05.21.09
Posted in Travel at 5:04 pm by Benjamin Ross
This is the 6th entry in a series titled From the Delta to the Backwoods about my recent trip to China.
After spending two days exploring Hefei and wandering the streets Fuyang, Tex and I still wanted to travel deeper into the backwoods of Anhui. Our goal had been to see some of the most underdeveloped and isolated (relatively speaking) locales in the Middle Kingdom, and we wanted to dig even further into the thick of it. There is no better way to do this than head deeper down the administrative ladder of the Chinese map. But before explaining the next leg of our journey, let me provide a brief explanation of how Chinese administrative divisions are broken up.
The massive political unit we know today as the People’s Republic of China is broken down into a massive Confucian municipal hierarchy, much of which has been in place since ancient times. Modern China is broken into 22 provinces(省) and 5 autonomous regions (自治区) which are essentially the same as provinces, as well as 4 municipalities controlled directly by the central government. Each province is broken into geographic regions referred to as “cities,“ (市) with the largest city generally designated as the capital (省会). In addition to housing the provincial government, capital cities are also generally the hub of transport and commerce for each province. Each “city” region is then broken into various “counties,” (县) with the city center serving as the de facto hub of government, transportation, and commerce. Within each county, there is a county seat which serves as the de facto hub of the county. The pattern continues down several more bureaucratic levels, so that every last smattering of buildings across the Middle Kingdom is relegated to its place within the whole hierarchy.
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| Fuyang is a city (市) and Tex and I wanted to travel to one of the surrounding counties (县) under the administration of Fuyang, so we consulted the map, and decided to head to Taihe (太和), a county seat which appeared to be roughly an hour away according to the map. The beauty of traveling in unfamiliar parts of China is that transportation patterns are entirely predictable, and based around this municipal hierarchy. Thus, as Tex and I both accurately predicted, there is a mini bus running from Fuyang to Taihe, which departs roughly every twenty minutes. There are no set times, and no advance tickets. The bus simply leaves when it gets full. There are always enough people wanting to travel from the “county” up to the “city” that there is a constant flow of traffic in either direction. Likewise, there were also buses from Fuyang to Hefei, which ran every 5-10 minutes, and from Taihe, there were similar shuttles en route to surrounding villages. This same pattern applies virtually everywhere in China when traveling from a city to a county town. |
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| The bus cost 10 RMB (approx $1.30 USD) each way and was ridden mainly by farmers and merchants from Taihe making their regular trips back and forth from Fuyang. As is common in rural China, the bus made frequent stops along the road to pick up new passengers. |
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| Taihe was like a miniature version of Fuyang, with its drab architecture and modest streetscape. |
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| The reactions we received from most locals was as if we were martians arriving on earth for the first time. It was as if they had heard of the existence of 6 foot white guys, but didn’t fully comprehend it until they saw them in person. It was difficult to stop anywhere without making a scene. |
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| Fuyang (where we went in the previous entry), although poor and underdeveloped, is not what I would consider “rural.” Taihe, on the other hand, was I would say, more rural than urban. Thus, you encounter numerous sites that aren’t typically seen in cities, such as this veritable corn/rice processor. It looks like an old truck engine, and has the cacophonous sound of an electrical generator, but in reality, it’s sole function is to produce a rudimentary snack which sells for a mere 1 RMB per bag.
