The landscape was a staircase of giants, the rice terraces were broken in green and the old women wore their colors of indigenous pride. We were in Yunnan, the least Chinese of China's provinces. A fresh wind blow, We felt the peace of those peoples.
Arriving to Yuanyang was leaving the labyrinth. I still accompanied us in a journey that she began in Shanghai, toward 2.600 km, We are much earlier. The driver for China's final stretch was called Chou, A type of phlegmatic character, helpful and prudent on the road. I had the impression that the restless rhythm that punished us from Beijing had vanished.
I had the impression that the restless rhythm that punished us from Beijing had vanished.
We stayed in a small town where cows crossed us on the dirt roads. The houses were made of stone, The pigs fell asleep in the corners and the roosters bothered at dawn. The window of my room let the landscape to Bocajarro in, Without curtains, nor sieves. Only the rain moderated the green of the terraces, that extended through the valley until they were lost in the distance, very low, In waterfalls.
But, We discovered that life was disturbed on the other side of the people, the market and teases of town. Bai women carry clear clothes, happy and the hopis dress in dark blue, With indigenous elegance. There are many other groups that mix in traditions, changing rooms and nuances in which one is entangled when trying to decipher which group each belong.
Under a tin roof, Food stalls shoot the color of dresses and fruits. Children smile at the camera and men dismembered pigs. A 1.700 meters, There are no tourist invasions, You live with chickens and eat rice paste, or the rice broth, or fried rice, or boiled rice, or the rice liquor…
A little over a decade ago, The Chinese government decided to grant the people the grace to aspire to their own home
But even Yuanyang's remote villages are being infected with a concept that intuited unpublished only a few years ago: The possession of the Earth. The same anxiety with which it is built in cities, It has continuity in the most rural part of China. A little over a decade ago, The Chinese government decided to grant the people the grace to aspire to their own home. The reaction was voracious. Six billion souls were given to the dream of private property. The cities grew with a morbid appetite, The construction companies deployed Armies of Cranes, The brick swallowed the landscape and the Chinese began to release bathrooms, Washers and mortgage. Well, That mentality has moved to the mountainous confines of the country and buffalo, that they graze in the fields without understanding anything, Come how peoples are flooded with stones, lumber, sand and all kinds of materials. The neighbors help build the houses of the peasants. The trajin of trucks downloading cement dreams contrasted with the serenity of the landscapes to which the villagers begin to turn their backs. They build without stopping, the clock, With a anxiety that seemed almost irreverent in that environment.
They build without stopping, the clock, With a anxiety that seemed almost irreverent in that environment
Perhaps the most ironic of all lies that tenants do not have the house. The dream has an expiration date, Well, past 70 years, The Government of the People's Republic of China will keep the house and the counterpart of the grandchildren. It's just a rental, But the Chinese do not want to know anything about the future if they can play the Play Station today in the hall of his "house.
That is why we preferred to get away from the growing peoples on the way to the smallest villages, Where the houses are old stone and the farmers are no longer wanting to get up walls. There we felt safe from the tachycardia of the rest of China.
And so we pass the afternoons, drinking coffee, Looking at the landscape steps, Rice hairstyle, Under the rain, stranded in time, unhurried.
