself an interesting structure with many interesting features.  When I was with the group, I asked a lot of questions, some of which couldn't be answered or easily translated. 

Outside the courtyard but inside the walls of the compound is a large pond, now stagnant.  I had noted ponds like this in other villages, both those we stopped at and those we drove past.

I surmised that these ponds were for raising fish, which are a staple in this region. It seemed a logical deduction, so I asked even though the ponds themselves do not look like they would sustain fish.

Edward consulted his cousin, who said the ponds traditionally served to put out fires. In the days when construction featured wood, a pond on premise meant that fires could be contained before the entire community went up in flames.

These curiosities are compelling to me, both as part of local history and as achievements in themselves. So many facets of Chinese architecture and ornamentation lend themselves to appreciation; their grace and symmetry alone are astonishing.

Roof lines, like brick walls and wooden doors and handmade brooms, are a favorite subject of mine. Patterns, parallels, repetition -- all warrant a closer look, although too often I felt like I was missing something crucial, the thing that would allow me to "get it."






Both outside and inside the attention to detail that is traditionally labor-intensive and painstaking strikes me often as effortlessly elegant. In addition, none of this artistry is impractical; every detail serves a second, pragmatic function.

As often happened, the group had gathered to go while I was still deep in my investigations. The next time we come . . . I kept thinking, both of this Hakka village and of many places we visited. So much to see, so little time to see it.

Near the car we stood for a photo op with Yujia, Donna, and Edward's mom . . .and a photo farewell to the sole visible inhabitant of the village, who was not interested in us at all.

Then we were off, chasing the scooter through the streets again into the new development to see the cousin's new house.

China Revisited -- 2013 [#19]

The Art of the Ordinary


We did not spend a lot of time in the villages. We were in Edward's mother's village once for about 90 minutes and in Edward's father's village twice, on consecutive days, for a total of three hours or so.

I took a lot more pictures than I have been able to use in the stories I have told so far.

These pictures of brooms, for example, have not found a place in a story -- yet I find myself drawn to them as meaningful objects. These brooms are made of a kind of dried weed or straw tied to a bamboo pole or stick. There is nothing unusual about these brooms apart from the fact that they are handmade of regional materials and, thus, they look interesting.

As odd as this may sound, I think that the brooms people use indicate something about them. Certainly these brooms tell us about culture and history, but perhaps they indicate an attitude about the present as well.  To illustrate, in all my six plus decades, I have never seen anyone use a handmade broom in America; yet I have seen handmade brooms in all the foreign countries I have visited.  I am not sure what this indicates about us as Americans apart from our preference for the neat, progressive look of factory brooms.

But both in Russia and in Korea I saw brooms without shafts in common use.  Imagine straw brooms, like the ones pictured, without handles.  Short brooms of that sort require the sweeper to bend over, sometimes nearly double.  In Russia these short brooms seem to be made of bundles of sticks, although I may be wrong in that observation. I first saw them in use by soldiers sweeping at the front gate of a military post, so they are not just the choice of the old women who appear everywhere sweeping streets and hallways. Many of these old women seemed to be bent double from the hardships of life.

 

A broom similar to the Russian model, made of straw, is common in Busan as well. The stoop of old women using the brooms might be unrelated, but the visual connection between bent posture and sweeping, to me at least, is compelling.

Another kind of picture I have been drawn to involves gardens. As I have said, it did not matter what poor condition a house might be in or the general state of a neighborhood, the garden outside or nearby was always well laid out and well tended. Even on January 1st the produce was thriving.

 

This first picture is the common area in the Zhang village close by the tea table under the trees. Likely the plots are individually assigned or owned. The area itself is neatly fenced, cultivated, staked, and healthy.

These two gardens are in Lehu, the neighboring town of 380,000. Local residents have created neat gardens that fit and utilize small or odd shaped areas that would otherwise lie vacant and gradually fill with trash. In both of these cases, the areas are designated for building projects; but in the meantime, enterprising folks are raising vegetables.

To shift my focus a bit, disposing of trash, like pollution generally, has been an urgent problem of rapid modernization in China during the last thirty years. Among the pictures I did not take (for a variety of reasons) was a picture of the stream that ran through LuoXi village. It lies below the iron pipe railing on the left-hand side of this picture.

What struck us about this little stream was that it was filled with plastic bags of the grocery store variety. Many of these bags in the countryside are red, so they stand out. The widespread use of thin plastic bags is a recent phenomenon in China, as it is, interestingly, in England too. These bags are cheap, useful, and sturdy to a point; but their wide use has created a litter problem previously unseen.  Villagers, until recently, would have used bags or baskets made of natural fibers that could be repaired or that would disintegrate over time, so the habits of disposal that have worked for milenia  now create problems.

A third kind of photograph I like to take involves brickwork, stonework, tiles, roof lines, wall construction, earthen buildings.

Whatever else this building may tell us, its construction is an odd mix of masonry.  Part of the building was built of stones such as one would pick up from the river bed or even from the fields. Walls lining fields in New England are famously made of stones removed from cleared land in order to facilitate cultivation of fields.  Sometimes, too, foundations of old New England homes may be made of these same stones; these are called rubble foundations. Well-made, they can be sturdy; but inexpertly made, they tend to fall apart. On this building, the stone-work is augmented by or repaired with two kinds of bricks. The older of these are the larger, tan bricks. These don't separate from one another and crumble into a heap like stones, but they do tend to break apart more easily than the newer, smaller, modern "red" bricks, which are the newest part of this building.

After our celebration dinner for Edward's father and after our conversations around the community tea table under the trees, I had wandered a little bit to get some pictures. I walked down to the dry, stubbly rice fields, I looked at the gardens and chicken coops and pig houses.  I found a shrine to the local land gods.

When I walked down to this little building to take pictures of the walls and the tiled roof, thinking the sunlight might create some interesting textures and patterns, my interest seemed to create a stir.

As I got to the door, after shooting any number of wall pictures, Edward hustled over.  "Pop," he said, "don't go in there."

I backed away, thinking I had approached something forbidden, hidden, secret, mysterious. 

"They are afraid you might go inside," Edward said.  "It's an outhouse."

I shot a lot of interiors, but not of that building. That was another picture I decided not to take.