A Short Letter Home

All trespassers will be shot on sight

Before we embark on our third hike (tomorrow), I suppose I should recount our second. I didn't post as many pix, but it's worth a post.

As I mentioned previously, Michael, Matthew, my family and myself had gone on another hike up in the hills surrounding the city. This time we ventured towards the north, in search of yet another shrine. I think Michael called it a stupa. Anyway, the plan was to venture north along a canal, cross the local river, make our way through a new housing development, then through a village and finally travel a ridge to reach the stupa. We started with the aforementioned chat in Michael's flat, and then almost cancelled the walk as a short cloudburst passed overhead. But that let up and Michael was quite eager to venture out despite the threat of rain. We all were of like mind, so umbrellas in hand, we headed out.

Some more rain came along as we hiked along the canal and river. The canal runs along the east edge of campus and once you get past the college entrance, there are a number of shacks along the canal's edge. There's also a couple of rickety looking bridges built over the water. (There's no photos, since it wasn't worth dampening the camera.) We didn't attempt to cross any of those. Instead we followed the sidewalk (actually the top of the canal wall) to where it intersected with the river. After a short walk we crossed over on a viaduct and then ventured into the new housing development.

New was right. The whole thing was still under construction. For a while we skirted the edge of the development, but then Michael led us right in the middle of the construction. As we walked through, I noticed a number of shacks throughout the site, some with laundry hanging on the outside. Michael spoke with a couple of workers and confirmed that they were from the Sichaun province, having come south for work. The site itself seemed a mixture of old and new, with trucks and backhoes working alongside shovels and wheelbarrows. The workers were decked out in regular clothes, shirt, pants, canvas shoes or sandals. I don't recall seeing any hard hats or other safety equipment. Indeed, the fact that we could waltz right through the site without objection proved that they had never heard of OSHA or union rules. It was a delight for us, because it allowed us a close view of the whole site. Of course, I would have felt quite differently, had a stray brick fallen down and smacked one of my kids on the head.

The highlight of this leg--indeed of the whole hike--is when we encountered a group of ladies who were hauling bricks into one of the buildings. Each one had a wooden yoke which the carried atop their back and shoulders. A wire loop dangled from each end of the yoke and they would load up about ten bricks on each side and then carry them up a wooden ramp into the second story of the building. They gestured for us to head up into the building and take a peek for ourselves. The ever-unreserved Matthew went one better and attempted to handle one of the ladies' yokes. A couple of the women put the yoke across his back and loaded him up with bricks. He had one false start when the bricks started slipping off the wire, but eventually, with some effort, he was able to stand upright. He didn't venture to carry the load into the building, however. It just goes to show that a job looks quite easy when done by a professional.

One of the workers was also curious about Siu Wan and attempted to engage her, and then us, in conversation. After a lot of gestures and broken Chinese, we were able to communicate that Siu Wan was our adopted daughter and not a tour guide or new apprentice.

After we were done playing with bricks, we continued on through the site. It seems like your typical Chinese apartment building has a bunch of garage like spaces on the ground floor. I've mostly seen them used for shops of one sort or another. On the buildings we passed, I saw that some of them had laundry hanging on the outside of the door. I wonder if the workers hadn't taken advantage of the space and set up house in one of those garages. Anyway, we soon ventured out of the construction site, walking past a couple of grazing water buffalo. At this point we suffered our gravest injury--Siu Wan and Matthew both trod into some wicked mud, covering their shoes in the stuff. Providentially, there was a lady washing clothes at the edge of the road where there was a hose. She lent us use of the hose and we were able to somewhat clean the shoes.

Where the construction stopped, the village started. It was an older place--with narrow, winding streets. The homes varied in quality. Some made of mud bricks, others of fired. Some had newer doors, others were noticeably older. (oddly enough, the older doors all seemed to have a little decoration, made of woven straw, affixed above them. If it had some spiritual significance, it was odd that the newer doors didn't have them. Of course, it could just be that woven straw decorations are just cheaper...) Matthew and I both were taking pix and so lagged behind the others. At one point we had lost sight of them and tried to guess at which route they took. There was a guy with a wheelbarrow ahead of us. At one intersection we started following him, and he kindly pointed us down the other street. I don't know if he actually knew which way the rest of our party had headed or if he just didn't want a couple of big noses dropping in for tea...

Past the village, we found the others and our intended route along an irrigation ditch. We followed the path along the ridge, which led towards a grove of trees. Once it got into the trees, however, the ditch fell away and the path became quite narrow and overgrown. Once again we had seemed to have lost our way. We attempted a couple of side paths and eventually encountered a lady walking along a parallel path higher up the hill. We tried to indicate our desire to find the stupa. She motioned that we should follow her, and when we tried to backtrack she indicated that we should just tramp up the hillside. We couldn't see a path, exactly, but we obeyed. The plants we walked over looked cultivated, and Matt quipped that it probably belonged to a neighbor against whom our guide held a grudge.

Our new guide led us along a path heading upwards and we soon found yet another path and another irrigation ditch. She helpfully pointed us back to the village in which we came. We were lost, but not that lost. We pointed along the path in the other direction and tried to ask if it was the right path to the stupa. Communication had pretty much broken down at this point. We finally made it clear that we were not heading back to the village and the lady then took it upon herself to guide us onward. The path curved around a gorge and past some fields. It then ran along what looked like a creek. Though for all I know, it's a manmade ditch that's incredibly old. Being a Yankee, it's hard for me to conceive that people could have been living in these villages for thousands of years. Anyway, we finally came to another village. Here our guide indicated the road back into the city, and she was quite insistent that we take it. We finally assented to her wishes, wondering if perhaps she might have a religious motive for us not to head towards the stupa. On the way back, however, we figured that she really just thought that we were trying to find our way home. We figured we'd be satisfied with our day's outing and try for the stupa again some other day.

posted by John @ 6:56 AM