The operator pours a mixture of half rice and half corn into a funnel at the top, and then after much smoke, clanging, and dust a cylindrical tube with the consistency of a cheeto shoots out the end. The cheetoish mixture of corn and rice is then broken into sticks about a foot in length and bagged for sale. The pure rice/corn mixture without any artificial additives or flavors, provides a nostalgic reminder of what chips tasted like before the advent of modern food science. |
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| Although Taihe is small, rural, and for lack of better terminology, out in the sticks, this does not mean it was by any means desolate. I couldn’t find accurate figures, but Tex and I both estimated there must be at least 200,000 or so people in Taihe. Bear in mind, this is a town which can be traversed on foot in roughly half an hour. |
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| A common street snack we found, especially near schools in Taihe was this concoction made from bean noodles. |
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| The finished product looks like this, and like most street food in Anhui, sells for 1 RMB (approx 15 cents USD). |
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| It isn’t every day that martians descend on Taihe, especially just as school is letting out. This, accordingly, caused quite the ruckus near the school gate, as a mob of elementary school students watched Tex and me curiously as we payed for our snack and ate. |
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| The timid curiosity quickly morphed into rabid excitement as the children discovered that these two odd creatures could communicate with them in their native language. The scene which would then ensue was like nothing I have ever experienced in the Middle Kingdom. |
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| While eating our bean noodles, a mob of students began to gather, who along with their parents on the periphery, all wanted to get a glimpse at the two six-foot Chinese-speaking white dudes, Out of the blue, a little girl handed me her school textbook and asked me to sign my name on the first page. |
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| Figuring it was but a minor request, I complied and signed my name in both English and Chinese on the first page of her textbook. |
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| Seeing how I had agreed to her request, student after student, pulled out their textbooks, all waving them in my face and pleading for an autograph. |
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| Tex, who stands a good 4 inches taller than me, couldn’t escape either. Soon the both of us had aching hands from all the signatures. But the excitement on the students’ faces was too much for us not to comply with their small request. We each signed every last student textbook, plus a few datebooks from parents.Everything was going fine until all the attention attracted a police officer. The officer shot us a questioning look, and Tex and I, somewhat worried, decided that we weren’t really doing anything wrong, and even if we were, it wasn’t as if we could have escaped anyway since we were surrounded by a veritable wall of children. The officer approached me, asked where I was from and what I was doing in Taihe. As kids were still shoving textbooks in my face and pulling on my jacket, I nervously told him that we were from the United States and we had come to Taihe to experience Chinese small town life. After a brief pause, the officer reached into his pocket, pulled out his police notebook, and politely asked if Tex and I could each autograph it in the margins. |
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| The whole experience lasted 25 minutes. and when it was over, several hundred Chinese children, a handful of parents, and a police officer were all in possession of the autographs of two American tourists. You can view a video of the fiasco here. |
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| Like most small agricultural towns, Taihe’s development is centered around a permanent market located down the center of its main street. This is where agricultural middlemen (generally not the farmers themselves) come to sell their goods, and townspeople come to shop for groceries. While it’s mostly foodstuffs changing hands in the market itself, storefronts along the street sell kitchen supplies, T-shirts and slacks, umbrellas, bicycle parts, remanufactured car altenators, funeral garments, sandals, maternity clothing, toothbrushes, PCV piping, or any other household objects needed to carry on daily life in Taihe. |
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| As we had been noticing throughout Anhui, chicken was definitely the meat of choice in Taihe. |
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| While we did also see a fair share of pork, beef, lamb, and fish, chicken was still king. I am no expert on agriculture so correct me if I’m wrong, but my best guess was that this was a reflection on space constraints. Anhui contains some of the most densely populated farmland in the world, and chickens generally have a higher yield per acre than would pigs or cattle. |
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| Another pleasant culinary surprise we found in Taihe was some of the tastiest peanuts Tex and I had ever consumed. While peanuts are common in most parts of China, their taste and texture vary widely by region. I am no penutologist either, but I would posit this probably has something to do with the soil and climate. This particular batch, sold at the market, was fried up with hot chilis. They could also be purchased salted or plain. |
