MAY 1st HOLIDAY, Part THREE of NUMEROUS: In the village!

It was night when we arrived at the village of Zhonglianchuan, leaving the minibus parked on the main road and walking downhill to the village plateau by the light of the stars. By the light of day, the home of our host Lao Zhang looked like this:

Cave dwelling makes a lot of sense on the Gansu plateau as the soil is soft and malleable and the homes stay very warm over the long winter. Lao Zhang's compound also had some more modern structures on one side of this traditional courtyard, one of which was a room where Lao Zhang's son and daughter-in-law slept with their young son, and another which housed a very basic shower with solar-heated water. None of the homes had any plumbing however, and the outhouses were wisely kept at a distance from the compounds.

Inside the main room (it goes back deeper into the hillside than it appears):

In the center of the room is a Kang, a traditional Chinese bed on a raised platform heated from within by burning coal.

Mmmmmm... coal.

Although Lao Zhang's cave-dwelling looks a little primitive from the outside, inside there's satellite TV and some very comfy chairs. Lao Zhang's puckish grandson can often be found here watching cartoons.

The photograph above the chairs showcases a proud moment; the visit of China's ex-Premier to the village and his meeting with Lao Zhang (pictured on the right next to Premier Zhu Rongji). We were later told that in addition to having a successful farm and comfortable home, Lao Zhang had quite a bit of political clout in the area. His was considered a "model village", in large part because of its implementation of both traditional and innovative agricultural techniques (particularly in the important area of water harvesting). This is one of the reasons for Premier Zhu's visit as well as a factor in its selection as a site for Dr. Cook's dissertation research.

Me and Lao Zhang:

The entrance to the Zhang family compound:

Lao Er (son of Lao Zhang) and his son:

In his role as protector and arbiter of courtyard justice:

Lao Zhang's compound wasn't large enough to sleep all of us, so us ladies headed down the road to the home of a family headed by a man who, after a great deal of anthropological interrogation, Rachel and I decided was Lao Zhang's nephew. Here, he and wife sit on the Kang where we slept. So warm, so nice, so much tasty burning coal.

Arriving at their home, one of the first things we noticed was the ceiling, which was papered with a interwoven combination of strips of foil-like paper and strips of packaging that would have otherwise become bags of Hain Rice Cakes (I've never, ever seen these in China and have no idea how they ended up here). The ceiling of a similar room in Lao Zhang's house was papered with strips from some random potato chip or some such.

We asked a lot of questions about why this was done and why this particular product packaging was used, but didn't learn much more than that it was just what everyone did. Darn foreigners and their crazy questions!

Both of the houses also had these: solar water boilers which used very basic and very cheap (about $20) technology: hundreds of small mirrors adhered to a concrete saucer.

When you removed the tea kettle, you could feel the strongly concentrated solar heat and imagine your seven year old self killing countless numbers of bugs using the heat dish of death.

I woke early after a heavy sleep 在炕上 and went for a walk:

After a filling country breakfast Lao Er and Dr. Cook took us on a tour around the village where they talked about terrace agriculture, loess soil, and water collection and irrigation. It was fascinating stuff, but I'll spare you the details. At least for now.