A Visit to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Local Opera and Reflections on a Struggling Art Form:

In addition to lunch, the Changyucheng villagers treated us to a performance of their own particular kind of opera. This event took place in the village's combined Buddhist and Daoist Temple—one of the earlier Changyucheng posts (March 11th) has photos and a bit of text about this place. The temple has a small outdoor stage, so it also serves as a theater and concert space.

The musicians (业余乐师) in the second photo at the top of the post were mainly playing traditional Chinese musical instruments. These included a stringed instrument that is a kind of miniature cello and sits on a musician's lap (二胡). Another one was the Chinese-style bamboo flute (笛子). And one person was knocking pieces of wood together as of way of keeping rhythm. Since this action is akin to clapping, the English term for instrument is “clapper;” according to a Chinese friend, the Mandarin term is “快板”.

This miniature orchestra also had a pair of small drums (鼓). However, one instrument typically heard in Beijing Opera (京剧) performances isn't in the photo. I'm talking about the loud and clanging cymbals (钹; 铙). At least I don't remember hearing them being played during the village opera performance.

The other photo above is a shot of one of the singers. According to my Chinese friend, Lu Hong Yan (路红艳), the Chinese just call the singers and musicians “performers”, or “表演” (this is also the verb “to perform”). These people can also be seen as performing a kind of folk art, which Mandarin speakers call “民间艺术”. The first two characters literally mean “between the people”, so this suffix is used in other “folk” type vocabulary, such as “folk music” (民间音乐), “folk stories” (民间故事), and “folk literature” (民间文学). The characters 艺术 form the word for “art.”

We spent about an hour or so watching the villagers perform. Our guide, Hong Gao, informed us that this village developed its own distinctive style of opera, due to its location on the old Silk Road trading route (see my March 1st post about Changyucheng). Since none of us, even the people who spoke pretty good Chinese, could really follow what the singers were saying, Gao provided capsule summaries of the lyrics. These stories naturally all took place in old China and were about Emperors (皇帝) and Emperesses (皇后), along with their concubines (妾), eunuchs (太监), and ministers.

For me at least, the real highlight of this part of our Changyucheng tour came after all the performances were finished. We got to go inside the small room backstage where the singers put on and took off their makeup. As one can tell from the photo at the top of this blog, every singer's face is elaborately painted. After the other members of our group left the room, I got this photo of an older male performer taking off his makeup (卸妆). I think he had played the emperor in one of the operas.

The age of this man, as well as the musicians, underscores a sad fact about Chinese opera, including Beijing Opera: it really is struggling to survive as an art form. Nearly all of my younger Chinese friends and acquaintances tell me that they never watch Beijing Opera. They all say that they find the lyrics, which are sung in a very high-pitched voice, extremely hard to understand. And they also believe that the stories are very dull and slow moving.

Indeed, after living here for four years, I am struck by the fact that when it comes to popular entertainment, the Middle Kingdom's youth, well at least its urban youth, mainly prefer foreign imports over traditional Chinese popular culture, including Beijing Opera.

This is especially true for TV shows, and like Americans, Chinese people watch lots of television. Chinese Central TV (CCTV) broadcasts quite a few historical drama type shows depicting pre-revolutionary China, particularly the struggle against the Japanese and Guomingdang (国民党) during the 1930s and 1940s. None of my friends has ever mentioned this programming or any other CCTV shows when I ask them about what they watch. They instead mainly view American TV shows downloaded (下载) from the internet (网络).

For example, “Friends” (六人行) is hugely popular here. “Prison Break”, which had its final season last year, also has a large following in China. Alas, many Chinese people think that watching this program is a good way to learn English! Other heavily watched shows include “Desperate Housewives” (绝望的主妇) and “The OC”. Finally, South Korean soap operas, which the Chinese call “韩剧”, have a large audience among younger Chinese women. The same can be said for similar programs from Taiwan.

With respect to films, China does produce a few films (电影; 片子) every year that are genuine blockbusters with respect to their movie theater viewing audience. One was the Hong Kong director John Woo's adaptation of the famous literary classic, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (三国演义), or “Red Cliff” (赤壁), starring Liang Chao Wei (梁朝伟) and the gorgeous Taiwanese fashion model (模特儿) turned actress, Lin Zhi Ling (林志玲). Another was the hilarious romantic comedy, “If You are the One” (非诚勿扰) starring another beautiful Taiwanese actress, Shu Qi (舒淇), and one of China's most famous male comic actors, Ge You (葛优) (I'll be doing a post on this movie at some future date).

But the limited number of Hollywood films that are screened here—China still places strict limits on film imports—typically do as well as, if not better, than their Chinese blockbuster counterparts at the box office. This goes for worthy films like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Reader”, as well truly awful swill, like that recent Will Smith vehicle, “Hancock”, and the newest installment of “The Mummy”. The latest James Bond movies, with Daniel Craig as “007” (零零七), were also very popular here. And in most DVD shops, I find that the selection of foreign films, particularly American movies, is greater than the selection of Chinese films.

When it comes to music, young Chinese people mainly prefer pop music (流行乐). Very few of them listen to older Chinese classical music (中国古典乐). Chinese pop singers, particularly Jay Chou (周杰伦) from Taiwan, do have a huge following. But if you translated the lyrics of their songs into English, they would certainly sound pretty much like standard Ameircan pop music tunes. And hip hop style music and the kind of music dance numbers done by Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and the like have caught on big in China as well (the same is true for music videos, although the Chinese ones that I have seen are really pretty lame).

Thus Beijing Opera's Chinese audience now consists largely of older people, like the memorable “old widow” next door neighbor from Michael Meyer's terrific new book about life in Beijing's siheyuan (四合院) houses and hutong (胡同) alleys. As was mentioned in an earlier post, this lady kept her TV tuned all day to a Beijing Opera Channel (for those expats living here who are interested, it's Channel 11). She thus became very irate when the small electric heater Meyer bought for his room blew out the siheyuan's fusebox and interrupted this programming.

To be sure, some foreign tourists go to live Beijing Opera performances while visiting China. However, these people certainly can't understand the subtleties of Beijing Opera. I have to confess that I don't either. I'll also confess to not having seen a single Beijing Opera during my 3+ years of living in the capital. Moreover, the foreign tourist audience doesn't come close to offsetting the steep decline in Chinese viewership. And very few of the old pensioners, who make up the bulk of Beijing Opera's diehard Chinese fans, can afford to pay the ticket prices theaters must charge in order to make money from staging live opera performances.

Beijing Opera is still officially touted as a Chinese “national treasure”; however, as Jasper Becker notes in his recent book, CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY, most of the few remaining state opera troupes are gradually going bust (破产). They not only face dwindling audiences, but declining state subsidies (补贴) as well.

