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June 15, 2016

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

‘Memory of home’: Traditions of hospitality and trust still thrive in today’s rural villages

“IS there anyone here?” We shouted as we sashayed through the open front door of a villager’s two-story house. No one answered. We exited from the back door, which was also open, and still found no one around.

We then tried to ask the villager’s neighbor, but to our surprise there was no one inside the neighboring house, where the doors were also wide open.

We meant to ask permission to cut down a dozen fresh bamboo poles, which we would use to prop up vine crops on an adjacent farm. Our friend Xiao Cao had leased this farm from an agricultural zone near Taihu Lake.

We waited for about 10 minutes before the villager, apparently in his late 60s, finally appeared from a distance. When he came back to his unlocked house and found us roaming around his courtyard, he greeted us with a ready smile.

A short conversation ended with his kind nod to our request. Can you guess how much we paid for these fresh bamboo poles? Three were less than one yuan (15 US cents). Some poles we cut were 6 or 7 meters long.

As we got busy chopping, Xiao Cao remarked to me: “How amazing that the farmers leave their doors open while they are away!” Indeed. It reminded me of a famous article written by the late literary and art guru Feng Zikai (1898-1975), in which he was joyfully surprised to find that farmers would not lock their homes the way urbanites would. I wouldn’t have experienced this simple and trusting way of life had I not spent two days over the weekend at Xiao Cao’s Suiyuan Farm, about 10 minutes’ walk from the northeastern bank of Taihu Lake. Suiyuan translates into “the source of ease and fellowship” in Chinese.

Xiao Cao majored in mechanics at college and was a sales manager at a big company for many years. In addition to her farm, she now operates a teahouse in Suzhou, both of which offer organic food. “To live on a farm where one becomes part of nature is truly a source of happiness, even a better one than living in a much-coveted house with a courtyard in a downtown area,” she said.

Aside from being close to nature, rural amicability is also a rare treat for us urbanites. Actually, I live in a western suburb of Shanghai, close to Golden Gourd Village, but most villagers there lock their doors and windows like the rest of us city folk. Those villagers, though still so called, have no land to farm any more. They have been urbanized, and live on pensions and sporadic work like driving taxis.

Rural amicability manifests itself not just in unlocked doors or windows, but also in spontaneous care for strangers. It was raining hard when I was learning to weed wild grass on Suiyuan Farm. Since there were not enough straw hats, an old farmer gave hers to me. She then wore a small cotton sun hat that was not rainproof at all.

Two days of amateurish farming blessed me with unblocked sunlight and thunder. It seemed to have cured my chronic cough, which I believe to be the result of exposure to indoor air-conditioning. It also impressed upon us the spirit of spontaneous joy and unselfish pleasure typical of traditional Chinese rural society. As they care for each other, many rural farmers become happy because their neighbors are happy. This is the spirit of sui (ease and fellowship) reflected in the name of Suiyuan. Two days’ farm work also helped us better understand quite a few qin melodies, which described ancient bucolic life.

During a public lecture in Shanghai last month, professor of architecture and urban planning Ruan Yisan praised traditional Chinese neighborhood life. “In olden times, close neighbors mattered more than relatives from afar,” he said. “When neighbors relocated, they would hug each other and cry. In the days of old, you hardly heard of a child missing for three days without being noticed (by neighbors).”

Xiang Chou

This amicable neighborhood spirit, nurtured for thousands of years in agricultural societies, is increasingly being lost in the process of modern urbanization. “Fortunately, President Xi Jinping has proposed that we should keep our xiang chou (memory of home),” professor Ruan said, referring to Xi’s remarks last year about maintaining rural landscapes and the spirit of neighborliness.

Ruan cited a popular children’s diddy with the lyrics “Row, row a boat to Grandma Bridge.” He said: “If there’s no more Grandma Bridge, how can we keep our memory of home?”

In Chinese, xiang means both “hometown” and “village.” To a large extent, the traditional Chinese way of life, including folk architecture and neighborhood planning, originated in a predominantly agricultural society.

Liang Sicheng (1901-1972), a renowned architect educated both in China and the US, was sorrowful when he saw ancient walls and buildings in Beijing bulldozed in the 1950s.

Asked if he was luckier than Liang, professor Ruan replied: “Yes, I am luckier than him. One reason is that people have begun to reflect (upon what went wrong in the past).” Indeed, it’s important for both officials and ordinary people to place emphasis on living in harmony with nature, and each other.

When I related my trip to Suiyuan Farm to my colleagues on Monday, they all appreciated the amicable relations among rural neighbors, but on my joyous recounting of laboring under the sun and thunder, one of them sneered: “Sunshine may be OK to cure your coughing, but thunder and rain definitely will bring coughing back!” He is a fan of sedentary office work.




 

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