Pingnan, Exploring Ancient Villages - Part 2 (Miscellaneous Notes of a 26-Day Trip to Fujian and Guangdong, No. 11)

Looking for food on the street in the morning, I saw the long-lost life scenes of the small town of Pingnan, feeling very warm.

Things like grass, roots, and branches, chopped into sections. What are they used for?

Answer: For making soup to keep fit, also for preventing colds. I couldn't quite understand the local dialect, but that's roughly the meaning.

Today, I left the arrangements to the driver.

Tangkou, a small town in the mountains of eastern Fujian, surprisingly turned out to have a group of Western-style buildings. Besides a church, there were also a women's and children's hospital, Shuhua Girls' School, and something like an orphanage or a girls' dormitory called 'Girls' House,' which were refreshing to see.

I checked the information: it was built around 1910 by the American Episcopal Church using the Qing dynasty's Boxer Indemnity funds.

It is said that after liberation, for a long time, it was also used as the headquarters of a hospital, a school, and a farm.

The vacant farm headquarters had walls covered with slogans from that era.

Rammed earth walls are not uncommon in traditional Chinese architecture. Today I was fortunate to see craftsmen repairing a wall using traditional techniques.

Digging soil, carrying soil, layering it onto the wall, using formwork, tamping...

How much can one workday accomplish? I asked.

Answer: Eight workers can do about ten square meters.

Very labor-intensive! The cost of restoring traditional buildings far exceeds building new ones.

A friend said that in the past, when villagers built houses, they would help each other, only needing to provide a meal and a feast for the ridgepole raising ceremony. Now they hire professional craftsmen, which is much more expensive.

In the early days of the War of Resistance against Japan, scattered Red Army guerrilla forces from eastern Fujian gathered here to form the Sixth Regiment of the New Fourth Army (with Ye Fei as regimental commander) and marched north to fight the Japanese.

The Sixth Regiment was a unit that produced many heroes, and it has connections to Shanghai: it established a base on Mount Mao, was the original unit of the story of Shajiabang, fought in the Battle of Shanghai, and also participated in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. The famous combat hero Yang Gensi came from this regiment.

One of my purposes in coming to eastern Fujian was to see covered bridges. More than ten years ago, in a deep autumn, a visit to Zhejiang left me with a lingering dream of covered bridges.

There are also many covered bridges over the mountain streams of eastern Fujian.

The Qiansheng Bridge (Thousand Vehicles Bridge) — a bridge with the power of four thousand horses, just the name is impressive. First built in the Southern Song Dynasty, it was destroyed twice by fire and once by water, then rebuilt during the Jiaqing reign of the Qing Dynasty. It is about 200 years old, 63 meters long, and is said to be the longest existing ancient covered bridge in China.

On the way, I stopped to see traditional mountain workshops.

Pottery kilns and finished products of jars and pots. For tea tasting, for playing with, for brewing wine, for pickling — everything you could want.

Abandoned ancient kilns

Kilns and products still in use

Slicing, machine cutting, polishing — after leaving a pile of powder, bamboo stalks become barbecue skewers.