I would thus be willing to bet that in another 20-30 years, after most of the audience and performers for traditional Chinese Opera have passed away (出世), live performances of this art will be few and far between. I am thus very glad to have had the opportunity to see one version of it performed live during my visit to Changyucheng Village. I'll truly remember it as another highlight of my ongoing China adventure.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

业余乐师 (ye4yu2yue4shi1). “业余” means “part-time”, so the Chinese word for “part-time work” is 业余工作 (ye4yu2gong1zuo4), while 乐师 is one word for “musician”. Truly expert and professional muscians are called “音乐家” (yin1yue4jia1).
二胡 (er4hu2).
笛子 (di2zi5).
快板 (kuai4ban3). The first character is the Chinese word for “fast”, while the second can mean “board”. “Blackboard” is thus 黑 (hei1; black) 板.
鼓 (gu3).
京剧 (jing1ju4). “京”, of course, is the second character in 北京 (bei3jing1), or literally translated, “northern capital”, while 剧 can be translated here as “stage.”
钹; 铙 (bo2; nao2). “铙” are large cymbals. The left hand side of both characters has the metal radical, which provides a clue about their meaning (it really narrows it down, he! he!).
表演 (biao3yan3).
民间艺术 (min2jian1yi4shu4).
民间音乐 (min2jian1yin1yue4). “音乐” is the Chinese word for “music”.
民间故事 (min2jian1gu4shi4). “故事” is the Chinese word for “story”.
民间文学 (min2jian1wen2xue2). “文学” is the Chinese word for “literature.”
皇帝 (huang2di4).
皇后 (huang2hou4). Literally translated, “皇后” means “behind the Emperor.” Language often reflects underlying social realities and this phrase says much about the subordinate position of women in old China. Throughout China's long history, only one woman, the Tang Dynasty (唐朝; tang2chao2) Empress 武则天 (wu3ze2tian1), has officially ruled the country.
妾 (qie4).
太监 (tai4jian4).
卸妆 (xie4zhuang1). The opposite of taking off makeup, i.e. putting it on, is “化妆” (hua4zhuang1) (this term applies to actors, actresses, and women). “Cosmetics” is “化妆品” (hua4zhuang1pin3).
下载 (xia4zai4).
网络 (wang3luo4). “网” is the Chinese word for “net”, and the character really looks like a “net”.
六人行 (liu4ren2xing2). For some reason, this show's title isn't literally translated into Mandarin as “Friends” (朋友; peng2you3), but as “Six (六) People (人) O.K./Good (行)”. That's actually a more informative title!
绝望的主妇 (jue2wang1de5zhu4fu4). Unlike the show “Friends,” this is a literal translation: 绝望 means “desperate”, while 主妇 is the Mandarin word for “housewife”.
韩剧 (han2ju4). “韩” appears in the Chinese name for South Korea, which is 韩国 (han2guo2), while 剧 in this context means “program”.
电影; 片子 (dian4ying3; pian4zi5). “电影” literally means “electric (电) shadow (影)” and the right side of the “影” character does resemble a shadow. “片子” is the term for “movie” and can also mean “blockbuster movie”.
三国演义 (san1guo2yan3yi1).
赤壁 (chi4bi4). “壁” also means “screen”, as in Beihai Park's famous Nine (久; jiu3) Dragon (龙; long2) Screen (壁; bi4).
模特儿 (mo2te4er5).
非诚勿扰 (fei1cheng2wu4rao3).
零零七 (ling2ling2qi1). This literally means “007”.
流行乐 (liu2xing2yue4). “流行” means “popular”.
中国古典乐 (zhong1guo2gu4dian3yue). “中国” of course means “China,” while “古典” is the Mandarin word for “classical”.
周杰伦 (zhou1jie2lun2).
四合院 (si4he2yuan2).
胡同 (hu2tong2).
破产 (po4chan3).
补贴 (bu3tie1).
出世 (chu1shi4). This term literally means “depart (出) from the world (世)”. The verb “to die” is “死” (si3). The Chinese regard “four” (四) as an unlucky number because its pronunciation, a fourth tone “si”, is almost the same as “死”

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, People:

Most of our time indoors during the visit to Changyucheng Village was spent making dumplings and then eating them, along with lots of other food, for lunch. We did all this in the house described in the previous blog post. That was the first stop in our tour.

The photo shows several members of our group watching—the three people on the right are Filipinos—one of the locals demonstrate the art of making dumplings (包饺子). This lady is doing the first stage of making the dumpling, namely rolling the wrappers (来擀皮儿). I have to say, this gal was a real pro (饺子能手) when it came to making dumplings!

After the wrappers were rolled and cut up into individual dumpling sizes, it was out turn to participate in the dumpling making. We got to stuff the stuff the wrappers and then close them. You do this by first spreading the wrapping on your hand, then put in the filling, and lastly fold the wrapper over the filling and then tightly pinch the edges. Or, as the Chinese would say, “先把皮儿摊在手上, 然后放陷儿, 再把边儿捏紧”.

Like everything else in the Spring Festival celebrations, eating dumplings has lots of symbolism. Dumplings, or to use the Chinese word, Jiao(3)zi(5) (饺子), are shaped like the gold (金) and silver (银) ingots that were used as money in ancient China. Thus making dumplings both symbolizes and is supposed to bring families prosperity (富足) and good luck (福气).

Indeed, making dumplings is the first thing families usually do after the fifth day of the Chinese New Year, or the so-called “Broken Five” (破五) Festival. Our guide, Hong Gao, told us that during the first five days of the Spring Festival, families are supposed to observe some rather strict rules. Women can't visit their parents, children shouldn't cry, no one should utter inauspicious words, and neighbors aren't supposed to quarrel. It's also forbidden to break any tools or furniture, see a doctor, do needlework, use scissors, or sweep the floor. And one is not allowed to eat thin porridge for breakfast (that's one don't I could comply with!!).

However, on the fifth day of the Spring Festival, all these rules can finally be broken. In addition to feasting on dumplings, people remove the offerings placed on the household alters for deceased ancestors (ancestor worship remains quite strong here). Other normal tasks, such as doing business, can also be resumed after the five day Spring Festival hiatus.

There are three basic kinds of dumplings in China: boiled (水饺), steamed (蒸饺), and ones that are fried in a skillet (锅贴). English speakers call the third kind of dumpling “pot stickers”, and that's what the Chinese call them as well: “锅” (guo3) means “pot” or “skillet” while “帖” (tie1) is the word for “stick.”

I prefer the “锅贴” dumplings; however, “水饺” dumplings are what people here usually eat during the Spring Festival and that's what we had for lunch. These dumplings came with the two most commonly used fillings, namely pork (猪肉) and greens (青菜). Of course there are many other kinds of fillings put into dumplings. These include chicken (鸡肉), mutton (羊肉), shrimp (小虾), and mushrooms (蘑菇).

The meal also included chicken, fresh greens and vegetables (蔬菜), tofu (豆腐), toasted almonds (烤杏仁), rice (米饭), potatoes (土豆), noodles (面), and quite possibly some other dishes I've forgotten about. Since this house didn't have a kitchen, the food was prepared somewhere else and brought in through the front door (前门).

Hong Gao told us that all of the food served for lunch was grown in the village. I mentioned the almond trees (杏树) in earlier post and could see how this place would have them. And there were plenty chicken coops in the village. However, I didn't notice any greenhouses (花房), which would have been the only place where vegetables could be grown in the winter, during our stroll about this place. Perhaps they were located somewhere outside of the village.

The comment about the food made it clear that the people of Changyucheng Village are largely self-sufficient when it comes to food. I'm certain this is as much a matter of necessity as it is of choice. After we left the western outskirts of Beijing, it took us some 90 minutes to reach the village. During that time, we didn't pass through large any towns, so there are probably no big stores within easy driving distance from Changyucheng Village. And very few, if any, of its residents have access to a car or some other kind of vehicle.

