Legend has it a phoenix flew
over Fenghuang, and was so entranced that it hovered over the town,
unable to break away. It's probably still there because unlike
almost every other town in China, Fenghuang has not been demolished.
It retains a charm that
conjures up what many places in China looked like, until as recently
as 25 years ago.
It's also a literary town: the
birth-place of Shen Congwen, who's novella Border Town, was
set by the banks of the Tuojiang River, pictured right and below. And it
is populated by Miao People, a warlike and passionate people, who
spread all across the south and west of China, and were once such a
threat that the Ming Emperors built the Southern Great Wall to try
and keep them back.
And - it's virtually unknown
outside China. I was there for Mid Autumn Festival, when it
was full of revellers and travellers and vitality.
Here are some of the sights
and sounds of Fenghuang
Fenghuang Bridge Collapses, killing 36.
Sadly, Fenghuang was an international news story with the collapse
of the motorway bridge. News and pictures
here
(August 2007)
A traditional folk song, about
two lovers singing on either side of a river. The boatman here,
a short and lean man with a copper-bald scalp, was the headman of the
local boatmen.
He
sings different and probably more authentic words from the version
known across China
Evening Busker
It is evening, a young man is
sitting in the shelter of the old city gate. Rush hour. People
- in Miao traditional costume and with shoulder poles carrying
unsold chickens and piglets - rush past.
There's a lovely contrast between their
rush and him sitting there.
If you've seen Raise the Red
Lantern or Red Sorghum, you'll know that Chinese brides
used to be carried in palanquins, with a marching band accompanying
them.
We happened upon one such
traditional wedding in the old streets
Writers are odd and solitary
creatures, so it's interesting to see another writer's desk and
imagine sitting there, trying to be inspired.
Shen Congwen's desk was Ming Dynasty,
with a white marble inlay; his window latticed, and all in all far more romantic than my own.
There were some empty
bookshelves of his, and a gramophone and a sign which said he liked to
listen to music when writing. I wish they'd said what music.
Each of my books seems to have a different soundtrack.
Here is the tour guide in Shen
Congwen's house, a little obscure if you don't understand Chinese, but
probably mind-expandiong
The night of Mid Autumn
Festival, families gather together and eat lots. So - being in
a holiday resort - all of us well away from our families there was
the air of people at Christmastime who have escaped the filial
obligations.
There were lots of drinking games and a
very happy chef who serenaded us from the kitchen: hear the applause
of the other chefs as they bang their woks with their ladles.
He's singing a song from the opera Ba Wang
Bie Ji: which is also the play known in Farewell My Concubine, in
which the king asserts his love for Concubine Ji before she dies
When I saw women washing their
clothes in the river, and slapping them with wooden paddles I got very excited on the first
morning in Fenghuang, to much genuine bewilderment.
It was all due to remembering a poem of Yu Xuanji's
I translated, when she talks of hearing the sound of women washing at dusk, and I realised
this was the same sound she was writing about, a thousand years ago
