Take Me Home Country Road

I headed out to the countryside to visit another of Laura's father's friends; that guy really does have a lot of friends! It's the first time I've really managed to get more than just a passing glimpse of the countryside from a vehicle window, so I was pretty interested to see what I would find. The standard view is that China's modernisation has left the countryside behind and that conditions there are much poorer than in the cities. That’s certainly what I observed. Get off the main roads and you’re pretty quickly onto dirt tracks and (after one day of rain – mud). The houses are much more basic and designed in the traditional way. That does involve some quite ingenious design features mind you – like heat being piped from the kitchen wood stove through to the space under the bed. The bed itself is on a base of brick and tiles and it’s the cavity underneath that's heated. The place I visited had a separate fire to do this but backing the kitchen space onto the bedroom area is a common practice. Where we sat to eat lunch was heated by a tiny coal fire in a pipe attached to a pipe chimney venting outside into the courtyard. Hot water was produced through a tank welded to the side of the fire box.

The people we visited are Christians so we trotted down to have a look at their church, an optimistically huge construction built a few hundred years ago when the missionaries presumably believed it would only be a matter of (a short) time before they had converted China. Of course, as we know, it was not to be, so there's this huge church in this small village . . .

When we got back it was off to dinner with another of Laura’s father's friends at a Hui (Muslim) restaurant. I can't complain about the food! I was feeling uncomfortable though about the fact that I keep being hosted at – often quite expensive – restaurants but never get to contribute. On the other hand, I couldn't afford to go if I had to pay. I raised my concerns over this with Laura and she insisted that it is the Chinese custom that the host pays for everything – no one else pays anything. As a visitor I'm not expected to contribute anything; it's an honour for them to have a foreign visitor there. It feels strange and I still feel a little uncomfortable about it but that's how it is. I suppose if her parents ever come to New Zealand I can shout them to a nice restaurant – I'll have to start saving as soon as I get home!