A visit to Wang Kai's home town

Wang Kai invited me, Ling Ling, and Marianne (artist-in-residence at CEAC) to join him and his girlfriend Li Ling for a two-day trip to his hometown, Gantang Zhen （甘棠镇）, in East-Fujian. The high-speed train from Xiamen to Shanghai brought us to Fu'an in two and half hours, cruising comfortably at 205 km/h.
At the Fu'an train station, a friend was waiting with a mini-bus to drive us the remaining 35 km to Gantang Zhen, upstream along the Baima river, passing several large shipyards.
Gantang Zhen is a small town with several hundred years of history. Once surrounded by a city wall, but at the present only the encircling canal remains.

Wang Kai's family lives just at the outside of this canal, close to one of the bridges into the old town. Many of the traditional stone houses in the old town have been replaced with the typical concrete/brick buildings emerging everywhere in China and other developing countries. Wang Kai's family also just build a large five-storey house for three brothers and their families, each having their own store front and entrance. The building is not nearly finished (like so many buildings), and at present only two floors are in use, the upper floors still an open concrete structure without walls. Even the finished floors look like they have been occupied prior to completion, with a mix of brand new furniture on polished floors, bare concrete, and electrical wiring hanging from unfinished ceilings. It doesn't seem to bother anyone. Interesting detail is that the large modern kitchen (with gas stove, microwave, and a range of electrical appliances) also has a traditional wood-fired stove build into one corner of the stone countertop, with a large build-in wok, as seen in traditional Chinese kitchens in villages in the countryside.

Wang Kai's father had booked a couple of rooms in a decent hotel around the corner, and after we dropped our luggage we went for a quick tour of the old town under Wang Kai's guidance.
It was a beautiful day, and Wang Kai showed us the house where his grandmother used to live, now almost a ruin, but interesting to see. The old town still has many stone and wooden houses, some with clay walls, often having the front door wide open, offering a glimpse inside the people's livelihoods.
We visited a small temple, where Kai showed us how to read your future after shaking a container with numbered wooden sticks until one comes out, which leads to a written prophecy.
The town clearly isn't used to foreign visitors, and we got a lot of stares and sometimes a bit more engaging attention. It reminded me of my earlier travels in more remote areas of China, and the curiousity is still mutual. Needless to say, there where many excellent photo opportunities.

Back in the house, we were treated on a terrific home-cooked dinner, with crab, fish, and lots of interesting local dishes. This was only the first, the next days more lunches and dinners would follow, all equally overwhelming, not to mention the locally produced alcohol, consumed in more than adequate quantities. After dinner we went to play pool in one of the local pool halls, where Kai played since he was a teenager. His skills are impressive, and Li Ling's too.
The next day we visited Wang Kai's former high school, where he met Li Ling, who is from a nearby town. Her mother joined us for one of the dinners, this time on invitation by one of Kai's uncles, in an excellent restaurant. Of course we were invited by all Kai's well-to-do relatives who were eager to show us their houses and children. In the country that gave birth to the one-child policy, I have yet to meet a family who actually has only one child. Laws are very flexible in China, if you can afford it.

We also paid a visit to the Zhongde temple （种德禅寺）, a large complex, still partly under construction, financed by a wealthy local who made his fortune in Singapore. You often see Chinese who make a fortune overseas come back to their hometown to use their wealth to build a lasting memory for the community they were born in.
The last day it was raining lightly, which prompted me to buy a pair of rubber boots, which I have been planning to buy for a while, but never found a pair attractive enough. Here I found a nice pair of slightly transparant brown boots with bright orange soles. Smart looking, and only 20 RMB a pair.