Lishui (Oct 14, 2016)

Lishui is a small rural town in Zhejiang province (same province as Hangzhou) located next to several villages, so we were able to learn a bit more about village peasant life. We saw a lot of farmers, and the mountain scenery was beautiful.




This is a typical example of a traditional style Chinese peasant home. Homes like this one were originally all made of clay, but as the homes became more modern, people began to build houses out of stone, and the most recent ones are made of brick. So you can tell how old a home is by the use of building materials.


The main village we visited in Lishui was located right next to a well-known reservoir, known to be very advanced for the area. It apparently uses hydro power effectively and has won awards. The lake was very pretty.


We walked by an area in the village where we saw tons of long noodles hanging to dry- I thought it looked cool!


And here's the "60 and up" center where all villagers over 60 go to live after they retire (that would be mom and dad!!!). They do lots of different activities there like play cards, knit, and play instruments. They walked down the street playing drums and symbols.




There wasn't too much to do at night here, so one night we walked towards a nearby lake and saw this neat lit-up pagoda! We had met up earlier with a Tufts-in-China alum who just graduated and now lives in Lishui teaching English- she recommended this area to us.

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On the 2nd full day, we visited the She village. The architecture here was not traditional whatsoever, and the village layout was supposedly unusual: all the buildings were on the perimeter of a giant oval of greenery. Later in our peasant studies class we learned why this was the case. This village had been picked out to be modernized by government companies. In return for their village's modernization, peasants would give a huge plot of land to the company for 50 years. The company would then build expensive villas on the perimeter of that plot of land to attract wealthy buyers.



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On the 3rd/ last day, we visited 3 more villages. This first one was a painting village with lots of murals on almost every wall.


The second was known for its folk houses, built during the Qing Dynasty, and this "tong ji yan" river.


We stopped and watched this lady make traditional snack foods. One girl in our group bought something that looked like a scallion pancake filled with meat and then immediately dropped it on the ground hahaha.


The 3rd village was known for its tea pottery!








The tea sets were nice and very cheap, so I decided to buy a small set with a pot and 3 cups- I'm planning to give it as a gift for my Tufts housemates! A lot of other people bought tea sets too.