Check out the reverse of the 20-yuan note in your pocket. You are looking at the Li River backed by white vertiginous, jagged limestone peaks of distinctive karst scenery, the landscape formed from the slow dissolution of the soluble limestone by acidic rainwater down the cracks in the rock, creating a subterranean world of caves and potholes. Emerging, battered by the equally potholed roads from the airport taxi in Aishanmen village, you are a Nanjinger in in a strange land of blue sky and impossible to believe fresh air, in a traffic lite environment of slow moving farmers in the paddies and splashy duck ponds. This is willow pattern rural China – but where bamboo has replaced the willows.
Unbelievably, Karst is also the name of the owner, with Paulina his wife, of the Guest House where we spent a few days in November. It’s a two hour flight from Nanjing and balmy even at this end of the year. In their late thirties, this Dutch couple are former youth workers with two children who decided to buy and renovate a series of old farm buildings in an area where the architecture has been routinely destroyed and solidly practical 4 storey white farmer’s homes built to replace them. Even the high quality grey Ming courtyards with their classic sweeping roofs are at risk. One such was bought by the so called ‘mad Welshman’ who created the ‘Secret Garden’ Guest House here to the amazement of the locals. The area is the darling of Chinese location shooting: Somerset Maugham’s “The Painted Veil’ (the Edward Norton version) was filmed on location a few miles away in Huang Yao which is preserved as ‘an ancient town.’
Our farmhouse is of honey coloured mud bricks, which were derelict and abandoned in 2006 when offered for sale by the 27 members of the farming families who had lived there. The Sino/Dutch deal was struck by pressing their fingerprints into red sealing wax. The massive task of renovation is recorded in their photo book, and they have done a fantastic job, sympathetically transforming the internal accommodation into over 20 comfy rooms with bathrooms, plus recreation rooms, a dormitory, restaurant and lounge with wood fire. In the pitch dark of the early evening sub tropics, you could be in Black Sail Hostel in the Lakes, huddled round the wood fire with a bottle of wine and a story from your day, in this case to share with the range of international guests. These include several Chinese families, and a fair number of expats looking for a crossover cultural experience away from the mega cities. They include three families from Shanghai Jaguar Land Rover, two English, one Swedish; Belgian and German couples and a pair of Italian cyclists.
Paulina employs some 15 local people, all pretty good English speakers, for the day to day running of the place including the organisation of the large number of activities including bamboo rafting, bike rides, nature hikes, cookery courses, tai chi, fan paintings, and now swimming in the new pool. Our waiter like many in China is working hundreds of miles from his home in Anhui Province. Like all the charming staff, he engages happily with the guests and joins us to discuss the finer points of English, which he studies in every spare moment using recordings and magazines include the ‘Spectator’. I am amazed he aims as high as this: few would attempt to cope with this highbrow publication with its London centric political and cultural references. He stops me mid sentence by enquiring about the difference between jeopardize, sabotage and undermine (answers on a postcard please) and I’m humbled by his determination and my presumption.
The cookery teacher, originally a tour courier, worked in England for several years and is now back in China and married to an Englishman teaching in a local school. She has fine practical and teaching skills. First we visit Yangshuo market, which is so clean, and the food so fresh, there is no smell. She knows the English translations for the vegetables, many of which I cannot identify like taro and has a lively sense of humour mixed with some slang picked up from the students she cooked for in Cambridge. She is intrigued by my visit to a massage parlour “are you sure it wasn’t a whorehouse? There you will see a wooden bucket for washing instead of a hole for your face”. While I am working this one out, we manage the wok temperature to smoky and fry duck egg into mini omelettes, then fill them with pork and greens. We eat our meal on the sunny terrace overlooking mountains and valley, now dotted with tall imposing farmhouses which have been built only in the last few years, most during her recent two year stint in England. She was shocked to see them on her return.