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| Well, I’m not sure exactly what you would call this, but Tex and I both settled on referring to it as the “Chinese Jell-O Mold.” As we marveled at this strange concoction, passers-by solicited their opinions to us as well, as this is not a common item in most necks of the Middle Kingdom. One told us, “It’s delicious you should try it.” Another cautioned, “You wouldn’t like it. It’s disgusting. Stay away.” |
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| More street snacks. These candied fruits on a stick however are no local specialty, and can be bought just about anywhere in China. Their Chinese name always seems to escape me somehow. |
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| Like major cities, small towns across China have also seen rapid population growth as many agriculturalists (or more accurately the children of agriculturalists) have left the farm to seek jobs in town. The incipient residential developments often contain wide avenues such as these, which are developed to accommodate rural China’s burgeoning automobile culture. |
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| The older, more central parts of small towns, which were laid out long before automobile traffic became common in the 1990s, generally look more like this. Enough space between buildings for a person or two to walk through is usually enough. |
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| This of course does not mean the occasional car won’t wiggle its way through streets such as this, but in a town like Taihe, most traffic on such streets is still pedestrian or bicycle. |
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| Another frequent site in small towns, caged barn yard animals on wheels. Small Chinese towns always have a way of getting me nostalgic about locally based agriculture. When you eat in a place like Taihe, you can be pretty certain that the vegetables and rice that you are eating were all probably pulled out of the ground within a fifteen mile radius and 48 hour time frame of where you are eating them. Same goes for meat, which was probably a living, breathing, eating animal less than 24 hours before it made its way to your plate. This pattern of freshness and local eating remains the norm in areas of the world like Taihe which by in large do not have access to modern refridgeration techniques. |
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| People who follow this blog regularly probably know I have a soft spot for Chinese propaganda slogans. Not that I necessarily agree with all of them, nor that I even agree with the concept of displaying vague statements in awkward public meeting spots, but nonetheless I find this form of rhetoric worth some examination. This flavor of sign is extremely common in rural China. It reads:
Stabilize, lower the birth rate
Accelerate the construction of the New Countryside
The enforcement of China’s Family Planning Policy has always been trickier in rural areas than in cities, mainly because the rural lifestyle favors having additional children, economically speaking. This, combined with lower levels of education, more traditional thinking, and generally higher levels of corruption, have led many rural families to continue the practice of exceeding statutory birth limits. The government, in its rhetoric to combat this practice, often takes the angle that a lower birth rate is necessary for the future development of the country. |
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| As is frequent in many Chinese municipalities large and small, the oldest street in Taihe is generally occupied by the lower class, and thus is rather dirty and and not well-kept. Chinese people can be quite sensitive of this and as Tex and I strolled down this street snapping pictures at sites like these, we had several locals tell us to stop taking pictures. “You should take pictures of something beautiful, not this. You are just doing this to show your American friends how poor and dirty our town is,” they would say. Which I guess, in effect, is true to some extent.At this juncture we also had an extremely difficult time convincing them that we were not journalists on assignment. “This place is not for tourists. You are wasting your time here. There is nothing to see,” we were told multiple times. |
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| Well not all the town was dirty and poor, especially not the government buildings, such as this, the “Taihe People’s Courthouse.” |
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| I’ve always maintained that one major area of city planning where China could really use some work is that of waste management. Sites such as these were common in Taihe. |
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| school children on their way to class |
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| A homeless man relaxes on the steps of a storefront on 古街 (Ancient Street), the oldest street in Taihe, with most of its buildings dating back to the late Qing Dynasty. |
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| Another shot of “Ancient Street.” In China, buildings this old (over 100 years) are ironically quite uncommon. Due to relatively short cycles of architecture, wars, limited construction materials, general turbulence, and razing to make room for new developments, I would maintain there are probably more 100-year-old buildings in Chicago than there are in any city in China. |
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| What I really love about places like Taihe is the feeling of isolation you get. Sure, they have the internet, and sure people are traveling to and from Fuyang, and to Hefei, and from there to Beijing and Shanghai, but the sense of isolation and consolidation with the small town and the its surrounding agriculture is something I never feel in big cities. |
