Jianshui

This town where we've spent the last few days, 3 nights has been lots of fun. Can't get over how uniformly friendly people are here- maybe it is because relatively few foreigners come here, though at the moment, during the Spring festival there are lots of Chinese tourists.

Historical Tourism Chinese Style

Most of the interesting things to do here are historical cultural things, like the 2nd biggest Confucian Temple in China, a 19th century old Chinese style courtyard mansion (with 17 courtyards!!), and other old buildings. People flock to see these things now, but it is sad because a lot of the history has been lost- in the Confucian temple alot of the halls had blank white walls, where they originally would have been painted I think, and the statues looked new. Out in one of the gardens we saw some broken old statues pieces, that looked more like they might have been 'original' just lying in the grass. One of them was Confucius without a head, so it seemed like it might have been cultural revolution damage.
Jianshui used to be a knowledge centre- it's Confucian school was really succesful and half of the 'juren' (people that do well in imperial exams) in Yunnan used to come from this town! Since it was a successful town, there were lots of rich families about, and we visited one old Mansion in town that is now a tourist attraction. The Zhu Family Gardens was much worse at preserving history- the family was on the 'wrong' side in 1915 and had their belongings confiscated and over the years 2/3 of the house was destroyed. Their lifestyle (they were wealthy merchants, making money from tin and opium) was the antithesis of the Communist ideal, and houses like this just did not survive the century.
Now however, it has been completely rebuilt, and as we went through in peak tourist season, guides dressed in Qing dynasty clothes, scenes that looked like they were from Chinese historical soapies were enacted in some courtyards, there was dancing on the floating stage, and performance calligraphy was auctioned off at 300Y ($50) a piece. You did not feel like you were looking at a piece of history, more like a set at Movieworld or something! The museum at the back just said that the fate of buildings like this over the century was 'inevitable', and did not say how it came to be destroyed or anything, only explaining that although they were on the 'right' side in 1911, the Zhu family were on the wrong side later. Any evidence of the role the CCP had in the destuction of what is now celebrated is covered over. People won't be able to remember what happened, as the history is all painted over and rebuilt. Going to look at the house was not about history, but more about theme park entertainment- they may as well have built the whole thing brand new!


We did go out of town to visit another mansion- actually a village full of mansions, though not as big as the Zhu's. This was a fascinating experience, and not as 'disneyfied'. Many of the houses were still being lived in by the same families (I think the same families, since 70% of the village is surnamed Zhang!), and the woodwork and paintings looked old and original. On the wall of the Buddhist temple in town there were paintings of warfare and revolutionary slogans (which I couldn't really understand)- but found out from someone that they were done during the cultural revolution. We later saw similar paintings on the wall of someone's house. We spent 4 hours or so in this village and found it much more interesting- the history was still there to see, and i guess the houses seemed real since people still live in them. The courtyard house we had lunch in was beautiful (Emperor Kindness House), and the people had beds you could stay in, which we would have if we'd known beforehand!

Speaking of living history, in this village we saw a couple of old (over 80 they said) ladies with bound feet! We also saw a few in Jianshui too! We had heard that this area still had quite a few, as it was a wealthy town, and I guess more conservative than the east coast (we're talking about girls born in the 1930's!). I didn't think there'd be anyone still alive with bound feet, yet here we seem to see so many! The first day we were watching out for bound feet on the old ladies, and thought we'd seen some- a rather old lady whose slippers seemed to swim on her and feet seemed very small. When we actually saw bound feet they were unmistakeable and we realised foolishly that us big-footers had no idea what we were looking for (it was just a petite woman with small feet!) The venerable old ladies wear special handmade shoes, and their feet are unnaturally small. After we'd seen 5 or 6 I worked up the courage to ask one if I could take a photo, thankfully (I was a bit uncomfortable about doing this) she was quite happy to oblige. It is my own small memento of history, and something that will only be alive in photos in 10 years time (thank goodness!- remembering history does not have to be about celebrating it, although that's how it's done in China!). Two of the ladies we saw were walking, one actually quite well, but both had sticks, and the other was going painstakingly slow. Most were just sitting on the side of the road, and seemed to have some muscle wastage around their ankles maybe because they avoided walking.


Anyway, I really reccomend Jianshui as a different place to visit in China, maybe like Dali 15years ago?, Maybe not quite...Oh and the BBQ Tofu is great- sounds unglamorous though :).

Saw a dog get run over by a bus last night, felt a bit sickened, at least it died quickly! You see dogs running loose on the streets and it's almost a wonder you don't see more roadkill :(. Poor unloved little doggies, in this area- Jianshui and Yuanyang, I have also spotted a few dog restaurants too.