Hutong Village
We spent our last outing in Xi’an visiting a middle class/sort of what is considered “rich” village. The bus took us an hour out of where our hotel was and the next thing I remembered waking up to was passing images of dusty land, dead trees, and little wooden stalls (or what is actually home to some natives here).
We arrive to an intersection and were dropped off and greeted by the village chief. He welcomes us and introduces himself and his son, but many of us were too distracted by surrounding crowd of children and an odd batch of dried corn hanging off the side of a house. The chief explains that they dry their corns to make porridge later, then feed the remains to farm animals so that both the animals and the townspeople receive an abundant amount of food.
Chief takes us on a tour around his village, telling us that every family is well off financially. Each home is equipped with cable television and Internet, and many families are starting to own cars. Yet, this is quite paradoxical to what the village looked like. Some of the homes looked abandoned; the children, covered in dust, looked nothing like what we typically considered “rich”.
All the young children had extremely rosy cheeks. This might be a combination of very cold weather or a tell tale sign that they were eating right. Who knows, I’m no nutritionist.
Everyone’s favorite kid was the tiniest little boy who had a toy gun. One of the students went up to take a photo with him, but grabbed and turned him toward the camera in a slightly rough way and that made the boy push away, step back and point the gun at the student. What a little gangster. At one point, two boys walked away from each other, western cowboy style, turned around and ran to one another to start wrestling. The losing kid stomped around kicking dust and marched like a drunk rapper. Wish I could explain this any more clearly, but it’s one of those things you had to be there to get.
At the end of the tour we were taken to artist Shen’s home. It was a lovely place: neat tile floors, beautiful wooden stairs. The first thing you see upon entry is a large photo of Mao Zedong, signifying their loyalty and appreciation for Mao’s influence on modernizing China. We went upstairs to see artist Shen explain her art, and how she self taught herself to create paintings and paper cutting arts. Everything she makes is inspired by all that surrounds her.
She begins to fold a red square paper before her and starts cutting it, while Tony continues to elaborate on the art of paper cutting. It is a very unique and traditional Chinese art, and the details are magnificent. Within minutes of Tony speaking, Shen snipped and snapped and finally unveiled her work.
(Photo by Shirley Wong)
Because this year is the Chinese zodiac year of the tiger, she created five tigers, the top one leading the pack. Everyone was stunned how this square paper turned into art before our eyes. We were then allowed to tour her gallery and buy a piece of art for 100 yuan ($14.49 USD) or a large piece for 200 ($28.99 USD). I was particularly fascinated by the paper cuttings more than paintings that I decided on a dragon one, which represented the year both my grandmother and brother were born.
As I paid, the tiger art stared up at me and I couldn’t help but want to take it along with my dragon. I insinuated that I loved it since my father was born on that year and because she wasn’t going to do anything with it, she allowed me to have it for free! I felt really special to be able to take the art that was made before me home to show my dad. Well, or put it next to his photo back at home anyways.
Outside the artist’s home, the sun began to set. It was time to leave the village. We bid goodbye to the neighborhood and its people, got back on the bus and returned to the over-privileged lives we all never really thought we had. But something as small as a paper art will always remind me when I’m being bratty that it’s always the simple pleasures in life that mean the most.
