they don’t have particularly clean water, but at least they have sprite

I am on the train from Nanchang, Jiangxi to Jinhua right now. I just spent the last few days in Nanchang, living with my dad’s side of the family. I have been bored to death. Of course, in a wonderful example of you-want-what-you-can’t-have syndrome, I will immediately wish I were back here in two days, when the super-intense work starts in Beijing. But for now, I’ll just sit here bored-but-free and blog about Jinhua.

Anyway, a few days ago, we went to my grandma’s old village, a mere thirty minutes outside of Jinhua. As soon as we got out of the van, it stank. And that means a lot in China, where some streets literally smell like shit, and you have to hold your breath before you go to the bathroom.


We were looking to buy a burial place for my grandparents, and the location we settled on, next to the large water reservoir and surrounded by mountains, had pretty good 风水 (feng shui—not the hipster kind).


Then we found the source of the stink—a soap factory. Its construction was the stimulus for the village’s recent economic development. For some reason, government officials did not find its location—across the street from the water reservoir—particularly disturbing.

After digging for graves, we went to my 姨婆’s (my grandmother’s sister’s—anyone know what that is in English?) house for dinner.

This was where there were forty mosquitoes in the room. We saw where they used to keep the pigs, the lily pond behind their house, and—what I found most fascinating—their stove. They use real fire. Real fire as in you don’t get gas or electric, you get branches and twigs and make fire every night. See picture below:

You go around the left side to feed the fire; a lot of smoke comes out of the right side and colors the ceiling completely black.

As my friend Eddie has also found in rural India, local water is never completely trustworthy. On one hand, you are really disgusted by it. But on the other hand, you realize that your family drinks it every day, and you might as well suck it up. The good news is that the factory-stimulated economic development has given the villagers the resources to buy Sprite, 10” TVs, and the undeniable notion that it was totally, totally worth it.

My 姨公 (my grandmother’s sister’s husband) also gave me some of his homemade white wine. That stuff was at least 120 proof. In the latest example of my Asian heritage, I was buzzed after a shot and a half. My grandpa was amazed I could hold it down, and in his eyes, I completed my transformation from boy to man.