words
issue twelve @ 2002 May
more life in suzhou
A Tale of Two Villages
(or "Get Thee to a Nunnery")
For Chapters 11 and 12, I thought I'd collect some of my favorite stories (and
some of my favorite people) from my life in Suzhou. There are a lot more stories
to tell. I guess you'll have to wait for the book.China's tourist industry
these days is hyper-developed. Ask any foreigner who has been here and s/he can
tell you many tales of fighting the hordes of tourists here all wearing stupid,
matching caps following a flag-waving, megaphone-bearing tour guide who leads
them around like sheep. Vendors shouting and tugging at you and Chinese people
climbing all over statues and rocks to pose for that perfect picture so they can
prove to their friends that they actually visited this or that "famous scenic
spot".
Chinese often laugh at foreigners because we like to take pictures of
PLACES, not PEOPLE at those places. On more than one occasion, I have had my
film returned from the photo lab with far fewer than the 36 pictures
developed. "Why?" I have asked the photo lab on those occasions.
"Oh, there were no people in the pictures. We thought you made a mistake.
So we didn't develop those pictures. See, we saved you money!" (More about
the Chinese attitude towards money in a few minutes.)
How difficult is it to find a piece of respite in this land inhabited by
1.3+ billion people? For a long time, I thought it impossible. But I was
wrong. Read on.
(or get thee to a nunnery)
The ultimate China experience - a real, live, true, Chinese village. Dirt
roads, chicken, goats and geese running around. Not a single tourist
anywhere. Not a SINGLE shop.
Many foreigners come to China seeking that. They are quickly disillusioned.
It took me almost two years to find such a place. But I did.
And it was all that.... and a whole lot more.
The place was close to Suzhou; quite close, in
fact, to the touristy part of Taihu (Lake Tai). But it's off the map. I
intend to keep it that way. Tourism has ruined too many spots in China.
One night in a Suzhou bar, I met a couple from Australia. Brent, who
had come to China with his wife. They're both Australian. She originally
came here because she was offered a job as controller of the Mercury Marina.
The Mercury Marina was recently built on Lake Taihu. Mercury is, of course,
the large boat company which makes pleasure craft for the hoi polloi.
Imagine my surprise when he told me that Mercury actually had a MARINA in
China...and that Marina was at Lake Tai Hu.
Mercury had built this beautiful foreign-venture lakeside marina, but
alas, how many Chinese are into yacht clubs, right? Well, he word was that
Mercury was granted the right to open a manufacturing plant here in exchange
for which, the Chinese side required that it construct and operate a Marina
on the Lake. This is understandable. As China joins the twentieth century
(80 years too late) she is a wannabe. So the leaders probably thought that
it would be cool to have a world-class marina on Lake Tai Hu. Well, the
marina is world-class in western terms. But the people here, wannabes though
they are, are quite a ways away from recognizing world-class. You see, the
price gets in the way. And the Chinese are, if nothing else, the most
price-conscious people on earth. "Yi
Qie Xiang Qian Kan". (Everyone sees nothing but money). And the
idea of spending money on a membership to a yachting club which offers
nothing more than entree to the club is not attractive to the "nouveau
riche" here. For one thing, the place lacks a Karaoke Club with prostitutes.
That's the death knell. Every fancy (by Chinese standards) "Club" includes
those amenities.
Such is the cultural gap between East and West.
So the Marina, while it hasn't gone belly-up yet, is sucking wind big time.
Anyway, Brent's wife had quit the job (as Controller, she realized they
weren't gonna be able to make her next paycheck, much less the whole
payroll). Now she was studying Chinese at Suzhou University and
teaching a few night classes at some of the foreign companies (which is how
I met her).
Meantime, while she had been working at the Marina, her bored husband had
wandered thru one of the nearby villages one day and he discovered a family
that had a very small wood-working shop in their home. Brent had been an
insurance underwriter back in Australia, but had done woodworking as a
hobby. Now he was in China with his wife. Now he was bored (by his life, not
his wife). So he asked them if he could do some woodworking in their shop.