This isolation really distinguishes these people from their counterparts in North America. Even people who live way out in the sticks in Wyoming and Montana can hop in their car or, in the case of many of these folks, pickup truck, and drive themselves into the nearest town or city of any size.

To be sure, it might take them several hours to do this. But they can at least go on their own to the nearest big supermarket and store to stock up on food and other necessities. I suspect someone periodically drives a vehicle to a store at the edge of Beijing or over to Changping—also more than hour away from Changyucheng Village—to pick up stuff such as toilet paper, hardware, and the like.

We did our stroll through the village after finishing lunch. Along the way, we met a few more of the local people. One of them is the elderly fellow in the photo below. We were told that this senior (老年人) is 84 years old. Hong Gao, our tour guide, is on the left side of the picture, while the lady on the right side, whose English name is Cathy, works for Hong Kong Government's office in Beijing.

The building on the right of the photo is this old fellow's house. If you look hard, you can see a small dog standing at the base of the wall. This spot in the wall had a small hole, and the dog kept going in and out of the house through that hole. As the Chinese would say, this little canine friend (狗) was 很可爱!

As this post and the previous posts have made clear, the people of Changyucheng are not at all affluent. But this didn't prevent them from being incredibly welcoming and generous hosts for our little group. Their hospitality (好客) will go down as one of many highlights in my China adventure.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

包饺子 (bao1jiao3zi5). The verb “包” means to “stuff” or “package” (this character also is the noun “package” and “bag”). Since making 饺子 mainly involves stuffing different kinds of filling into the wrapping, Mandarin speakers use this verb rather than “make”, or 做 (zuo4).
来擀皮儿 (lai2gan3pi2er5). In addition to “wrapping,” “皮” has several other meanings, including human “skin” (皮肤; pi2fu1) and the “leather” in “leather bag” (皮包)
饺子能手 (jiao3zi5neng2shou3). “能手” literally means “capable hands”, and is used to refer not just to people who are able to work with their hands, but who are also good at everyday chores. People who are skilled at doing more specialized tasks are called a “高手” (gao1shou3), which literally means “high (高) hand (手)”. It's customarily translated as “master.” So a chess master is a “国际象棋高手” (guo2ji4xiang4qi2); “国际象棋” is the Mandarin word for western or “international” (国际) chess. Chinese chess is “中国象棋” (zhong1gu2xiang4qi2). As noted in a very recent post, 中国 means “China”, or “Middle (中) Kingdom (国)”.
先把皮儿摊在手上, 然后放馅儿, 再把边捏紧 (xian1ba3pi2er5tan1zai5shou3shang4, ran2hou4fang4xian4er, zai4ba3bian1nie1jin3). “先” means “first,” while “把” is a particle emphasizing the noun it precedes, in this case “皮儿”. It has no equivalent in English—it would be like saying “First, especially the wrapper …,” and of course we don’t say it that way. Since there are no hard and fast rules about its use, we loawai have a hard time knowing when to say it. Native Mandarin speakers, of course, know instinctively when to do so. “摊” means to “spread out,” while “在手上” means “on (在 and 上) the hand (手).” “然后” is “then” and “放馅儿” is “stick into.” “再” is the word for “then” when you do one action, as in these dumpling making steps, right after another action. And “边捏紧” means “pinch (捏) edges (边) tightly (紧).”
金 (jin1). For those who are wondering, a “gold medal” is a 金牌 (jin1pai2); “牌”, of course, is the word for “medal”.
银 (yin2). Since historically the Chinese used silver coins, the character “银” is in the Chinese word for “bank”, “银行”.
富足 (fu4zu2).
福气 (fu2qi4).
破五 (po4wu3). “破” is the word for “break” or “smash”, while “五” means “five”.
水饺 (shui3jiao3). “水” is the character for “water.”
蒸饺 (zheng1jiao3). And “蒸”, of course, means “steamed.”
猪肉 (zhu1rou4). “猪” means “pig,” while “肉” means “meat,” so together they mean “pork.”
青菜 (qing1cai4).
羊肉 (yang2rou4). The same logic applies with “mutton” as it does with “pork.” Mandarin combines the character for “sheep” (羊) with “meat” (肉).
小虾 (xiao3xia1).
蘑菇 (mo2gu1).
蔬菜 (shu1cai4).
豆腐 (dou4fu5).
烤杏仁 (kao3xing4ren2).
米饭 (mi3fan4). The second character refers to cooked food, so 米饭 really means “cooked rice.”
土豆 (tu3dou4). “土” means “soil” or “earth”, while “豆” is the word for “bean.”
面 (mian4).
前门 (mian2men2). “前” means “before” or “in front of,” while “门” is the word for “door” and “gate.” The latter character actually looks like a door or a gate.
杏树 (xing4shu4). “树” is the word for “tree.”
花房 (hua1fang2). “花” is normally the word for “flower”, but here it stands for the “green” in “greenhouse.”
老年人 (lao3nian2ren2). Translated word for word, this means “old year person.”
很可爱 (hen3ke3ai4). “爱” is the verb “to love” and when combined with “可”, it becomes the adjective “loveable.” This adjective is typically applied to just young children and pets.
好客 (hao3ke4). “好” means “good,” while “客” is a shortened for of the word for “guest,” i.e. 客人 (ke4ren2). So it literally means “good to guests.”

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Interiors: Inside One of the Homes (在一个房子的里边)

Another highlight of our visit to Changyucheng was going inside one of the village's houses. They naturally showcased the nicest dwelling in the village. The exterior can be seen in the photo above, and this shot appears in an earlier post about the village. We spent over an hour here, making dumplings and then eating them, along with lots of other food, for lunch. I'll have more to say about that in the next post.

We spent most of our time in a large that functioned as a sitting room (客厅), bedroom (卧室) and dining room. I also popped inside a small bedroom off to its side to take some pictures (they're below). The house may have had another room, but I'm not sure. That other room, if it did exist, was certainly very small.

One part of large, multipurpose room off to the right of the doorway in the photo above had two or three old style brick beds (火抗)—the ones that are heated up at night with firewood. As I noted in an earlier post, that's why stacks of firewood are scattered all over the village.

I didn't see a stove inside this place, nor any sign of some other means of heating the place up. So the beds seemed to be the only way to keep the dwelling warm and cozy during this area’s bitterly cold winters. The beds were not very wide; they were certainly no larger than a twin bed back in the states. They thus functioned not only as beds (床), but also as sofas (沙发). After our walk through the village was finished, we all sat down on them and had some Nescafe before boarding the bus to return home.

A low table, much like an American style coffee table, was placed in front of one these sofa-type beds. According to my good friend, Lu Hong Yan (路红艳), the Chinese term for such tables doesn't use the character for table, 桌子. They are instead called 茶几, which can be literally translated as “tea device.” That's because the teapots used for brewing tea leaves are typically placed on these tables.

Finally, as one can see from the photo below, the walls of this room were adorned with Chinese Communist Party poster art (画).

The dining area was toward the back of the large room. This part of the house was away from the window, so it was fairly dark. Lighting was provided by several bare bulbs sticking down from the ceiling and through the thick, white-colored wallpaper-like (壁纸) material covering both the ceiling and the walls. Interestingly enough, these light bulbs (灯泡) were not the older round types, but newer energy saving ones.

