The other day, I had dinner with my friend in such an interesting village in the middle of the city, that I would love to tell you about it.
In China, and it seems like especially in Guangzhou, there are lots of villages in the city. Guangzhou is changing a lot, and the city has kind of been built up around little villages. So a lot of these little villages are still here, and they even have a special name: 城(chéng)中(zhōng)村(cūn) which literally means, a village in the middle of the city.
I love these little villages because they have such a different culture when you walk out of the subway into a little back alley with electric bikes and three-wheel carts speeding by. However, it seems like the villages are starting to disappear. Several years ago, one village that was right outside of my huge apartment building was cleared and then destroyed.
I watched sadly from my window on floor 28 as the smaller buildings were cleared of people and then the demolition began. I was sad for the people who used to live in those houses. People who owned the apartments or land would be doing well. They would be compensated and/or given much nicer apartments to live in. Unfortunately, migrant workers who enjoyed the cheaper housing would probably have a harder time without the village.
As the months passed, I watched the excavators destroying one building after another. I took pictures every once in a while, because I felt like I was witnessing a historic time—the time that China changed.
But there are still some little villages in Guangzhou, at least for now, and I’m going to enjoy them while I can! Let me share a little bit of what these villages are like, so you can enjoy them vicariously.
This village had streets that were so narrow, a car couldn’t have passed through them. Bikes parked next to the buildings, making the road even more narrow. Trash littered the sides of the road, next to the shops and factories that felt like holes in the wall. If I wasn’t close enough to the side of the road, or even if I was, bikes honked as they sped past. If there wasn’t quite enough space to speed, they would go faster than seemed quite safe. Everyone was in a hurry. One three-wheel cart loaded with fabric bumped against me as he passed. “Ow!” I said automatically even though it didn’t hurt. The man driving the cart didn’t even look my way.
This village seemed to be an area for making clothes/bags. Sewing machines hummed and many of the little areas were small factories. My friend said that they would make things and then give them to the larger factories—if I understood correctly.
Some of the little shops had drink refrigerators with drinks for sale. Other shops were full convenience stores. I didn’t go inside, but they seemed like the kind of shops where all the packaged products were a bit dusty.
Food carts lined wider parts of the street selling hot dogs, fruit—mostly strawberries at this time of year, fish balls, noodles, or rotisserie chickens that spun slowly inside of a metal oven. Small restaurants were tucked inside the buildings between factories. A noodle shop. Dumplings. Rice.
My friend and I went to a large nicer restaurant. It was getting dark by the time I arrived at 6:30, and the colorful sign glowed in a variety of neon colors, beckoning me inside. We sat on the second floor that was a balcony looking over the entrance to the store and the first few tables. The room was bright, and the tables were wooden with wooden benches.
I loved the food at this restaurant. We ordered a pot of stewed chicken with vegetables underneath the chicken. We asked for not spicy chicken, but it was still spicy—just the perfect amount. There were also a lot of rich flavors like cinnamon, and I reveled in the spices.
The only thing I didn’t like was how many people were smoking around us. Food at these kinds of restaurants is pretty cheap—for less than $10, we got a giant pot of chicken (we think there were two full chickens inside) with more vegetables in the pot, and a side dish of okra. The okra was a cold dish, and since we loved the stew so much, we ended up dumping the okra in as well. So we got a lot of delicious food, but the price for that was having to smell other people smoking throughout most of the meal. At many restaurants, we can ask the waiter to ask people not to smoke, but at this restaurant, it seemed to be standard practice to smoke. Thankfully we were sitting in the corner, right next to the air conditioner, and it blew all the air away from us.
After dinner we walked back through the village—it felt even more harrowing with two people—and then past the subway to a huge lake and a surrounding park. A little river cut the park off from the rest of the city. I felt like we were in a completely different world from the village. The hustle and bustle were replaced by a calm quiet. Rather than honking bikes speeding past, the only people speeding past us were joggers.
I have such mixed feelings about the villages in the city. In some ways, I love them. I love the culture and the feel. I love the cheap food (as long as I don’t get sick afterwards), and I love this slice of China. I feel sad to think about this part of China disappearing forever. But many of the people from these villages are moving on to better lives. China is developing, and while I’m happy about that, I will miss these special little slices of a lifestyle that is so different from what I’m used to. So I’ll take the chances that I can to wander the streets in these little villages, soaking up the vibes and trying not to get hit by the bikes.