Chuandixia, Ming Dynasty Village

17 May 2010
Fortunately, Anne’s long-time friend, Lina Wang, was in Beijing for a day (between meetings in Tianjin and was able to accompany us to a historical site 140 km west of the city. Without her, we probably never would have made it, because the driver kept getting lost and was ready to give up several times (it took us 3 hours to get there, but only 2 to get back).

Two hours West of Beijing, Chuandixia is one of the few intact villages remaining from the Ming Dynasty era, roughly 500 years ago. The Chinese character representing the name of the village has 30 strokes, in three separate parts, meaning light a fire, cooking and a family name “Chuan”. The town is at a critical point between Beijing, Hebei Province and the western parts of the country and was an ancient postal route.

The tour guide was assigned to us after the 5-strong local village committee learned that Walti was a foreign journalist (they are really promoting their village for tourism).

The town has been developed for tourism, as has the entire region, which is touted as an ecological area for day trips from Beijing. It boasts rivers with re-naturalized river beds,  fruit orchards, honey bee cultures, organic farms, nature preserves – and new roads bringing visitors into previously remote valleys.

We felt like we were in a mountain village in Tessin (Italian part of Switzerland), given the landscape, climate and stone buildings, but this village is 600 years old and people still live here. It is one of the last remaining intact Ming Dynasty villages – the others have all been destroyed.

Mr. Han is a 15^th generation – and one of the remaining 60 – residents in Chuandixia. He lives in a tidy, but very simple, courtyard house in the center of town, and serves snacks to tourists. His wife was telling him not to pose for photos, but only after we took this one.

The long history of the town is displayed by the “writing on the wall”: At the top, in faded black, paintings of grapevines from the Ming Dynasty representing fertility; in the middle, in Communist red, a propaganda slogan from the cultural revolution (1950s/1960s); and at the bottom, anti-Japanese writing from the Sino-Japanese war 1945-49.

Whereas we were fascinated by the long history, our Beijing driver, Mr. Zhang, was not the least bit interested. We have found that many middle-class Chinese know their ancient Chinese history well, but have no interest in seeing how people live outside of Beijing. For them, it is just backward, and they are clearly looking forward.