We had a rural homestay back in March, I think. Late March. Nothing like ChinaCal; it was a wealthy village by Beijing, where every house had its kang, where there were Big Scary Dogs and a fancy village meeting hall with Lenin and Stalin and Marx and Engel flanking Mao up on the wall... there was even internet in the village office, we later found out. Kearney and I spent a lot of time lounging on our family's living room kang, which is brick bed heated by a fire, and watching soap operas with our nainai. We also interviewed quite a few old people about their lives, found out that everyone had high blood pressure and strokes, and that nobody really controlled their diets. We also ate way too much meat, including pigs' feet. A little traumatic to two mostly-vegetarians...
Incidentally, right after I got back I found out that my summer internship plans had dramatically fallen through, and after some panicking Connor gave me a link to the ChinaCal clerkship site. And the rest is history... in the post below this one.
We also ran away to climb a closed-to-the-public bit of the Great Wall (my 4th time), and then the program director got mad at us for endangering ourselves. It was fine, really, though.
Without further ado: pictures.
Kearney and I stayed in the younger daughter's room while she was away at school.
Making jiaozi in Sean's family's house's courtyard.
Men drink beer; women drink almond milk.
While the other levels sat Chinese class, we "studied" with the "tutors".
The government recently gave the village solar-powered street lights - complete with propaganda posters. 时代不同了／男女一样好．Times have changed! Women and men are equally good.
Village clinic (and the local elliptical).
Went hiking to some pagoda foresty thingy.
The full complement in the meeting hall.
Our host family on the kang.
Door hangings made out of cans and candy wrappers and such, and paperclips.
No comments:
Post a Comment