Palm trees

On Monday and Tuesday of last week I had my first trip to the countryside—to Qian’an in Hebei Province, about a two-hour trip by car from Beijing. Qian’an is apparently a “rich” place in the countryside—it provides much of the iron for Beijing, and has so historically. That is, it has provided useful iron to Beijing, as opposed to the backyard steel furnace variety that was in vogue during the Great Leap Forward (the late 1950s version of tragic Chinese history). I went with my NGO friend, Xie Lihua, and two journalists from her magazine Rural Women. We visited two enterprises run by women and then had dinner in a peasant home. Then to add to the surrealism of the experience, we stayed in the Qian’an “city government” hotel, which would have been equivalent to at least a four-star hotel in Beijing or other large Chinese cities. Apparently Qian’an has used its iron wealth to build nice buildings that they can then host guests in, such as NGO visitors from Beijing, or, even better, officials from Beijing who come to see how hunky-dory things are in Qian’an. My hotel room even had a bathtub, which was a big thrill, along with a scale, which, to my great relief, was not working properly and kept telling me that I weigh 20 kilograms (like 45 pounds—Chinese food can be quite healthy, but not that much so).

It is not quite clear that this would really fool officials, given the general poverty of Qian’an county once you get out of the county town. (And just for some perspective—Qian’an, a “small” county town in China, has a population of over 100,000). At one enterprise we visited, a rural foodstuffs corporation, we asked the average salary received by the rural women working there, and learned that it is about 500 yuan per month. This is the same as I paid for my three-month membership at the King Gym—about $65. And these are “good” jobs, “opportunities” for these women.

No running for me. However, I did get some exercise participating in the “fan dance.” After dinner in the peasant home, we went back by the village where the head also runs a dairy enterprise. She used some of her earnings to renovate the little village square, so that it now includes things like yellow and red neon-lit plastic palm trees (like I said, surreal). Every night, villagers gather and perform the “fan dance,” which involves traditional Chinese instruments and dancing with fans in lines. This can be viewed all over the place on evenings in China—Jim and I used to watch it in our old neighborhood when we lived here. Many participate, though it tends more to older women. In this village, the dairy-farm woman had purchased costumes and make-up for participants. Anyway, Xie Lihua and myself joined in for awhile, to the great amusement of the spectators. Seeing foreigners do such things is rather unprecedented. When I can, I’ll try to post a photo or two.

The following day, I also go to be a laowai (today’s Chinese Word of the Day)—at a forum for rural women village leaders, I got to sit in front with the other “experts” with a placard proclaiming my (Chinese) name. I did not say one word, but apparently my presence was seen as somehow of use to someone.

So, our word today is laowai, a word in Chinese that literally means “old outsider” but is usually just used to indicate that a foreigner is on the premises. It used to be that you would just get on a bus and you’d hear people muttering “laowai” (I always wanted to learn to say “No S---“ as a response). In Beijing you can buy t-shirts that say “Laowai laile (the laowai is coming)” on the front and “laowai zoule (the laowai is going)” on the back. Laowai zoule!