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| During our walk we even encountered a church. |
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| more private houses |
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| The outskirts of small Chinese towns are typically surrounded by scattered houses such as these, where the inhabitants continue to farm, but are close enough to town center that they can stay active in town life as well. |
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| another one of the main drags of Taihe |
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| Here’s another common site in the countryside: small children wandering around unsupervised, and often playing with sharp, pointy, and/or flammable objects. |
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| For retirees, their days are often passed playing and spectating at card and board games which take place out in the open public. |
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| Games range from regional versions of poker… |
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| …to mah jongg, which is also highly regional, with different parts of the country each playing with a slightly different rule set. Regardless of any difference in rules, money almost always exchanges hands. |
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| For our last meal in Taihe, Tex and I decided to sample 太和板面 (Taihe board noodles). And no, that is not a typo, these are 板面 not 拌面, with 板 implying a board or flat surface, which represents the shape of the noodle. We had seen signs for 太和板面 all over Taihe, and even a few in Fuyang, and without much other choice in dining options (Tiahe like Fuyang, has hardly any restaurants), we decided to check it out. The restaurant consisted of a single room with an open kitchen (see above) and two tables set up for customers. The noodles cost 4 RMB (about 60 cents USD) a bowl, and the owner warned us that they were “extremely spicy.” |
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| Regardless of the sticky table and the rusty bowls, the meal was magnificent, and concurs with my past experiences that many of my all-time favorite meals in the Middle Kingdom have also been some of the most economical. The noodles came bathed in a broth, which as the owner had warned, was extremely spicy. They were surrounded by green veggies, bits of wood ear mushroom, and a few scattered morsels of lamb ribs. After Tex and I had both cleared our plates, and sat staring at one another for a moment, panting, as our mouths recovered from the inferno of hot pepper. We both agreed that this had been our favorite meal in Anhui thus far. |
After three and a half days in Anhui, we were finding ourselves noticeably exhausted by dust in the air, the loogies on the ground, and the cigarette smoke in emenating through poorly-ventilated indoor spaces. While these are all common nuissances, and easily blocked out by most veterans of the Middle Kingdom, their magnitude throughout Anhui was turned up to a notch which left us longing for the relative peace and tranquility of the coast. Our clothes and backpacks were covered in dust, our lungs were choking in dust and smoke, and our digestive tracts were longing for a break from street food. It was time to wrap up the Anhui adventure and head back to the “modern” world. We took the mini-bus back to Fuyang, and from there boarded the overnight train to Nanjing. More to come as we wrap up the adventure.
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Josh
said,
May 21, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Ok, that “Chinese Jell-O Mold” is just too much. I’ve never seen it in all my personal travels around China, and I hope never to do so. Incredible.
Bernard Siao
said,
May 21, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Great write up. I really enjoy reading your blog. That jello mass looks like head cheese. Did you end up giving it a try?
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 22, 2009 at 9:46 am
@ Bernard Siao
I like to pride myself on being adventurous when it comes to eating strange things, but as Josh implied, the Jell-O mold was just too much. It reminded me of the not quite solid, not quite liquid substance that American style hot and sour soup becomes when you let it sit out for a day unrefrigerated. Neither Tex nor myself were brave enough to give it a try.
rp8
said,
May 22, 2009 at 7:57 pm
That jell-o stuff can be really good. It’s typically made from fish or other meat (fat and protein) broth mixing with vegetables and meats and left overnight in the fridge.
Mr. hotel slipper
said,
May 23, 2009 at 12:51 am
okay..i got to admit, you been to more places than most native Chinese incl me..lol
Matthew
said,
May 23, 2009 at 3:43 am
Chinese foods are marvelous.
You can eat everywhere and your belly is comfortable.
But when you go to India, you just dare not to eat in small restaurant.
Imagethief : Comparing surfing habits in the US and China and other worthwhile weekend reading
said,
May 24, 2009 at 2:11 am
[...] wrote a memorable series of blog posts about working in a Chinese hair salon in 2007, has written a post from his recent travels in Taihe, in Anhui province. It is an affectionate and nicely illustrated portrait of a part of China most [...]
Rebekah
said,
May 26, 2009 at 4:02 am
Great photos. I like the jelly mold thingy. Looks like a massive pate jello.
Davide
said,
May 27, 2009 at 12:16 am
Thanks for the laugh, the officer asking for an autograph was priceless
Thomas Gatley
said,
May 27, 2009 at 6:06 am
Great blog – I totally agree with you about eating out, though I haven’t travelled far beyond Beijing and Guangzhou, I’ve had some terrible expensive food and some absolutely delicious dishes for a few kuai.