In addition to these state of the art light bulbs, the sitting room also boasted a relatively new TV set (电视) and DVD player (DVD机). So while this house was lacked any kind of modern heating (暖气) system, it did have what passed for a state of the art home entertainment center.

You observe these contradictions all the time while living in China. For me, as well as many other expats, this blend of backwardness and modernity is a big reason why the Middle Kingdom such a fascinating place. At least fascinating enough for us to want to continue living here and put up with the occasional “bad China day”.

The small bedroom was on the left side of the doorway entrance to the large room in the house. You can see that room's windows (窗) on the left side of the photo at the top of this blog post. The photo below is a picture of those same windows, along with bed in front of them, shot from within the room.

The bedroom also had a small writing desk (书桌) wedged between the foot of the bed and one of the room's walls. There was a mirror (镜子) on the table resting against the wall (墙). And in this room, the poster art consisted of a landscape painting, rather than portraits of revolutionary leaders.

The dwelling didn't have an indoor bathroom. There were instead two outhouses (厕所) in the courtyard area to the left of the dwelling's entrance; a small chicken coop (鸡笼) stood in the center of courtyard. As one might suspect, the toilets in the outhouses were not western-style toilets, but “squatty potties” (蹲便).

While I have never gotten used to using these little bowls of heaven, many Chinese people actually prefer them over Western-style toilets (马桶). They believe that they are more sanitary, and I'd have to say that they have point (有道理) here. Not sitting on a toilet seat rim used by lots of other people reduces the chance of picking up whatever infections or other bad things they might pass on. And I read somewhere that when Mao visited the Soviet Union to meet with Stalin (斯大林) shortly after founding New China, he could not get used to the pedestal toilets in his villa. He also didn’t care much for the soft bed either.

In many Chinese farming villages, particularly the poorer ones, the excrement (分辨) deposited in such latrines is still collected at night and put into the soil as fertilizer (I'm not sure about Changyucheng Village and didn't bother to ask). Poor farmers, of course, lack access to and can not afford to buy chemical fertilizer. They thus have little choice but recycle human and animal waster in this manner. And this process can also be seen as turning the food growing and consumption process into a closed circle: human beings, as well as animals, consume what's grown in the soil and then discharge their wastes back into the soil so that it more food can be grown in it.

Because this material was put into the fields at night, it's referred to as “night soil” in books written about China by Western authors. However, one of my Chinese friends informed me that the Mandarin word for “night soil”, 肥料, which literally means “rich material.” Jasper Becker notes in his book, CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY, that as late as the 1920s and 1930s—at that time, the ancient city of Beijing was still almost entirely intact—this “rich material” was carted out of the capital to be used in the nearby farms.

The courtyard area outside the dwelling also blended the new in with the old. For example, one of the outhouses had a washing machine (洗衣机). I also saw a pair of what appeared to be solar (太阳) heated water tanks (水箱) on their roofs. However, this outside area also had the dwelling's only sink/washbasin (洗手池; 洗碗池) and water faucet (水龙头). For some reason, I didn't bother to take any photos here.

There was an electric water dispenser inside the house, so one could get a hot cup of tea without having to go outside. But washing one's hands necessitated a short trip to the outside washbasin. And since it was the middle of winter, the water in the basin was frozen (冰) solid.

The lifestyles of most of Chinese urban dwellers (城里人), particularly those in country's rapidly growing middle (中产阶级) and upper middle classes, not to mention the rising number of those who are rich (有钱), at least somewhat approximate those of their counterparts in highly developed economies. But the same can't be said for rural China's rural residents. My visit to Changyucheng Village made it clear to this laowai that China still has a long way to go before its overall living standards catch up to those in Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea.

The good news, however, is that immense progress has been made here since the reform and opening up policy. Following 1979, over 200 hundred million people have been lifted out of absolute poverty. Nothing quite like this has happened in recent global history. And as I noted in several previous posts, the current government is making a genuine and serious effort to improve the lives of China's farmers. I am therefore confident that in the future, things can only get better in places like Changyucheng Village.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

在一个房子的里边 (zai4yi1ge4fang2zi5li3bian1): “房子” is the Chinese word for “house” or “dwelling,” while “里边” means “inside (of a place or space)”.
客厅 (ke3ting1). “Outer room for guests” is a more literal translation of this character combination.
卧室 (wo4shi4). 室 is a suffix that appears in many Mandarin words for different types of a room. “Office,” for example, is 办公室 (ban4gong1shi4).
床 (chuang2).
火炕 (huo3kang4).
沙发 (sha1fa1). This is an excellent example of a foreign word transliteration. Translated word for word, these characters mean “sand” (沙) “to happen” (发). As I think I noted in a much earlier post, anytime you run across a nonsensical character combination, it's almost certainly some foreign word transliterated into Mandarin. Then you have to figure what foreign word the characters sound like when said together. Not so hard to do with 沙发, but many other times, that's easier said than done!
桌子 (zhuo1zi5).
茶几 (cha2ji1).
画 (hua4). This word usually means picture, and the character pretty much looks like a framed picture. The verb to “draw” is simply 画画. Mandarin does have a word for poster, 海报 (hai3bao4), but after looking at my photo, 路红艳 told me that 画, not 海报, is the word Chinese people for such art.
壁纸 (bi4zhi3). “壁” means “screen”, while 纸 means paper. The left side of the character 纸 contains the silk “radical”, which provides a clue as to the meaning, namely something made out of woven material (at least that was the case for ancient paper).
灯泡 (deng1pao4). “灯” is the word for “light,” so if want someone to turn of the lights, tell them, “清关灯” (qin2guan1deng1). The first two characters are the words for “please” and “turn off.” Interestingly enough, 灯泡 is also a slang Chinese term for “chaperone.”
电视 (dian4shi4). This character combination, which means “electric vision”, is yet another example of how Mandarin vocabulary is usually much more logical than English vocabulary.
DVD机 (DVDji1). As noted in a previous blog post, 机 is a suffix that appears in many words having to do with mechanical devices, as is the case for another character combination that appears later on in the post, 洗衣机 (xi3yi1ji1). “洗” means “wash”, 衣is a shortened form of the word for clothes (衣服; yi1fu5), so when combined with “机”, they all mean “washing machine”. And yes, Mandarin is starting to incorporate some foreign words without transliterating them into characters. Many of these words are computer program names, like Excel. If you want to tell someone to open up Excel, just say “开Excel;” 开 (kai1) is the Chinese word for start or open.
暖气 (nuan3qi4).
窗 (chuang1). Since “窗” and “床” differ only in their tones, it's easy to be misunderstood—one might get the tone wrong and say, “I'm sitting on the window”, when you really mean to say, “I'm sitting on the bed.”
书桌 (shu1zhuo1). “书” is the Chinese word for book, so this combination literally means “book table.”
镜子 (jing4zi5).
墙 (qiang2).
厕所 (ce4suo3).
鸡笼 (ji1long2). “鸡” is the Chinese word for a live chicken. Chicken meat, on the other hand, is 鸡肉 (ji1rou4). So chicken soup is said as “chicken meat soup”, or 鸡肉汤; the last character, a rising tone “tang,” means “soup”.
蹲便 (dun1bian4).
马桶 (ma3tong1).
有道理 (you3dao4li3). “有” means “have”, while 道理 is the word for “point.”
斯大林 (si1da4lin2). At least this transliteration sounds somewhat like Stalin's name; the same can’t be said for the one for that of his arch geopolitical rival, Adolf Hitler. The Nazi dictator's Chinese name, 希特勒 (xi1te4le4) is said like “she t-eh l-eh.”
粪便 (fen4bian4).
肥料 (fei2liao4).
太阳 (tai4yang2). For those who are interested, “solar power” is 太阳能 (能 is a rising tone “neng”).
水箱 (shui3xiang1). “水” means “water”, while 箱 appears in the Chinese word for refrigerator, or 冰箱, which literally means “ice (冰) box/container (箱)”. “冰” is also one way of saying that water is frozen solid, so ice cubes are 冰块 (bing1kuai4; 块 is the Mandarin word for “piece”).
洗碗池 (xi3wan3chi2). English speakers would call this the “kitchen sink”; in Chinese it means “dishes (碗) washing (洗) basin (池)”.
洗手池 (xi3shou3chi2). And this means “hands (手) washing (洗) basin (池)”.
水龙头 (shui3long2tou2). For some reason, the Chinese decided to combine the characters for “dragon” (龙) and “head” (头) with “water” (水) to form the word for water faucet or spigot. Perhaps they thought that such devices really do look like a dragon's head!
城里人 (cheng2li3ren2). “城” is the shortened form of the word for city (城市; cheng2shi4), “里” means “inside,” and “人” stands for “person.” So the combination literally means “city inside person.”
中产阶级 (zhong1chan3jie2ji2). “中” is the word for “middle” and also appears in the Mandarin name for China, “中国,” which literally means “Middle Kingdom.” “产” means “produce”, while 阶级 is the word for “social class.” Thus the working class is called the 工人 (gong1ren2; or worker) 阶级, while the capitalist bourgeoisie is the 资产阶级. Readers might remember from the previous post that the first character is in the character combination, 资本 (zi1ben3), for “capital.”
有钱 (you3qian2). This literally means “have” (有) money (钱)”.

