Visit to Gansu Province for the Chinese New Year

Helen Wallimann

Description

In 2003 about sixty percent of China's population still lived in rural areas. And of that population, about forty million still lived in the man-made cave dwellings known as yaodong. Whereas life in the cities had changed radically, in the country change was slower and many old customs still existed - as the author of this book, Helen Wallimann, was to experience during her stay with a Chinese family in their farmhouse on the loess plateau of Gansu Province, northern China. There, during the Chinese New Year holiday, she witnessed everyday family life, the busy market, weddings and preparations for weddings, and also various traditions connected with the New Year celebrations or the commemoration of the dead. She visited people in farmhouses and yaodongs, sat with them on the heated kang, ate with them; she watched women doing the cooking, spinning, sewing shoes, doing embroidery; she chatted with old ladies about foot-binding and their work in the fields, with young women about courtship and marriage. She talked with school teachers about schools, a long-distance truck-driver about his work, the local doctor about euros and Swiss francs. She met a government surveyor, a woman who ran a bus line, a man who sold clothes in MoscowThis does not claim to be an academic anthropological study, it is simply the diary of an open-minded woman who noted and photographed what she saw and heard. Now that so much has changed and that many traditions have been lost or have lost their meaning, this account may serve as a partial record of a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Helen Wallimann's descriptions and photographs of a New Year stay in Gansu give a wonderful, lively picture of daily life for millions of Chinese people, far from the neon and skyscrapers of China's coastal cities. Frances Wood, former head of the Chinese collections at the British LibraryThrough her vivid description and the numerous photos, the daily life of the people she lived with for nearly three weeks in the midst of winter is recreated in the reader's mind. Helen Wallimann has the gift of conveying [the] feeling of being accepted as a friend of the family, of being at home to her readers. PD Dr Johannes Reckel, Curator of the East- and Central Asian Collection at Gttingen State and University Library

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Cultural studies
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838598082
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Helen Wallimann

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Credits: with the exception of image 5 (boy playing the erhu ) for which the copyright owner could not be identified, all the photographs are by the author.

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ISBN 9781838598082

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Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Glossary
Map
Foreword
Diary
Wednesday, 15 January Encounters on the night-train to Xi’an
Thursday, 16 January Arrival in Xi’an –On the crowded bus to Xifeng – How Yang Tao became a music professor – First meeting with the Yang family – I’m put in the ‘best bedroom’
Friday, 17 January My first night on a kang – Yang Tao’s brother – The bandits’ yaodong – Preparations for a wedding in a yaodong
Saturday, 18 January Trying to keep warm – Three traditional weddings – I perform an Irish folk song
Sunday, 19 January Helping the bride and groom get to know each other – The bride makes noodles – Loess – Children – Scenes along the road – The family yaodong – The farmhouse – Various toilets – Washing oneself
Monday, 20 January English in China – The village schools – Eating habits – The kang
Tuesday, 21 January The Middle School delegation – Installing a stove – Two old ladies – Making cotton shoes
Wednesday, 22 January Waiting for a bus – Buying things in Xifeng– Yang Tao recalls his high school days – Visit at his aunt’s – A shower at the public baths
Thursday, 23 January A modern flat – We return home by taxi – Wen Dongming does her washing – A motorbike ride from family to family – Foresaken wives, foresaken husbands – The soldier from Xinjiang
Friday, 24 January Market day – Depositing money at the bank – A visit to the doctor’s – Toilet habits
Saturday, 25 January Pigs in the snow – Red paper for gifts – A simple donation ceremony – Another farmhouse – Babies – Foxes
Sunday, 26 January Problems with smoke – Meimei – Visiting various relatives – A woman’s place (Wen Dongming) – They all have black hair
Monday, 27 January Preparations for the formal donation ceremony – The music teacher’s song – The donation ceremony and the banquet – The English teacher’s bad luck
Tuesday, 28 January New impressions of the countryside – By landrover to Xifeng – Yang Lanfen’s bus business
Wednesday, 29 January A little girl with big responsibilities – Folk dances – Acupuncture and Chinese medicine – Foreigners are special
Thursday, 30 January The old lady with the tiny feet – Evenings are boring
Friday, 31 January Money for the dead and other customs – Traditions on New Year’s Eve
Saturday, 1 February The men celebrate New Year’s Day in the traditional way – Portrait of a long-distance truck driver
Sunday, 2 February Visiting with Meimei – The lady who doesn’t like her husband – What the Chinese know about Switzerland – Tragic events: Yali’s story – Everyone wants to meet the foreigner
Monday, 3 February Taking leave – Yang Tao is dropped off at his sister’s house – Reflections in the car – Impressions of Xi’an airport
Tuesday, 4 February Nearly home!
About the Book
In 2003 about sixty percent of China’s population still lived in rural areas. And of that population, about forty million still lived in the man-made cave dwellings known as yaodong . Whereas life in the cities had changed radically, in the country change was slower and many old customs still existed – as the author of this book, Helen Wallimann, was to experience during her stay with a Chinese family in their farmhouse on the loess plateau of Gansu Province, northern China .
There, during the Chinese New Year holiday, she witnessed everyday family life, the busy market, weddings and preparations for weddings, and also various traditions connected with the New Year celebrations or the commemoration of the dead. She slept on a kang, she used all kinds of toilets but never flush lavatories, she washed herself in an enamel basin and cleaned her teeth out in the lane. She visited people in farmhouses and yaodongs , sat with them on the heated kang , ate with them; she watched women doing the cooking, spinning, sewing shoes, doing embroidery; she chatted with old ladies about foot-binding and their work in the fields, with young women about courtship and marriage. She talked with school teachers about schools, a long-distance truck-driver about his work, the local doctor about euros and Swiss francs. She met a government surveyor, a woman who ran a bus line, a man who sold clothes in Moscow…
This does not claim to be an academic anthropological study, it is simply the diary of an open-minded woman who noted and photographed what she saw and heard. Now that so much has changed and that many traditions have been lost or have lost their meaning, this account may serve as a partial record of a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.

