Jianshui

After 24 hours in Kunming it’s off south to Jianshui by high speed train, the last we will take for a few weeks. We take the local bus from the station to the centre of town, with me perched on the edge of my slightly dilapidated seat with what feels like a nail in my bum – causing great amusement to a gang of four local women. The weather is mild as we get further south, and we start to imagine we can see differences in the faces of the locals. Wandering the town on the first night we find a totally new kind of dancing in the park (under the moonlight the serious moonlight) – that unbeknown to us at thew time we get to try out a few days later.

The guesthouse is a little hard to find, down a whitewashed alley, off a narrow street lined with open-fronted shops, in the old town. It feels remarkably like Bizert or somewhere similar in Tunisia. Its not the first time that we have felt echoes of Tunisia in China, once you are away from the flashy town centres and shopping malls in the big cities like Xian and Chengdu (as slick or slicker than anything Europe has to offer) then some places have a distinctly Tunisan feel to them (presumably generic capitalist middle-income country feel – but it’s Tunisia that we know best). But this is added to here by the white washed, winding alleys. Clean and simple it’s a great base, even if the local traditional band twang and wail until ten at night (its a bit like the SOAS library now I think about it) and the locals start raising the mucus and banging doors, and a cockerel starts quite early in the morning – the beauty of being up an alley in the old town.

First full day we head for the old station and a trip on a renovated old and slow train. The station is beautifully renovated with a trendy retro feel – very “bobo”, with a cool cafe and a restaurant on platform 2 and various arty stuff. Tourism for China’s massive middle class is a boom industry and you can feel Jianshiu trying to get ahead of the curve. There’s much less English spoken here and we have to check: « pardon me miss is this the Jianshui choo-choo? » At 9.30 the train gives a loud blast on the horn and it’s all aboard as the old/slow train trundles out of town at about 10km/h. First stop the dragon bridge with 17 arches. Either side of the track is a patchwork of fields with locals working rice, corn, market gardens and ducks and geese. Next stop a trendily renovated station with stuff to sell us, a chance for some of the more ridiculous selfie snapping we’ve seen so far. Inside the station we could be on the set of a Year in Provence, outside we spot a guy tending his fields barefoot. A lady sets up selling hot corn-on-the-cob on the tracks in front of the train. Destination: Tuanshan, a village largely made up of the compound of a noble family which after 1949 was taken over by local families that now squat the dilapidated and crumbling remains. We pay a ticket to get into their village, a mix of renovated buildings and more ramshackle homes. A curious experience. Afterwards, with the help of a young family visiting from Kunming we eat tofu and potatoes on a barbeque, the restaurant owner keeps track of how many pieces we pick from the grill with dried grains of corn. When we get back to the train the driver has completed some nifty shunting, down and up the junction, and we show a hitherto unsuspected turn of speed to complete the 12km back to town in well under an hour.

Next day we decide to stay put in the centre of town. After some school work in a cafe on the main street we visit a Taoist temple at the end of our narrow street. Then we head for compound of a certain Mr Zhu – also in the centre of town. It turns out to be impeccably kept with something like 42 connected courtyards, some of them following a botanic theory of architecture that intruiged us but ultimately remained a bit of a mystery. As we came into the garden part we came upon our dancing friends again, this time in full local costume. We joined a collective dance lesson getting really rather sweaty in the process (I have to say I was pretty handy!). As we left we found one of the rooms offered a chance to turn a pot on a wheel! Invoking their very best Margo Leadbetter and Tom Good (Series 2, Episode 7), the kids spend a happy hour throwing pots. Sadly we had to leave the results in the guesthouse where we imagine they now hold pride of place. That night we ate in a restaurant on the street in the main pedestrian street – a bowl of noodles and some skewers to put on the bbq, and what a treat: grilled scorpion! (We can report: not too much flavour, lots of crunch).

Next stop Yuangyuan by bus, Jianshui is the end of the line for now when it comes to high speed, or even old slow, trains.