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At Home in China
Alexis Salas
My China, that is, the hunt for 3000 year-old
neolithic habitations, bamboo stilt houses, and other forms of
vernacular architecture that was “At Home in China”
will remain with me through exchanges with a wild assortment of
individuals….
high-ranking government officials who are so excited to have a
foreign guest interested in their house that they invite 60 friends
over, each of whom toasts her with baijou, cell phone-, taxi-,
and credit card- loving monks, 14 year-old girls determined to
practice every phrase they know in English on me, kindly old men
who pass the days taking their birds for walks and smoking cigarrettes
from long tubes, families who have harvested the same rice paddies
three times per year for thousands of years, Hani minority women
who are quick-witted survivors with enormous hearts and a firm
belief that women look better with long hair, benefactors of Deng
Xiopeng’s economic reforms who are creating China’s
concrete hell cities while also making neccesary advances in urban
development, young children who ask to have their photo taken
with me and then ask if I am a superstar, actress, or singer (
the answer of student is ignored), ma-mas who don’t take
no for an answer, serve big portions of food, and stop it all
to watch martial arts historical television dramas, urban hippies
who relish their ancient culture and have found fresh ways to
incorporate it into their modern expereience,…and I am so
grateful to have had the opportunity to have met them. Although
awed and stupified by the vernacular architecture I came to expereince,
I believe that ultimately it will be my interactions with the
people who live in it that remain most present within me. The
Chinese are, at least to me, an often-surprising mix of friendly
and reserved. Meeting them and being invited into their homes
was much easier than I anticipated, and once in them, people spoke
openly about topics I imagined utterly taboo--- the Cultural Revolution,
contemporary Chinese corruption, economic inequalities in higher
education, even contraception. Yet, I was constantly amazed by
my ability to quiet a room with a questions I did not imagine
to be invasive ---how married couples met or what the family thinks
of feng shui and how they have used it in their home. Yet, the
Chinese are eminently hospitable…sometimes in the most unexpected
of settings… Perhaps the strangest gesture of friendship
was in a hotel restroom--after just leaving her stall, a woman
glimpsed back and saw me, the foreigner, using the bathroom, and
promptly rushed back to offer me a cookie!
Indeed, studying vernacular architecture and the people who inhabit
it often required flexibility in understanding Chinese culture.
Vernacular architecture often employs sophisticated and elegantly
simple means to resolve problems of human subsistence, yet its
creators battle inelegantly with the most funamental of problems.
A more concrete way to state my observation: China does not know
what to do with its trash. Dump sites--spontaneous, unkept, often
near the family crops or home--are an obvious aesthetic, health,
and sensory menace yet no one does anything about them. The Chinese
have a very distinct relationship with trash, indeed; many trash
trucks play the "Happy Birthday" song to let people
know they are passing!
As a note to other travellers, I strongly suggest
they bring a photo album and two-sentence description of their
project in Chinese characters. These photographs and the description,
sparked many a conversation. Of course the images of architecture
were helpful in conveying what my project was about and whom I
hoped to meet when my impoverished Chinese language skills failed
me. But even moreso, it simply made people so happy to see where
I come from and other facets of my life before I became a scruffy,
bumbling traveller.
Lastly, I would like to thank you once again
for this life changing and limitless adventure. I believe I will
carry it with me as one of the most treasured and unique times
in my life. If I can be of service to the grant, I would be honoured
and pleased to do so.
Sincerely,
Alexis Salas
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