Happy Year of the Horse! 吗年快乐

As usual this time of year, it's when a billion people travel all at once, largely to their hometowns, as people in China are in large parts 'Migrant workers' in their own country.

I was no exception, since I'm now married to one, and so I can no longer enjoy my time for more than a couple of days, instead having to get a 5-hour bullet train out to Jiangxi province - or Shenzhen near Hong Kong, depending on the year.

This year felt a little different than previous ones for a few reasons, but one big one was just how far into the countryside we actually shuffled into.

The usual place, Shenzhen, is a mega city that didn't exist 50 years ago, but is now a futuristic hell-scap... I mean, utopia, of around 15 million people.

Instead, we started off going to a 'small town' called Ganzhou, with a population of merely 9 million people - More than New York or London, for perspective.

Here, the hotels were like $30 for luxury living.

After that we had to drive several hours to actual "countryside", which to me was a large county of 350,000 people but whatever, called Xunwu.

Even here, the roads and general development at least on the surface level, looks pristine. The sense of community is palpable, too. I mean, where else would you see this outside of a movie?:

Here's one of my fave pics below from the trip. It's like a Spot The Difference photo. Each bike superficially looks the same, made from the exact same bits and bobs, but each one also has various subtle differences. The more you look, the more you see:

Here's a close up of the farthest bike with its upside down branding:

There was quite a bit of darkside stuff you can spot if you pay attention. The musical performer behind my wife on the left of this photo, for example, had NO arms and ONE leg:

I had known years ago that these people were very often associated with various mafia, who drive them around and dump them in various places across town to perform and collect money, then get picked up and driven to the place they live (dread to think), taking the money bar a few scraps from these homeless disabled.

It's insane to think how somebody with a single limb can live life without any sort of care whatsoever, forced to busk for scraps.

A few days later, we drove another hour or so into what I can only call layer 3 countryside: not quite mud huts or log shacks I saw in deep Yunnan, but where your stereotypical image of poverty might start looking familiar.

Here, we met some family members in their home. They lived in a huge, 5-story building, but this is common. Inside, there was no heating, no windows. The flooring was the base concrete, the white walls stained from top to bottom. The seating was plastic chairs, a tiny pink one of which I was relegated to, even though my arse could barely squeeze into it (I'm not fat!).

But one thing I noticed clearly was the natural, genuine smiles of the people out on the streets and the family members at the dinner table.

It's a different kind of poverty to that of the West, where you have to desperately choose between feeding your kid and paying the bills. Here, it's more like... they have all the basics, though low quality in every aspect. But luxuries are simply not at the forefront of anybody's minds. Nobody is pining for a trip to Finland to see the Northern Lights. They're farming their own vegetables and just getting by without ever hearing the word 'Credit Card'.

That being said, they are very much aware of how much the Central Government has simply abandoned this town. Long forgotten with no public transport links whatsoever, elevated highways blasting through over your head in places without any on-ramp connection for miles and miles.

It is hidden away from the foreign eyes, for the most part, as we for the most part only see things that are within a quick taxi ride from a train station. Poverty - or, the awareness of it in any form of media, was banned years ago (to varying degrees of enforcement), with the declaration that it had been officially 'solved'. And so, these people live their lives just cruising through like the world outside doesn't exist.

In a way, it's something quite desirable. Many people in the West - especially the Libertarians - want as little government involvement as possible. This is, in a sense, a Libertarian paradise.

This is not a place where poverty being high = crime being high. This is more a communal area where everybody knows everybody, and help each other out whenever they can. Family is, of course, essential. Housing is as cheap as dirt, and you're not forcefully plugged into the matrix of always-online services and payment systems, 24-hour on-call business meetings, and massive, rampant depression.

One has only to adjust to the slow pace; to give up on dreams of luxury; to accept you might be sleeping in your clothes and coat every night through the winter.

It felt, to me, very pure and simple. Not that I'm claiming I could go from Shanghai life to Deep Countryside life and have no issue. I'm so accustomed to everything being so damn convenient I might die from the shock of it all. But still - There's no reason it wouldn't be a good, honest life for many who haven't been corrupted like me.

We also went to this AAAAA-level (basically 5-star) tourist mountain spot which, despite it being AAAAA, was utter shite. One of those stereotypical Chinese places with a glass bridge, a boat ride, and an 'ancient town' that's at least 7 years old.

It's one of the greatest tragedies of China, turning pristine nature into hyper-artificial, noisy-ass tourist spots. Speakers blasting sales and music everywhere, people with tables selling all kinds of plastic garbage for miles.

The one main attraction, a 'beautiful lake' had been entirely drained to clean up the sludge at the bottom, effectively making it an absolute dystopian wasteland, fully equipped with the most depressing black swans I'd ever seen, trapped in the mud, eating scraps people throw at them:

So yeah, that was an unpleasant trip. But at least I got my steps in.

Lastly, here's a sleeping dog:

So yeah, plenty of highs and lows to contemplate. One must appreciate and be proud of my wife, who was born and raised in this poverty until her father climbed the ranks and became a success. She herself did not leech off his wealth, but generated her own after he could provide her with the international experience by getting her to study & work in the USA. She's currently earning quite a bit more than myself and really making a name for herself without any fatherly intervention.

But it's still sad to see how many others have been left behind.

Well, Happy New Year!