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Exteriors: The Castle Gate and a Cultural Revolution Legacy (文化大革命遗留下来的)

Near the end of our stroll through the village, we passed under one of the old castle gates. Readers who've been following the earlier posts about Changyucheng will remember that this place was an old castle. The garrisons manning the nearby section of the Great Wall lived here.

While the actual gates are gone, the arch above them still exists. And this arch provided us with a potent visual symbol not only of China's old history, but also of its tumultuous recent past. I know it might be hard to see on this web-sized photo, but if readers look really hard, they can make out a face on the arch. This face belongs to none other than the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao (毛泽东).

The 1960s was a particularly dark (黑暗) decade (十年) for China. It began with the culmination of perhaps the greatest famine in modern world history, the one brought on by the Great Leap Forward (大跃进). An estimated 20-30 million people starved to death (饿死了) thanks to that harebrained effort industrialize China overnight. Then after a brief interlude of stability and relative prosperity, the latter half of the decade was marked by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命).

Few if any places in China were not affected by this huge social upheaval (社会动乱). Changyucheng Village was no exception. Mao's now barely visible and faded portrait was painted on the arch by the Red Guards (红卫兵) sent to there to live among and learn from the farmers (农民).

I've done more than a bit of thinking about this picture on the arch. I believe that the portrait of Mao may have helped spare this little remnant from the old castle from being torn down. As anyone familiar with the Cultural Revolution well knows, these years were immensely destructive to China's old cultural heritage. The Red Guards were determined to smash the “four olds” (破四旧), namely old ideas (旧思想), old culture (旧文化), old customs (旧习惯), and old habits (旧风俗).

The British journalist Jasper Becker has written a terrific new book on the history of Beijing, CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY. He notes that in one month alone, the so-called “Bloody August” of 1966, the Red Guards ransacked 33,000 houses in Beijing and destroyed 3 million tons of books (that's right folks, 3 million tons, not 3 thousand tons). And many other valuable relics—vases, statues, furniture, and the like—were smashed up.

The Shanghai Museum's priceless collection of pottery, vases, and other relics was saved only through the cleverness of its curator, Ma Chengyuan (马承源). At that time, Ma was 70 years old and had finely honed his survival skills. Before the Red Guards could make it to the Museum to destroy the collection, Ma dressed his staff in Red Guard outfits and had them paint Maoist slogans all over the cupboards and display cases. When the real Red Guards showed up, they were told they had arrived too late. And in any case, these people refrained from breaking open the cases in which the treasures were stored, as doing so would have involved physically attacking Mao's words.

To be sure, the Maoist portrait on the arch was not a clever stratagem aimed at sparing the structure from revolutionary destruction. But I can't help but think that it had that impact, even if such an outcome was far removed from the ideals and intentions of the Red Guards who painted it up there in the first place.

So the arch still stands and provides visitors to the village with a powerful reminder of China's distant and not so distant past.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

文化大革命遗留下来的 (wen2hua4da4ge2min4yi2liu2xia4lai2de5). As noted in earlier posts, 文化 stands for “culture,” while 大革命 means “great revolution.” According to my good friend, 路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4), “legacy” should be translated here as 遗留下来的.
毛泽东 (mao2ze2dong1). “毛” is the family name—the family name precedes the given names in Chinese names—while “泽东” means “light of the east.”
黑暗 (hei1an4). According to several Chinese friends, unlike their English counterparts, Mandarin speakers never use this adjective to describe the weather, as in “It's a dark day.” It's only used in connection with historical periods and actions. For example, you can say 黑暗的行为 (hei1an4de5xing2wei4). This literally means “dark deeds;” “ 行为” has several meanings, including “action”, “deed,” “conduct,” and “behavior.”
十年 (shi2nian2). “十” means “ten” and “年” “year”, so this character pairing is, like most of he ones in Mandarin, very logical. The 1960s in Chinese is 六十年代 (the 六十 combination is the word for “60”, while the character, “dai”, means “generation”).
大跃进 (da4yue4jin4). “大” means “big” or “great”, “跃” means “jump” or “leap,” while “进” can be translated as “advance” or “enter.”
饿死了 (e4si3le5). “饿”, which is pronounced like “eh”, is the Chinese word for “hungry”, while 死 means “to die” and “death.”
社会动乱 (she4hui4dong4luan4). “社会” is the word for “social” and “society,” while “动乱” can also literally be translated as “reckless motion.” By itself, “乱” means “reckless” or “wild.” So children who are wildly running about are 乱跑 (luan4pao4; 跑is the verb “to run”), while people making wild and reckless statements are 乱说 (luan4shuo1; 说 is the very “to say”). And Mandarin has a very peculiar four character phrase—these are called 成语 (cheng2yu3)—for a thoroughly muddled situation: 乱七八糟. When translated word for word, it reads “reckless, 7, 8, terrible”.
红卫兵 (hong2wei4bing1). “红” is the word for “red” and, of course, symbolizes the revolution. “卫” usually means “sanitary”, but in this context stands for “protect.” And “兵” is a shortened form of the word for “soldier” (士兵; shi1bing1).
农民 (nong2min2).
破四旧 (po4si4jiu4). “破” means “smash” or “break”, “四” means “four”, while “旧” is the adjective for “old.” However, this “old” is applied only to things, not living beings. For the latter, the Chinese say “老”.
旧思想 (jiu4si1xiang3).
旧文化 (jiu4wen2hua4).
旧习惯 (jiu4xi2guan4).
旧风俗 (jiu4feng1su2).
马承源 (ma3cheng2yuan2). This family name, 马, is also the Chinese word for “horse.”

