Adventures in China

I was fortunate enough to be invited to visit a teacher's village. It was about a 40 minute bus ride from Luoyang, where her parents and her father's family still live. The village has around 800 people living in it, which is considered larger than average. It had both the elementary and middle schools for the surrounding area in it.

Her family's home was typical for this village. The village was on a rough grid pattern. The streets were very narrow in the center, and wider towards the edge of the village, like in this photo.

Each house area had the same space allocation, which was about twice as deep as it was wide. The walls of the houses touched each other like townhouses. This picture shows the doorways to three houses.

This is the front of the teacher's home. They had recently renovated the house, but had chosen to keep the same ancient style used in the rest of the village.

The central feature of a home is the courtyard. This home had rooms along 3 walls. There were two sitting rooms, 3 bedrooms, and a kitchen. Every room except one of the bedrooms had entrances to the courtyard. Since the teacher's parents were too old to farm, they raised foxes (in the cages) for extra income.

The home was sparse and much of the furniture was very old. Their home did have electricity and ceiling fans, but no running water or heating. Even the windows were paper, not glass.

Despite the older furnishings, the family cooked a huge meal for us. The teacher had two sisters. One sister was living at home again because she had just had another child and her husband is a long distance truck driver, so there wasn't anyone to take care of her.

There were other buildings in the village besides homes. This cow is tied to the building used to store tobacco (over 70% of Chinese men smoke). All the adult animals we saw were contained, but young animals were allowed to run free.

The teacher's paternal grandmother lives in the village along with all of her male children. The teacher's mother moved to town when she married. This grandmother lives alone with the support of her family. She could live with any of her sons, but she prefers to live by herself.

While the teacher's grandmother was too old to farm, she still contributed to the family economy. Here, she is making cloth shoes for her grandson.