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Feng Huang Village

By Bob McLaughlinupdated on September 24, 2018September 4, 2018

As I said yesterday – we traveled by bus for 5 hours – with a dinner break – to this historic village.

We were sitting up front above the driver so had a great view until it got dark. Mostly on country roads not motorway. I believe this construction is for Fast train to the city we have just come from.

New Motorway or fast train — Farmland – all small holdings – rice and corn being main crops.

farmland — Had to laugh when I saw this sign – just like the menus in Chinese takeaways have pictures of the food – this sign has pictures of the tourist places. Must be a Chinese thing..

signs — The new Fast train bridge

bridge — Motorways just go over the houses.

motorway — We had a shared Dinner again and back on the bus – too dark to take pictures.

When we arrived in the Village – we had to carry our bags across a small bridge and thru narrow lanes to our hotel – and yes Ruth and I had our own special hotel – Bathroom was the toilet and washbasin and shower in about 1.5 sq metres. The bed was good – we slept well.

Early morning shared breakfast and off again – this time on foot.

The next couple of photos in the alley waiting for the group to get here.

alley — this part of the village is a modern take on the old buildings – all timber.

houses — All cities, villages in China are build around a river. Check out the waterwheel made from bamboo.

river — Some modern houses

river — Part of the original City wall. You can see the top bit has been rebuilt.

houses — One of many bridges over this part of the river – wait till you see the bridge we had to use.

bridge — No not this one – but our guide did use it.

bridge2 — Laundry day – does not matter that there are thousands of tourists taking your photo.

wash day — Believe it or not – this is how we crossed this river – one stone step at a time.

stone bridge — And here is Ruth holding up the queue for a photo op.

Bit of a mix of new

some old — All Chinese tourist welcome for coffee redwine Whisky and Beer

signs6 — But not the Japanese – old parts still do not like the Japanese

sign8 — The original wooden houses of this village

old village — The stone fronted one belonged to a famous artist

old village2 — Always a Pagoda somewhere in a town or city.

old village3 — From the land of the original Chinese Gooseberry which we Kiwi’s renamed Kiwifruit comes the red heart yellow kiwifruit. It was great but boy how prices change from one vendor to another. These were Y5 per 500 grams (About NZ$2.50 per Kg)

kiwifruit — Here’s our Guide giving us some more information about this part of town (New part) – you can see the vendors ready to sell to the tourists – and I must add – all Chinese. This guide was wearing silver earrings , neckless and about 5 or six brackets and lots of silver rings. Now why am I telling you this – well remember how I told you our bus ride was nearly 5 hours – she talked for most of that time about the country side and about how healthy drinking your tea from silver pots and cups. Guess where we went from here to – you’re right – straight to the biggest silverware shop I have ever seen – owned by her and her husband. I lost count of the number of staff – 50 at least – with everything weighted before quoting a price based on current silver price. All the guides and bus drivers had things going on the side – like selling meat and fish from the bus.

guide — Vendors moved very quickly when the word went out about another bus load of tourist. They had their stall on their shoulders and off to get the best spot.

vendor — Nothing like some fresh sun dried fish – covered in flies – NOT

fish — Ruth doing what Ruth does best – shopping – but this one did not get any of her money.

ruth — I saw these in the museum but here is a bamboo carrycot with child.

carrycot — here two old friends from our tour group. They could not speak English and i could not speak Chinese but we got along just fine. They always made space for me to sit down and kept a seat for me at meal times. I enjoyed my time with them.

best friends — This is one of many shops selling Tea. This is a black tea but I think they have fermented it and you buy it in a block that is hard as nails. Ruth got some and this morning spent 10 minutes chipping away at it to get enough for her pot of tea. Those white rolls are this tea in a roll. Some of the teas are hundreds of NZ$ per Kg.

black tea — I love the detailed woodwork on the older houses – this is a restored house – their restorers are true craftman.

house — More chillies and fruit being sun dried – in a public space.

dring — There are some things we would never buy and these small fishy things are one – look closely and it is covered in flies and goodness knows what else/

flies — we are on the bus again – it is heading back the direction we came from the other night – but we are going to Chengsha. During our shared lunch break – we changed buses. Because we had now joined another tour party who had been together for 7 days there was no seats together for Ruth and I. Talk about organiser – within 5 minutes she had people moving seats and we ended up with two seats near the front of the bus. this bus ride is also going to be about 4 – 5 hours – some of that extra time was because we arrived in Chengsha at rush hour traffic. On the way I spotted this new tunnel but the main thing here is the blue entrance structure. All building sites have these. It the cities you see them all the time.

Trucks are much longer than I remember from NZ. This is a “pit stop” to give our driver a rest.