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Exteriors: The All-in-One Temple:

After passing by the ruined school buildings, we arrived at the village's temple. This Temple serves as both a Buddhist Temple (佛寺) and Daoist Temple (道观). The photo above shows its main entrance.

The villagers put on a little show of its own kind of opera for our group. During a break in the performance, I wandered over to the Temple's exit, which provided a nice frame for the tree in the immediate background.

I'll have more to say about the opera and the people of Changyucheng village shortly. But there’s one more post left to go about the village's exteriors.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

佛寺 (fo2si4).
道观 (dao4guan4). In one of the mysteries that is Chinese, Mandarin has separate characters for Buddhist (佛) temples (寺) and Daoist (道) temples (观). And if that's not confusing enough, a Confucian temple is a 孔庙 (kong3miao3), with first character standing for Confucian and the second standing for “temple”. And the Temple of Heaven is the 天坛 (tian1tan2)—天 means “heaven” here, while 坛 is the character in this word for “temple.”

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Exteriors: An Abandoned School House, 农民工, and reflections on rural China:

During our stroll through the village, we passed by the buildings in the photo above. As one can tell from the appearance of their roofs, doors, and windows, they hadn't been used in quite a while. When I asked our guide, Hong Gao, about them, he said that they had once been the village school.

At one time 100 or more students attended classes in the village school. But now the school is closed because very few younger adults, including young couples with children, live in Changyucheng Village. These people have moved to Beijing, Changping, and other nearby cities because they offer more work opportunities (工作机会). Villagers can make much more money working in factories and other businesses, even on construction sites, than they can by farming here.

As my previous blog posts and photos about this place emphasized, it's clearly very difficult to earn a decent income as a farmer in Changyucheng Village. The growing season is short, the plots of land are very small, and the variety of crops that can be grown here are limited.

I just finished reading Michael Meyer's fantastic book, THE LAST DAYS OF OLD BEIJING, about the capital’s vanishing hutong (胡同) alleys and siheyuan (四合院) courtyard houses. Meyer lived in a siheyuan south of Tian’anmen Square and the book is based on this experience. It has a memorable cast of characters. One of my favorites is Meyer's neighbor, an old woman who turned her TV set on all day to a Beijing Opera (京剧) Channel. She became very irate when the small electric heater Meyer bought for his room blew out the Siheyuan's fuse box and interrupted this programming. Hell hath no fury greater than that of an elderly Chinese lady deprived of her Beijing Opera broadcast!

Another memorable character is a young shaved noodle chef named “Soldier Liu”. He got this name because he had served in the PLA. Soldier Liu's family hailed from a small farming village in Shanxi Province. At one point, Meyer took a trip to Soldier Liu's village, which is located near Pingyao, one of China's last cities with intact ancient walls. Pingyao is also where Zhang Yi Mou shot his film “Raise the Red Lantern” (大红灯笼高高挂). Soldier Liu's sister remained in the village after her brother and parents moved to Beijing to set up their noodle restaurant in Meyer's neighborhood.

When Meyer met this woman, she informed him, “Everyone except the elderly have moved to the towns.” Soldier Liu's sister added, “In fact, this has always been a prosperous village … things have never been that bad here. It's just that people know they can make more money in the city.”

The same holds true even in provinces like Hunan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, all of which are blessed with good soil, abundant water, and a year around growing season. These places have also seen massive migration (移居) from rural to urban areas. The Chinese call these migrant workers 农民工. Those from relatively prosperous rural areas can still earn much greater incomes doing factory (工厂) assembly line or construction work than they can from farming.

Over the past 1-2 decades the 农民工 has sent vast sums back to their villages. These remittances have made it possible for them build better houses in their hometowns. The money has also enabled the 农民工 to send their sons and daughters to high school—in China free universal education extends only through middle-school. After that, families must pay tuition. While it's not a lot of money, it can be a major burden for poor families. These children can now at least contemplate going on to a college or university. Finally, the extra cash has been used to buy small luxuries, such as motor scooters.

Last Sunday, March 8th, I took a stroll down one of favorite nearby places, the wide 国子监 alley by the Confucian Temple. I did a post a while back on coffee culture coming to this place and will be shortly doing a follow up story on it. The 农民工in the photo below are construction workers. Interestingly enough, they were doing a project which involved restoring old Siheyuan housing rather than replacing it with new high rises (I'll have more to say about that soon as well).

I asked one of the younger fellows about his old home town (老家). He mentioned a place in surrounding Hebei Province and added that his parents were farmers. In Hebei Province, as well as in neighboring Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, farmers are literally running out of water for their crops. Indeed, this whole area of China, including Beijing, is facing a looming ecological disaster brought on by severe water shortages.

I shot this 农民工 photo in West Beijing, just east of the Muxidi Subway station while on my way to the city's incredible Capital Museum (首都博物馆). My colleague Mike Watts mischievously suggested that the photo's caption should read, “A Hard Day at the Office”.

And in fact, these people do lead incredibly hard lives. To start with, those who are married often leave their spouses and children behind when they move to the cities. It's not just men who do this, but women as well. Many females do assembly line work in textile and electronics factories, while in Beijing, large numbers of women from poor Anhui Province work as maids. Indeed, when I lived at Erwai, I had a maid who happened to be from that province. We often chatted a bit in Chinese—she naturally spoke no English—and this lady informed me once that her son and husband were back in Anhui.

To be sure, lots of villages share Changyucheng's lack of very young people. However, there are many others where the children have stayed behind in their villages after one or both of their parents have moved to the cities to work. I vaguely recall hearing on a Chinese TV newscast one night several years ago that 25 percent of China's children are being raised by a single parent or their grandparents.

This happens mainly because of China's system of residence permits (户口). In order to get a Beijing residence permit, one pretty much has to be born in the city. Either that, or you need to have studied at one of the capital's many universities and then and worked here for some length of time. The same goes Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities that are highly sought after as places to live.

While the 农民工 and other individuals can move to and live in Beijing without a residence permit, not having this document makes them second class citizens. To start with, they’re deprived a certain welfare benefits and other services. More importantly, they have to pay tuition if their children attend elementary and middle schools in the city.

The cities are reluctant to let anyone and everyone get a residence permit. In particular, they fear that granting migrant workers residence status will place a severe strain on social services, especially education. And this fear is somewhat justified. For example, in her excellent recent book, THE CHINA PRICE, Alexandra Harney notes that one Chinese city actually did suspend tuition for the children of non-residence permit holding families. This experiment was quickly ended after the crunch on school finances became too great.

On top of that, the 农民工 face considerable prejudice (偏见) from city-dwellers. Most urban Chinese regard these people as uncouth and uncultured country bumpkins (乡巴佬). I must say that I sometimes get exasperated with these people. This typically happens on a crowded bus or subway car. The 农民工 often plop their trademark big plastic zipped collapsing bags—these function as both a suitcase and duffle bag—in the middle of the aisle or near the doorway of crowded buses or subway cars. This cheap luggage and shabby attire makes it easy to spot the 农民工; Mike Watts calls them the “village people”.