Scott Humm
said,
May 28, 2009 at 3:29 am
Such an interesting trip. I agree that some of the most memorable experiences I’ve had in China were in small towns undiscovered by the western travellers. One such place in Anshun in Guizhou. You should have stayed the night in Taihe and experienced the nightlife. If it’s anything like Anshun, you would have had an amazing time!
Reading your blog makes me feel very nostalgic, I want to go back to China right away. Those banmian look delicious!
Can’t wait to read about the next leg of your journey.
Ji Village News
said,
May 28, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Really enjoyed reading this, Ben. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve eaten some of the rice/corn mixture concoction type snack you pictured in the 80’s. I just don’t remember its name now.
Oh man, that board noodle looks fantastic. I could use one big bowl of that just about now!
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 28, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Scott-
I would have definitely loved to stay a night in Taihe, but unfortunately Tex and I were a little rushed in our schedule, and had to leave enough time to explore Nanjing (coming next in series.) Sounds like I should really check out Anshun. Guizhou is definitely on my hit list for my next trip back to the Middle Kingdom.
Most small towns I have visited seem to close down around 11 pm, with not much nightlife. In fact I can recall on at least 2 occasions, running around a small town just around midnight in search of a bottle of water, only to find every single shop had closed down. I guess it’s all pretty regional though. And most big cities seem to stay up late as well. At least in Fuzhou, there was always a kiosk and usually a 大排档 open pretty much 24/7 in most neighborhoods.
Jamieson
said,
May 30, 2009 at 4:25 am
The Jell-O mold thing looks a bit like brawn. My Grandmother used to make it at her home & you can buy it at the Delicatessen counter in large supermarkets back home in Australia ! *salivating at the prospect*
J.
KK
said,
June 2, 2009 at 10:18 am
Candied fruits are called 冰糖葫芦?
Benjamin Ross
said,
June 2, 2009 at 7:02 pm
@KK
That sounds about right, although I don’t recall ever hearing a 冰 in there. That could possibly refer to a frozen version, eh?
KK
said,
June 8, 2009 at 8:30 am
@Ben
冰糖=crystallised sugar. The 冰 (ice) here has nothing to do with ice/frozen.
According to http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/冰糖葫芦 it is also called 糖葫芦.
Judith
said,
December 6, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Thank you so much for the pictures and commentary on Taihe. Our daughter was adopted from the Taihe SWI (we now live in Iowa) and it meant a lot to our family to see where she came from. We are so grateful for your interesting travel blog here.
Liu Shuo
said,
December 28, 2009 at 9:11 am
A friend of mine sent me this link a few minutes earlier,and it’s really a surprise to find out that you’ve explored my hometown,Fuyang(as you may know,Taihe is part of it).I read you blog with a great pleasure.All those appear above are so familiar to me.And I am so glad that you’ve find what I want to introduce to a new comer most,the food. My hometown is less developed compared with some other parts of China,but life here is not lack of fun.
Hope you discover more in China next time you back here.
Ruthie Knights
said,
January 11, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Thank you for your blog and your photos of Taihe. Do you know if there is more than one town named Taihe in China?
My daughter, adopted from China in 2005, was found at the Veterinarian’s Station in Taihe, in 2004. I have not been able to find pictures of Taihe, until I came across your blog today. I was told that Taihe was about two hours from Fuling, where she was taken to an orphanage. Were you about two hours from Fuling?
Benjamin Ross
said,
January 13, 2010 at 1:20 am
@Ruthie
It’s hard to say, but there are probably dozens of towns named Taihe in China. When you transliterate Chinese into English, you end up with a lot of words that would look different in Chinese, but look the same in English, so without Chinese characters and/or nouns, it’s difficult to know for sure. I do know of a town called Fuling, located in Chongqing municipality (most known as being the site of Peter Hessler’s book “River Town), but it is definitely more than 2 hours away from the Taihe I visited, which is located in Anhui province. Like Taihe though, there are likely dozens of cities called Fuling. Any chance you have any more information about the Taihe where your daughter was born? I’d be glad to bust out my Chinese atlas and do a little detective work.