Rise at 6:30 – it’s still dark. Stand on the balcony and watch the sky lighten. Zhang Ke appears and goes to the outside tap downstairs to wash. While waiting I see a line of people with lanterns walking along the path to the house, occasionally tossing firecrackers by the wayside and guess this is his family.
The family arrive with a number of items of furniture, a few possessions, a sack of rice, a bag of tea and number of oil lamps I saw them preparing yesterday. More firecrackers are set off and a lamp is placed in each room along with scent-burners. The family then begin clearing away debris left by the builders and preparing breakfast. Throughout the day the lamps are kept burning and the burners are renewed periodically.
We wait for Huang Jiamin to arrive and then have breakfast – rice noodles, some sort of equivalent of popcorn made from brown rice [delicious] and a hollow ball made from rice starch [equally good].
During the morning the funeral at the neighbouring house continues, though I ‘m too busy watching and doing other things to see everything that is happening. Late in the morning we go to a fish pond and after a couple of attempts we catch a fish about 18 inches in length – can’t show you the proof as we ate it. Although it is January and less than 1000 kilomtres from Jiujiang there are butterflies all around – Cabbage Whites and others of various colours, purple, brown. It is all a bit overwhelming.
At the house a chicken is killed, plucked and cleaned for lunch so there will be a choice of meat – chicken and fish.
At midday there are more firecrackers and gongs from the funeral and a procession sets off for the burial ground.
After lunch I go with Huang Jiamin and Zhang Jianhua [Ke’s younger brother] and we walk along the valley for a few miles passing many orange groves. On the hillsides are areas where the woodland has been cleared away and replaced by orange trees and other areas where the terracing is still being prepared. The terracing must take a while to dig on the steepest slopes. Eventually we turn back and on the return walk we turn off the main track and start climbing the hillside. It is very steep in places and the woodland prevents us seeing the top. Huang Jiamin gives up and Zhang Jianhua and I continue up to a point where the path becomes level and runs along the hillside so we struggle directly upwards until we reach the ridge top. I won’t say the view is magnificent – it doesn’t equal a Pennine view – but it was worth the effort. Getting back down is more of a problem as the sides are very steep so we move through the undergrowth until we find a better place of descent. We slip and slide using trees and stumps as the ground is stony and loose until we reach the path and then go back down to rejoin Huang Jiamin. We continue on our way back to the house via a different path and when we are in an area that I recognise I stop to sit down and take in the view and realise I am sweating from the exertion and the heat. While sitting I notice the sound of crickets all around me, something we won’t hear in Jiujiang for several more months – I’m looking forward to the return of the warm weather. Zhang Ke maintains that Guangdong only has three seasons as there is no winter, Huang Jiamin says Jiujiang only has two seasons, summer and winter. Does this mean that Hoylanswaine only has two seasons also, winter and 6 months of bad weather?
Then return to the house. Later in the afternoon a group of us go to the old house on the back of a trailer towed at very low speed by a strange looking engine. It looks like an oversized lawnmower but it is a general purpose agricultural vehicle used for ploughing rice fields and doing other jobs. Back at the old house we load furniture and other items on to the trailer and then set off back. I choose to walk, it is quicker. I’m not sure which of the two houses I prefer, the old one is homely and everything is well-established. The new one is lighter, better lit and, if everything worked [e.g. plumbing] would be more convenient. The hard tiling on the floor makes it much easier to clean off the chicken-shit. It is a mixture of modernity and traditional Chinese living.
We wash and then have dinner. Evening is cloudy, possibly it will rain tomorrow.