And now the 农民工 are bearing the brunt of the Middle Kingdom's current economic downturn. Even during China's boom times, they were often seen as expendable and faced very bad working conditions. Now it has been estimated that some 20 million of 农民工 have lost their jobs due to the mass closure of factories producing export goods.

All of the news reports I have read make it clear that very few of these people are happy about the prospect of becoming farmers once again. A 农民工 quoted in one story bluntly stated, “I hate working in the fields!” And who could blame him for feeling that way?!

Over the past few decades, China has certainly undergone rapid and massive urbanization, the likes of which the world has rarely seen. Nevertheless, over half of the country's population still lives in rural areas. That's still clearly far too many people. China could grow as much food as it does now and grow it more efficiently with a far smaller number of farmers.

With the downturn in the coastal export-oriented manufacturing sector, it seems like the old model of using urban factory work to absorb the surplus rural population is no longer viable. However, every crisis present opportunities and this one is no exception. Another way of dealing with the problem of too many farmers, which would also be far less socially disruptive, would be to allow for greater rural entrepreneurship in the form of small-scale factories, workshops, and other businesses.

As Huang Yasheng, who teaches at MIT's Sloan School has argued in his recent and brilliant study, CAPITALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS (the title can be translated as 有中国特色资本主义), this was actually done during the 1980s in the early stages of the opening up and reform process. So-called Town and Village Enterprises flourished in China's poorest provinces, like Guizhou, Yunnan, and Gansu.

These privately owned business lifted large numbers of people out of rural poverty. They also played a major in making wealth and incomes more equal during the 1980s. In the 1990s, by contrast, when the focus shifted to urban areas, income inequality quickly rose, turning China into one of the world's least egalitarian countries.

The country's current leadership has recognized these problems and sought to address them in the so-called “New Socialist Countryside” (社会主义新农村) policy. And the next steps it takes in this direction will determine the future trajectory of China for many decades to come.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

长峪城 (chang2yu3cheng2).
工作机会 (gong1zuo4ji1hui4). As noted in a very recent blog post, 工作 is both the verb and noun “work”. Thus 机会 is opportunity.
胡同 (hu2tong2).
四合院 (si4he2yuan2).
京剧 (jing1ju4).
刘士兵 (liu2shi4bing1). The first character is the Chinese proper name “Liu,” while the other two is the word for common soldier. In China, one’s title, as well as the “Mr./Mrs.”, comes after one’s proper name. Hence the department in my company is called 杨经理 (Yang2jing1li3); the last two characters mean “manager.” And my Erwai students called me 高老师 (Gao1lao3shi1), or “Teacher Gao”. Gao was the first character in my Chinese name, 高德伟, or gao1de2wei3; my first and only Chinese teacher from my Henan days gave me this name and it means “great in moral stature.” I now have to do my best to live up to it!!
大红灯龙高高挂 (da4hong2deng1long2gao1gao1gua4). The first four characters means big red lantern—the character for “dragon”, 龙, is thrown in with that noun—while 高高 means “very high”. Mandarin speakers will often repeat and adjective for emphasis. Finally, 挂 is the verb to raise or hang.
移居 (yi2ju1). According to my Chinese friend, 路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4), 移居 is more appropriate to use than the Chinese word for “emigrate” (移民; yi2min2, or literally “move people”) here. That's because people who 移民 plan to or have the ability to settle permanently in the places they move to. As noted later on this post, this isn’t the case for the 农民工.
农民工 (nong2min2gong1). 农民 is the word for “farmer,” while 工 is a shortened form of the Chinese word for worker, 工人 (gong1ren2).
国子监 (guo2zi5jian1).
老家 (lao3jia1). 老 means “old”, while 家 is a shortened form of the word for hometown, 家乡 (jia1xiang1).
首都博物馆 (shou3du1bo2wu4guan3). The first two characters form the Mandarin word for capital, while the last three are the word for museum.
户口 (hu4kou3).
偏见 (pian1jian4).
乡吧佬 (xiang1ba5lao3). There are two other words for this expression. One used by Beijing inhabitants is 土佬冒 (tu3lao3mao4). The first two characters literally mean “old soil/earth.” You can also say 乡下佬. But whatever term you use, all of them are fairly insulting. Again, many thanks to 路红艳 for helping me out here.
有中国特色资本主义 (you3zhong1guo2te4se4zi1zhu3yi4). Really informed and perceptive readers will note that the title of Huang's book is a clever play on the Chinese phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (有中国特色社会主义). In both these phrases, the first character is the verb “to have”, while the second and third characters stand for “China” (literally “Middle Kingdom”). 特色 means “special feature”—you could say 堵车 (du3che1; traffic jam[s]) are now a special feature of Beijing (是北京的特色). 资本 is the Chinese word for capital, while 主义 means doctrine. So put together, they mean “capitalism.” And when combined with 主义, 社会, which means “society”, becomes “socialism.”
社会主义新农村 (she4hui4zhu3yi4xin1nong2cun1). Here as in so many other cases, Chinese word order is the opposite of English word order. Literally translated, the phrase means “Socialism” (社会主义) “new” (新) “countryside/villages” (农村).

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Exteriors: A bit of Color

One could get the impression from the photos in the previous two blog posts that Changyucheng village is a very drab and colorless place. However, not everything was tawny and beige/light brownish colored. A few of the houses, including the one we dined in for lunch, were painted in bright colors (see the photo above).

Meanwhile, the doorway and panel in the photos below also enlivened things up a bit.

Since this is a very short post focusing on photos, there is no Chinese translation!

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) Village, Exteriors: Bundles of Wood, Grist Mills, Mules, and Mountains

This summer people all over the world could see on their television sets how Beijing has changed and modernized at lightening fast speed in recent years. And the same can certainly be said for most of China’s other major cities.

In Changyucheng village, however, signs of this kind of change were few a far between. The only examples were the satellite dish located near the village's administrative office, some solar powered lights, and a few pieces of brand new outdoor exercise equipment.

This equipment was located at the spot where our bus parked and dropped us off. The village thus had a small outdoor exercise area, which was more than a little ironic, seeing as a) most of the people living here are rather old (more on that in a later post) and b) get plenty of exercise doing normal farm chores. In fact, they are certainly way more physically active than your average Chinese Yuppie (小资) living in Beijing.

Our guide, Hong Gao, told us that the solar powered lights and exercise equipment had been recently installed by the Beijing Government—this place is part of the self-governing Beijing municipality. Thanks to its history, the Beijing Government views Changyucheng Village as a tourist attraction and has tried to spruce the place up a bit.

However, save for the minor modern touches, I'm pretty certain that the village looks very much like it looked in the 1950s and 1960s. So coming here was very a lot like going back in time. For example, one thing that was much more conspicuous than the lights or exercise equipment was all the big bundles of wood beside the houses and stacked against and on top of the stone fences (see the photo at the top of the blog post). When I asked our guide, Hong Gao, about this, he replied that the wood was used for heating.

None of the houses, it turns out, have any kind of normal heating, not even coal stoves. But all of them do have old-fashioned brick beds (火炕). The wood is burned in these beds to keep people warm and cozy at night. Since the village is located in the mountains, winters here are even colder than in Beijing. And gets mighty cold during the winter down in Beijing!!