How easy it is to cycle round these lovely paths close to the river through the farms. But how fragile it is socially. The majority of tourists are Chinese with the numbers expected to rise exponentially with the burgeoning market for domestic tourism: how long can farming survive as a viable occupation? Average monthly wages in the cities surged from a few hundred yuan two decades ago to about 4,000 yuan ($650) today, while incomes in the countryside lagged far behind. According to Joe Zhang, a Chinese expatriate brought up in Hubei province in the 70’s, (New York Times 28.11.14), the resulting ills of inequality are destroying the social fabric. The landscape washes away imperceptibly through geological time, whilst the rapid cultural changes seem unstoppable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/opinion/the-disintegration-of-rural-china.html?src=recg&_r=0
Unbelievably, Karst is also the name of the owner, with Paulina his wife, of the Guest House where we spent a few days in November. It’s a two hour flight from Nanjing and balmy even at this end of the year. In their late thirties, this Dutch couple are former youth workers with two children who decided to buy and renovate a series of old farm buildings in an area where the architecture has been routinely destroyed and solidly practical 4 storey white farmer’s homes built to replace them. Even the high quality grey Ming courtyards with their classic sweeping roofs are at risk. One such was bought by the so called ‘mad Welshman’ who created the ‘Secret Garden’ Guest House here to the amazement of the locals. The area is the darling of Chinese location shooting: Somerset Maugham’s “The Painted Veil’ (the Edward Norton version) was filmed on location a few miles away in Huang Yao which is preserved as ‘an ancient town.’
Our farmhouse is of honey coloured mud bricks, which were derelict and abandoned in 2006 when offered for sale by the 27 members of the farming families who had lived there. The Sino/Dutch deal was struck by pressing their fingerprints into red sealing wax. The massive task of renovation is recorded in their photo book, and they have done a fantastic job, sympathetically transforming the internal accommodation into over 20 comfy rooms with bathrooms, plus recreation rooms, a dormitory, restaurant and lounge with wood fire. In the pitch dark of the early evening sub tropics, you could be in Black Sail Hostel in the Lakes, huddled round the wood fire with a bottle of wine and a story from your day, in this case to share with the range of international guests. These include several Chinese families, and a fair number of expats looking for a crossover cultural experience away from the mega cities. They include three families from Shanghai Jaguar Land Rover, two English, one Swedish; Belgian and German couples and a pair of Italian cyclists.
Paulina employs some 15 local people, all pretty good English speakers, for the day to day running of the place including the organisation of the large number of activities including bamboo rafting, bike rides, nature hikes, cookery courses, tai chi, fan paintings, and now swimming in the new pool. Our waiter like many in China is working hundreds of miles from his home in Anhui Province. Like all the charming staff, he engages happily with the guests and joins us to discuss the finer points of English, which he studies in every spare moment using recordings and magazines include the ‘Spectator’. I am amazed he aims as high as this: few would attempt to cope with this highbrow publication with its London centric political and cultural references. He stops me mid sentence by enquiring about the difference between jeopardize, sabotage and undermine (answers on a postcard please) and I’m humbled by his determination and my presumption.
The cookery teacher, originally a tour courier, worked in England for several years and is now back in China and married to an Englishman teaching in a local school. She has fine practical and teaching skills. First we visit Yangshuo market, which is so clean, and the food so fresh, there is no smell. She knows the English translations for the vegetables, many of which I cannot identify like taro and has a lively sense of humour mixed with some slang picked up from the students she cooked for in Cambridge. She is intrigued by my visit to a massage parlour “are you sure it wasn’t a whorehouse? There you will see a wooden bucket for washing instead of a hole for your face”. While I am working this one out, we manage the wok temperature to smoky and fry duck egg into mini omelettes, then fill them with pork and greens. We eat our meal on the sunny terrace overlooking mountains and valley, now dotted with tall imposing farmhouses which have been built only in the last few years, most during her recent two year stint in England. She was shocked to see them on her return.
How easy it is to cycle round these lovely paths close to the river through the farms. But how fragile it is socially. The majority of tourists are Chinese with the numbers expected to rise exponentially with the burgeoning market for domestic tourism: how long can farming survive as a viable occupation? Average monthly wages in the cities surged from a few hundred yuan two decades ago to about 4,000 yuan ($650) today, while incomes in the countryside lagged far behind. According to Joe Zhang, a Chinese expatriate brought up in Hubei province in the 70’s, (New York Times 28.11.14), the resulting ills of inequality are destroying the social fabric. The landscape washes away imperceptibly through geological time, whilst the rapid cultural changes seem unstoppable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/opinion/the-disintegration-of-rural-china.html?src=recg&_r=0