Well, he discovered that this family had the skills and knowledge about
true Chinese antiquity stuff. Four complete generations (great grandpa and
great grandma still alive) in one house. In China, one house can mean a few
small rooms connected and circling a courtyard. Such was the case here. So a
little over two years ago, Brent, the Australian guy and the 34 year-old son
of the village patriarch went into business together. They set up a "co-op"
woodworking shop. Now they do anything from restoring ancient stuff to
creating new stuff. The Chinese family knows the ancient stuff. They don't
"BS" Brent because he has brought the family an opening to the western
market. This is the background of the story I am bout to tell.
One night in a bar in Suzhou in early December, I ran into Brent and his
wife again. We were chatting and I mentioned that I had just recently
rearranged my teaching schedule so as to have 3 straight days off. He said,
"Why don't you come out to "my" village on Friday and spend the day."
"Huh?" I said, which is when he filled me in on
the history I just related to you.
So two days later, I met Brent at the bus station and we took the "mian
bao che" to "his" village. ("Mian
Bao Che" is, literally, the "bread bus" which is what the
Chinese call a "mini-bus" because it looks like a loaf of bread!) . After a
half an hour ride, it dumped us on the shore of Tai Hu. Across the road from
the lake was a large development of new single-family villas. This is a rare
sight in China. And they all looked empty.
Brent told me that it had been built along with the marina in the hopes
that wealthy overseas investors would snap them up. In fact, he told me,
when his wife had been the financial officer for the Marina, they had been
given one of the villas to live in. In their time living there, he said, he
only saw two other of the hundred or so villas occupied. It looked empty
today.
Just by the roadside, a number of new commercial buildings and hotels were
in various states of construction. All empty. One looked as if it had been
abandoned after only three stories had been built. It was a concrete shell.
Brent told me that the land on which it had been built had once belonged to
his partner's family. It had been taken by them by eminent domain (yes, they
have such a principle under Chinese law) and the family received a very
small payment. Like 200 Yuan/month for 5 years. But that was before the
developer lost his financing leaving a concrete mass with a beautiful view
of the lake.
This is China today in many ways.
We began to walk up a road running away from the Lake about a half mile
until I could see a small village to our left across some rice fields.
Across the road on our right, I noticed a hillside that was surrounded by a
10 foot high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. It ran from the
roadside and on up the hill to the top. Other than a couple of small one
room buildings, there was nothing else inside the fenced area other than
many rows of small trees.
Puzzled, I asked Brent what I was looking at. He told me that that area had
been bought up by an overseas food conglomerate which had built the orange
groves that I was looking at.
"Why the fence?" I asked. "I mean, I can understand keeping out the
occasional kid who wanders in to pick a few oranges. But so high? And topped
with barbed wire?"
"Well," Brent explained, "when they first planted the groves, they had to
clear the land and they began clearing the land right on up the hillside."
Out in the countryside, most village cemeteries are on the hillsides.
Apparently, this conglomerate had cleared the hillside and planted over some
of the ancestral graves of the villagers. Yes, globalization had even found
it's way into this tiny Tai Hu village.
Angered, the peasants had decided to organize their version of the Boston
Tea Party - let's call it the Mandarin Orange Party, and late one night they
had overrun the hillside and cut down all the young orange saplings.
"Zaofan You Li!" - "Rebellion is justified!"
And thus the barbed-wire fence.
Suddenly we veered left onto a goat path and walked through a row of small
rice fields (then being planted with winter rice), past a pond where three
village women were squatting on the shore: one with a line in the water
fishing for lunch, one washing a bushel basket full of greens, and the third
washing the families socks.
We got to the village and he led me to the cleanest-looking door among the
village houses - recently refabbed with sturdy steel doors and a heavy-gauge
lock. Once inside, we passed through a corridor between two small rooms into
a very small courtyard (maybe 20' x 20') with a large rose bush. On the left
was an open kitchen and there was an old woman busily working away. She
smiled and nodded and that was that. No crazy "Laowai!!!" stuff. After all,
the Australian guy was here every day.
Xiao Family Courtyard
Grandma in the kitchen
Then her son came out. His name was Mr. Xiao. The guy spoke not a word of
English. Brent spoke very bad Chinese. It didn't matter. We three walked
into the main room of the house. It was plain and simple, but it was
cluttered with Qing and Ming Dynasty furniture in various stages of
restoration. Bookshelves were lined with various small pieces of ancient and
also newly done woodworking.
