Jiaojiehe Awards 2009
Our own Jiaojiehe House:
Jiaojiehe environs:
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Normally I wait until later in the year to
make my 'new building of the year' award in Jiaojiehe, but this year we
already have one of such outstanding merit that it is impossible to
contemplate a serious rival emerging. First though a reminder that
previous nominations are shown in the 2007/2008 articles linked in the
pane on the left. Generally my barbs have been aimed at rich and
insensitive incomers, this year they are aimed entirely at the people of
the village themselves, particularly, but not exclusively, those elected
(yes, elected) to administer it.
When we returned to Jaiojiehe in Spring 2009 after our South East Asia Odyssey, we found that the character we called Shakespeare whose marbles were admittedly not well arranged had been found a place in a mental health institution and his rather run-down house was therefore vacant. This is it in 2005: In quick time it was demolished, a wall built round the site and a base erected for the village's new cinema: So far, so good, I had my doubts about the car park to be built on the filled in area to the right, but at least the base was of near 'traditional' local style stone and concrete construction. My doubts started, however, when the frame was erected: Two days later the walls and roof arrived, multiple sandwiches of two pieces of thin steel cladding separated by a slab of untreated polystyrene (the latter now blowing all over the village), in other words it's the kind of building you would have expected to find at the wrong end of a small industrial estate at the back end of some urban sprawl. Which undoubtedly is what it is, my guess is that this represents one result of the government's economic stimulus to help the construction industry. And this is it in its full glory, a building of such monumental yet simple ugliness in a beautiful environment that it takes your breath away. Yuehong christened it "The Coffin" which may yet be a self-fulfilling prophecy if the villagers smoke inside it. I feel very sorry for the retired couple whose dream country house now has this backdrop: You can judge the effect of the new building on the village from this bird's eye view. Our own #1 house is near the top with large tree almost hiding it. #2 is visible in the middle with its twin lawns but #3 to the right of it is hidden by the trees. The red-roofed house is new for a villager who has blasted a road between our houses which has damaged the boundary walls and left the place looking less than tidy. On the right is the place I dubbed 'Blot on the Landscape' in 2008, even after over two years of development the garden is a barren brown patch with most of the original trees dead or dying and expensive bought trees struggling to establish themselves. After which, the main environmental news seems like small beer. A couple of years back a dam was thrown across the stream at the entrance to the village raising the water level. Predictably most of the beautiful mature trees in front of the bath house are now fit only for firewood as they have 'drowned' and the rest will follow, there is another dam built 30 metres down with just the same result. In the foreground are the remains of the ready made lawn given to the village in 2007 and never maintained, it will be a giant weed patch when the rains come. Downstream, one of the villagers has found the best way to get rid of unwanted furniture: I spent a morning collecting and burning household rubbish which had 'accumulated' during the winter below our smaller houses. A week later there was another large similar pile and, walking along the road below the village, the river is awash with similar jetsam: Some bushes are plastic bag trees underneath which lie the heavier plastic items which some villagers have simply thrown over the small wall at the bottom of their garden. The tourist invasion has yet to start in earnest, but this is a foretaste of what this year's sophisticated Beijingers consider to be eco-tourism, it's the current end of the road built into our formerly virgin east valley by a would-be developer. It really makes me want to give up, despite the natural beauty of our small patch: Yuehong has once again organised a splendid show in the garden - the small roses are in the lane outside as a discouragement to the village dogs, anything better would be plucked by passers by: Sometimes our desert island seems large enough to ignore the fact that it is surrounded by an ever growing ocean of shit, at other times the stench is overwhelming... |
Rob and Yuehong Dickinson
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