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On my map, it wasn't far from Xianrendong to Zhuanjiaolou Dam. But nobody wanted me to go there. The discussion involved the half a dozen people who came to Mr Qu's establishment for lunch. It wouldn't be very interesting, and anyway there was another dam even nearer which was prettier. Even once I had explained that I was determined to visit this arbitrary spot, nobody liked my idea of riding the bus to a turn-off on the road and then finding a motorbike taxi or minivan to take me the rest of the way. They wanted me to go all the way back to Zhuanghe, then catch a bus that went via Qingdui. This seemed like it would triple the distance! But they were so adamant that finally I just pretended to agree.
When I got on the bus I explained where I wanted to go, and I thought I had been understood. But little did I know that the ticket seller had already been preprogrammed by Mr Qu to take me back to Zhuanghe, and didn't really listen to what I said. By the time I realised that I had missed my stop, it was too late. Of course I should have watched for the turn-off myself, instead of relying on the ticket seller, but they've always been dependable in the past. They have quite a busy job, jumping on and off the vehicle all the time and helping passengers with their luggage. On a later bus journey, when some guys wanted to load several large sacks of live chickens onto the roof, the middle-aged ticket seller seemed quite happy to help them heave the sacks up onto the bus.
Once we passed Qingdui, the road because progressively rougher, and the towns smaller. As the light started to fade, the villages we were passing consisted of only a few dozen houses. Since most farming in China is relatively small-scale, there are thousands of these small settlements in the countryside, often within view of one another. I started to realise how brave I had been, although I hadn't realised it at the time, to buy a ticket to a place called Zhuanjiaolou that I knew absolutely nothing about. As night fell, we wound up into the hills on a dirt road.
Suddenly the bus stopped, and I was told that we had arrived at Zhuanjiaolou. There were no street lamps, so I couldn't see anything except a general store and a large illuminated building nearby that I later learnt was where the people looking after the dam live. I went into the store and asked if there was anywhere in the village where I could spend the night. The answer was "no". But I had nowhere to go, so all I could do was sit down in the store and wait.
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| Seen in the light of day, this is where the bus set me down. |
Luckily, after having time to size me up, the shop-keeper Mr Li invited me to have dinner with his family. Their house follows the traditional pattern for rural dwellings in cold northern China. In front of the house is an enclosed courtyard where some animals are kept: pigs, chickens, ducks. The door of the house opens into the kitchen area, a place which fills up with smoke and steam during cooking. To the left and right are low brick or concrete platforms, about half a metre above the ground, and a large wok is fitted into each. A fire burns underneath each wok, and the surplus heat and smoke flows under the kang in the adjacent room. This kang, a hard but warm surface, is where we sat to eat dinner and later slept. Except for Mr Li who has to sleep in the shop as a precaution against thieves.
The Li family earns money from the shop, but they also produce enough food on their small farm to feed themselves. The dishes we had were scrambled egg, ducks egg, cabbage, and pickled cabbage. Cabbage is about the only vegetable available in these cold regions during winter. Their staple was corn, stripped from the cobs and boiled in water. That bowl of rice (with red beans) was the only thing they didn't grow themselves, and I think they only cooked that because they thought I might not want to eat the corn. We had exactly the same dishes for breakfast and lunch the next day.
Apart from the risk of having nowhere to sleep, in hindsight I suppose it was a bit manipulative to turn up in the village after sunset expecting somebody to put me up for the night. But at least now my desire to experience rural China has been satisfied...for the time being. What was really a stroke of luck is that Mr Li's son, Li Yujun, was close to my age and has worked as a security guard in Dalian for the last three years, so we had lots to talk about. Li Yujun has quit his job now, and hopes to go to Japan this year to work and earn some money, although he seems to have no idea how he will go about doing this. He also has a girlfriend, who lives in Qingdui.
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| The house where the Li family live. |
In the morning I took a walk around the village with Li Yujun. Here is the dam that I came to see, and I also found out how it got its name. Long ago there was an inn at the bottom of the valley. Travellers would turn off the road to stay the night, hence it was called "turn corner building", and this came to be the name of a village. When the dam was built 35 years ago, the village and the inn disappeared under the water, but the dam and the new village retain the name Zhuanjiaolou.
Apart from going back to the house for lunch, I spent the rest of the morning hanging about in the shop. Before I left I gave Y40 to Mr Li to pay for my food and board, then I hopped on the 12 o'clock bus back to Qingdui.
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| It seems that at any time of the day you can find people dawdling in Mr Li's shop to chat, watch TV, or play cards. |