Welcome to...Here, July 11 Part 2

So, back to the three-day tour we took as international volunteers. After lunch on the first day we went to "XiangTang Culture New Village," which was quite a surreal experience. The whole bus ride there, we passed lots of stores and houses along the road, with people everywhere, working, walking, bicycling, standing around talking. As soon as we turned into XiangTang, a model village of rural life, almost all of the people were gone. The only people around were guides to the village and officials that were part of the tour process. It was like a ghost town, except all of the buildings were pristine and new--the crumbling buildings you would expect from a ghost town were the ones we passed along the way, full of life. I wondered if the government had paid off most of the villagers not to be in the village for our tour.

Now this was a propaganda tour--note that the Chinese meaning of propaganda does not have a negative connotation. It tends to mean "information" and can extend to mean "marketing." I don't necesarily think we were being fed lies about what village life is like, but we were definitely being shown the village that our guide even explained the government had poured thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into. Houses in the village only cost $50,000 dollars, and the government paid the rest. As we would see later, these were lovely courtyard houses with three bedrooms, a large living room, and a decentosized kitchen complete with kitchen table and a TV set. Apparently, the village makes its money through tourism, real estate, and the golf course. (We later took a bus tour through the golf course, the first I've seen with billboards on the clubhouse.) The prime real estate is sold to the rich, including foreigners, and we saw these huge houses and townhouses that looked like they were straight from an American or European neighborhood.

On the XiangTang tour, our first stop was a Buddhist temple surrounded by such houses. There were no Chinese residents or other tourists there, and not even all 7 buses from our tour group went at once. It was like having a private visit to Colonial Williamsburg. At every stop, including this one, an official would give a welcome speech that our tour guide Rock would translate. They all started the same way: "Ladies and Gentleman, [pause] welcome to [pause] here!" Then Rock smiles and usually raises his arm to point the way. All the welcome speeches extolled the wonderful quality of life in the area. The temple was beautiful and must have been renovated or rebuilt recently. All the detailed and gilt painting on the buildings was in perfect condition. The temple had three buddhas of past, present, and future. At the end a buddhist monk explained a bit more about these buddhas, but I didn't catch a lot of it. I got some on video so maybe I'll understand more of Rock's English translation when I have a chance to look back at the video.

We also visited the village's retirement home, where the oldest resident is a 102-year-old woman who has no family. The government takes care of her. The retirement area had nice courtyards with flowers and roses and a recreation room with a pool table, card tables--in use for mah jong games, and about 5 treadmills--not in use at all. The retirees were supposed to sing us a song about their life there, but the singing group seemed to composed mostly of orderlies and staff members, while two mahjong games continued right next to the singers with the old men seemingly unaware that a chorus was taking place next to their games. It was quite amusing! So was the translation of the song we got afterwards about happiness of life in the rest home with the wonderful air coming down off the mountains. (There did seem to be some hills barely visible through the smog or mist.)

We then visited a calligraphy and painting research center. I never found out exactly what this meant, except that there was some sort of collection that included calligraphy that was over 100 years old and that there were painters inside demonstrating calligraphy. The brochure we got about XiangTang called it an "academy" of Oriental Painting and Calligraphy, different than Rock's translation. I think they give lessons to some of the tourists that come, like the University of Iowa students on a video that I posted earlier.

Next, we went to another compound for a tai chi demonstration. The brochure calls this a "Tai Chi and Kong Fu School," so I think this model rural village has mastered tourism and how to sell itself, its merits, and its lessons to tourists.

We ended our tour with a visit to the village courtyard home that I described briefly above. It was immaculate, and it even had Western toilets. We never did figure out if villagers live in this particular home as the tour leaders implied or if it's the token museum home that every group visits. On our way out, though, we saw that another bus had been taken to visit the courtyard house next door. And someone mentioned that they met the "owner" of one of the houses. I don't think we'll ever know if those houses are really lived in or if the "owner" was playing a part to help create the model village.