‘Helen Wallimann’s descriptions and photographs of a New Year stay in Gansu give a wonderful, lively picture of daily life for millions of Chinese people, far from the neon and skyscrapers of China’s coastal cities. Red cheeks, resilience and resourcefulness characterise her friends in Gansu who work hard for their future whilst remaining closer to the traditions of the past. Both text and pictures inform, and for those who have been lucky enough to visit China’s rural northwest, conjure instant recall of freezing sunny mornings with the smell of little stoves fuelled with coal-dust briquettes, the soft pad of cloth-soled shoes and the sight of yellow sweet-corn stored in stacks around tree-trunks.’
– Frances Wood, former head of the Chinese collections at the British Library


‘Helen Wallimann lived and worked in China as a teacher in several posts from 1989 on. We were contemporaries in Changchun in 1989/90. Over the years she gained deep insights into a very diverse and fast changing Chinese society. This book is a diary of her experience in rural Gansu, very much a backwater region where time had nearly stopped and changes were small and slow. She stayed over the Chinese New Year celebrations, the most important festive season in China. Through her vivid description and the numerous photos, the daily life of the people she lived with for nearly three weeks in the midst of winter is recreated in the reader’s mind. The diary, through the objective observations of its author, in no way romanticizes the rural life. Nevertheless it provides pictures of a wedding, festivities for the dead and the living and the ghosts as well as of the daily chores, of shopping, cooking, washing, cleaning. It depicts a society in 2003 that since then has changed. The faces in the pictures bring back my own memories of many visits to rural China since 1985 and how friendly and welcoming people, who to our standards were poor, were with a strange foreigner. Some were shy, most were not and you could talk about nearly everything in a very natural and open way. I nearly always felt at home with them. Helen Wallimann has the gift of conveying this feeling of being accepted as a friend of the family, of being at home to her readers.’
– PD Dr Johannes Reckel, Curator of the East- and Central Asian Collection
at Göttingen State and University Library
About the Author
Helen Wallimann was born and brought up in Cheltenham UK. After her MA from Edinburgh University she worked in publishing in Munich, Paris and London. From 1973 until 2001 she was employed as a teacher of French and English at the Kantonsschule Solothurn, Switzerland.
Helen Wallimann taught English at Chinese universities for two years (1989-90 and 2002-03). In 2008 and in 2011 she taught English didactics to Chinese schoolteachers in Gansu Province. To improve her understanding of Chinese culture she attended various courses and seminars on Chinese language and literature at Zurich University for about ten years from 2003.
Translations by Helen Wallimann:
• from Chinese: Essays by Chinese artists and critics in Jörg Huber, Zhao Chuan (eds.), A New Thoughtfulness in Contemporary China. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2011 and The Body at Stake . transcript Verlag, Bielfeld 2013; Leung Ping-kwan, The Visible and the Invisible. Poems . MCCM creations, Hong Kong 2012
• from German: Legends from the Swiss Alps. MCCM creations, Hong Kong 2009; three novels by Erhard von Büren: Epitaph for a Working Man. Matador 2015; Wasp Days. Matador 2016; A Long Blue Monday. Matador 2018



Glossary
baijiu
liquor distilled from fermented sorghum, maize etc. and with high alcoholic content
duilian
couplets written on vertical strips of red paper and hung on both sides of the front door, particularly during the Chinese New Year
erhu
tradition