Despite being nestled in the mountains, Changyucheng is a farming village. People here grow wheat (小麦) and corn (玉米). An old-fashioned stone grist mill (磨粉机 or 磨粉面) is used to grind the corn and wheat. I saw two of these grist mills during our stroll through the village and one of them is in the photo below.

Indeed, modern farm equipment (农业机械) was conspicuous in its absence. I didn't see a single tractor (农用拖拉机), not even an old beat up one, during our visit here. Of course, the plots farmed in the village are quite small, so farm machinery wouldn't be of much in this place. I did see plenty of donkeys (驴) and/or mules (骡子). Readers can tell from the grist mill photo that the mill's heavy grindstone (轮形磨石) is pulled by these donkeys or mules.

For some reason, I didn't do any close up photos of them and can't really tell the difference between the two animals. So readers will have to settle for the photo below. It was shot from a very low ridge overlooking some of the houses and the courtyard where two of the animals were standing about.

The old-fashioned grist mills and farm animals brought back one of my most vivid memories of Henan Province—I spent my first year in China there. Henan is the most densely populated province in the Middle Kingdom and has largely been bypassed by the country's recent economic boom. The main reason for this is that too many of its people farm very small plots of land. One day, when riding the bus from Zhengzhou back to my then hometown, nearby Xinzheng City, I noticed some farmers separating wheat from the chaff by hand.

The last two photos in this blog post will provide readers with a first better impression of Changyucheng Village's physical environment. One photo is looking east, while the other is looking west. Both were taken from more or less than same place. It's obvious that there are not a lot of houses extending either direction. The photos thus make it clear that Changyucheng Village's valley isn't much of a valley.

Thus the amount of land for growing wheat, corn, and vegetables (青菜) is quite small. While some almond (杏树 xing4shu4) and fruit trees (果树) grow on the lower mountain slopes, there really isn't much in the way of a crop surplus to be sold on the market. I'll have more to say about that and how it's affected the village and our visit to it very shortly. Stay tuned!

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

长峪城 (chang2yu3cheng2).
小资 (xiao3zi1). The first character is one Chinese word for “small”, while the second character appears in the word for wages/income (工资; the second character is gong1). Hence it also means “petty bourgeoisie”. However, in the new China, it has increasingly been used to refer to young urban people who hang out at coffee bars and yearn for a hip, sophisticated, and affluent lifestyle—in other words, “yuppies” (at least this is what one Chinesepod.com listening lesson claimed). Who says that socio-economic change and changes in language are unrelated?!!
火炕 (huo3kang4).
小麦 (xiao3mai4).
玉米 (yu4mi3).
磨粉机 (mo2fen3ji1) 磨面机 (the middle character is mian4). 磨 is a shortened form of the word for grindstone (see below), while 粉 can be translated as powder—it also appears in the Chinese word for chalk (粉笔; fen3bi3)—and 机 is a character that appears in most words describing instruments or machines. One example is the word for mobile phone, or 手机, which literally means hand-held (shou3) machine/device.
农业机械 (nong2ye4ji1xie4). The first two characters mean “agricultural”, while the latter two mean “equipment.”
农用拖拉机 (nong2yong4tuo1la1ji1). This literally means tractor (拖拉机) used (用) in farming (农).
驴 (lü2).
骡子 (luo2zi5). Both this and the above character contain a character within the character, i.e. the one for “horse” (马; ma3), which provides a clue about its meaning.
轮形磨石 (lun2xing2mo2shi2). The first two characters mean “round shape”, while the last two mean “grinding stone” (石 is the Chinese word for stone/rock). For those who are curious, Mandarin does have an equivalent to the English idiom “nose to the grindstone.” It's 埋头苦干 (mai2tou2ku3gan4). This literally means to be “immersed in difficult work.” The first two characters alone mean “up to one's ears”, “Up to one’s ears in work” is 正埋头工作 (zheng4mai2tou2 gong1 zuo4). The first character means “in the middle of,” while the last two mean “work” (both the noun and the verb).

青菜 (qing1cai4).
杏树 (xing4shu4).
果树 (guo3shu4).

I would like to thank my wonderful friend 路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4) for helping me translate some of the less common words, especially “grist mill.”

A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) village: The Place and its History

In addition to going to two temple fairs during this last Spring Festival, I did a short day trip outside of Beijing. I went with a group of 16 other people to 长峪城 village. This name literally means “Long Valley Castle.”

The photo at the top of this post shows why this place is called “Long Valley Castle” village. No, that wall isn't part of the Great Wall of China (长城). It is a remnant of the old Ming Dynasty castle (城堡) that was built here before the village.

As one call tell from the way the wall snakes up the hill, this castle occupied a much larger area than its run of the mill Medieval European counterpart (everything here, from the population to the monuments, is oversized!). The castle was used to shelter the garrison manning the nearby section of the Great Wall. If the sentries stationed on the Great Wall spotted invaders, the main body of troops would be rushed there to man the defenses.

The village is located in the mountains northwest of Beijing and is about 100 kilometers from the capital. The city of Changping (昌平), which is home to the famous Ming Tombs (明坟墓), is just beyond the first mountain pass (山口) beyond the village. This mountain pass was the place where the ancient “Silk Road” (丝绸之路) trade route met the Great Wall and passed through it on to Beijing.

This trip was organized by a Chinese travel agency whose name is “90 percent travel.” Like yours truly, the young Chinese fellow in charge of this activity, Hong Gao, studied at the University of Southern California (USC), and I found out about this excursion through the Beijing USC alumni chapter.

The other 16 people making this trip were also all laowai, save for a young Chinese lady from Hong Kong; she works in the Hong Kong Government's Beijing office. The other laowai included a few fellow Yanks, as well as people from Britain, the Philippines, Nigeria, Sweden, and Australia.

The trip cost 250 RMB ($36-37). It included transportation to and from 长峪成, lunch, which included dumplings and local food, a guided walking tour around the village, and a performance by the local people of the village's unique brand of Chinese opera.

I'll have more to say about all this in the next few blog posts. There will also be lots more photos of this place and its people. Stay tuned!

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

长峪城 (chang2yu3cheng2). As noted in the text, this name literally means “long” (长) “valley” (峪) “castle” (城). The latter character is a shortened form of the word “castle”, which can also be said as 城堡 (the second character is a falling/rising tone “bao”). By itself, 城 commonly means “wall”, so the Great Wall of China is the 长城, or literally “long wall”—it is, of course, very, very long indeed! And the Chinese word for “city” combines 城 with the character 市 (shi4). Since the latter character means “market”, the character combination for city literally means “walled market.”
明坟墓 (ming2fen2mu4). Readers who looked at the previous blog post will know that 明 means “bright”, so the Ming Dynasty (明朝), was literally the “bright” or “brilliant” dynasty (the character 明 appears in the Mandarin word for “clever”, 聪明 [cong1ming2]). The last two characters in 明坟墓 mean “tomb.”
山口 (shan1kou3). The first character is the Chinese word for “mountain”. As one can see, it looks like a mountain. The second character by itself means “mouth” or “opening.” Since a mountain pass is an opening between two mountains, 口 is combined with 山 to form the Chinese word for “mountain pass.”
丝绸之路 (si1chou2zhi1lu4). 丝 means silk and looks a bit like two strands of thread, while 路 is the basic Mandarin term for “road” or “route.”