Buddhas, ashtrays, temple gongs, jewelry holders, boxes, mirror-boxes. A
carved mahogany lady's dressing table with washing bowl hidden under the
center piece was sitting there being used as an office desk of sorts.
Intricately carved model Chinese fishing boats from 1/2' long to 4' long
were perched here and there. This wasn't a show room; this was the living
room. Cluttered with stuff either recently acquired or recently finished, it
reeked of antiquity. And of commerce. China today.
Brent shows us some of his stuff
We sat at a beautiful round mahogany table with carved wood chairs upon
which 3 week old newspapers had been laid but was strewn with a couple of
ashtrays full of butts, some half-drunken teacups, empty cigarette packs,
and loose pieces of wood. Apparently, this was the office "conference
table". We had a cigarette and a cup of tea while the Chinese partner merely
sat there saying nothing. Well, saying nothing but smiling broadly.
I was told by Brent that this is what they do for much of the day -
he and the guy sit there and just nod and smile at each other.
Why?
Well, we got up and walked out the front door of the house (we had
originally come in through the backdoor which opened onto the rice paddies
we had crossed to get there). Out the front door was the "main street" of
the village. No more than 10 muddy feet between this house and the houses
"across the street". We turned right and passed by 5 or 6 houses until we
came to a house at the end of the lane. The new "co-op" of Brent and the
Village Guy had recently bought this house and turned it into the
woodworking shop.
Three workers were in there working on various pieces. Two were working on
new pieces and one guy was busy restoring a 200 year old vanity. An adjacent
room was filled floor-to-ceiling with various ancient pieces which had yet
to be re-touched. Brent told me that they (the co-op) no longer have to go
out and search for stuff. People from miles around now bring them the family
heirlooms and, due to his Chinese partner's knowledge (and that of the
father and grandfather), they know what's legit and what isn't. All this
stuff was waiting to be refinished/restored.
Across the lane was yet another house they had bought and had turned into a
lacquering room where the restored pieces could be lacquered. All work was
being done by hand and the few workers seemed to be applying their handiwork
with loving care.
It was a quaint scene.
Returning to the family home cum office, they led me to one of the locked
rooms we had passed when we originally entered the place. I stepped inside
and saw what they were using as their "showroom". Now remember, this isn't a
shop. You can't just walk down the street here (if you could even find the
place) and step in for a look. This "showroom" was inside the walls of the
family home.
Anyway, every piece was stunning. Desks, vanities, a few carved boats, a 2
foot-high dragon headed brush holder carved from a single piece of wood.
And, though I'm no connoisseur, when I asked him "how much do you get for
this or that" the prices seemed incredibly cheap. He wasn't trying to sell
me, mind you-we were friends and he was just showing off the operation.
Dragon-head Brush Holder
Carved Wooden Boat
His major customers are foreign expats living in Suzhou, some of the hotels
who need special pieces, and a few Chinese big-wigs in Beijing who have
heard about his work. In fact, he said, Zhu Rong Ji (China's Premier
recently gave a painting to the foreign minister of Malaysia. The painting
was done by a famous Beijing artist but was framed with one of Brent's
carved frames. The artist in Beijing uses Brent's frames.
Anyway, the whole time, I am thinking: Man, my old friend
Donna would love this place. Not just the wood stuff, but the ambience.
Donna loves to collect Chinese antiquities. He had a vanity there, for about
3,000
Yuan that would easily run $3000 U.S. in the States. He doesn't
do exporting so he can't charge western prices, Brent told me. Most of his
customers are Chinese so he prices his stuff locally. Besides, he told me,
they get this stuff dirt-cheap since the natives who bring it to them to
raise a few extra
yuan for the family have no idea what it's
worth.
Qing dynasty lady's dressing table
Only 3,000 RMB!
At noon, grandma came out of the kitchen with a full lunch of pork, fried
chicken, veggies, and barbecue ribs. No weird, exotic stuff. After all she
cooks for Brent and his partner everyday. She knows by now what the
foreigner likes. It was nice to have a simple, delicious meal without all
the usual "let's impress the foreigner" stuff.
And then it got real interesting. Real interesting.
To find out more, you'll have to go to the
next page. | 
