Holiday in Jiangxi

Earlier this month, dashed down South for a quick holiday in Jiangxi -a province that is not really famous for anything really of note. However we paid a visit to Jindezhen, famous for its pottery (or China) I suppose. Here you can see a dragon made of pottery in the main square of the town. There really was not many signs of pottery left in the area; presumably it is all in mass production and factories mostly. However there was some karaoke in the local park that kep us busy (i.e. everyone paid more attention to us watching the karaoke than to the karaoke itself). Next we were off to Wuyuan county, and specifically to the least toursitic (but hopefully still pretty villages) we could find, since the area is getting increasinlgy well known for tourists.

The highlight of the trip was Likeng, a town that has not been touched for centuries, and even the tourist groups barely bother with spending more than 20 minutes there. Life still moves slowly, although the young people have, of course, moved elsewhere to earn money. The village has streams running through it and the houses are pretty untouched. Since the village was determined a suitable site for toursists in 2000 the government gives each village a certain amount of money (from the admission fee us tourists pay to enter the area) which boosts their income and, presumably, restricts the changes they can make to the homes.

Here, as with the other villages we went to), the locals had expanded their houses into hotels, where we stayed. In Xiaoqi we found 2 villages, 1 of which no-one went to and the other 1 of which there was only 2 coaches all day. It was not as pretty as Likeng, but we had a wonderful meal with a local guy who was an entrepreneur offering guide services and all sorts.

Food in his house involved a journey into the kitchen to see what they had (nothing) and then a list of possible items from his wife; she then went and picked the food and cooked it. Lovely and fresh! In between the two villages i took this fantastic picture, totally by luck, as the rain started coming down. The next village was near Jiangling, in an area famous for its yellow Rape. Except not the season we were there. So there was no-one there and everyone was surprised when a couple of foreigners wondered into the village looking for somewhere to stay.

After lunch (some rice that was cooked so it tasted like potato!) we were still hungry. How spoiled we are for food normally. Look at the grandfather, who evidently had been working hard and eating little all his life. We did not see him drink any beer, so it must have been his son (with a large beer belly) that the crates are for in the background (we were told it is cheaper to buy the beer in bulk!)

We went wondering up into the hills, found a canal (later were told it was taking water to a hydroelectric station to generate electicity), strolled along it till we came to a new road that was being built and ended up at Mountain Lake (3 hours later), where we found a house being dismantled tile by tile and a number of run-down delapidated hotels.

We also had a small problem when Andrea's sandle broke and had to hitch a lift with the old women who collect recylable rubbish once a fortnight to take to the town and collect money. In a truly memorable experience the 2 of us were squished in with 4 other women plus the driver as they drove at top (i.e. walking) speed to their destination dropping us off on the way. There is a short movie clip here.

And then, after 1 last night and more walking around the local countryside buying ice lollies it was time to leave. Although, from Shenzhen (near Hong Kong) it had taken us 1 over night train, 1 express bus, 1 local bus and a series of motorbike rides to get to this place, we were right next to a brand new expressway that goes to Shanghai in about 6 hours. If only we had a car like all the other Chinese tourists who were in the Wuyuan area!