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.”