Sunday in Huxian

Huxian is a small town about an hour and a half from Xi'an. The father of my friend who's wedding I attended earlier this year lives there, and he invited me over to see look at some ancient relics that are frequently found in the surrounding farmland.

I'm never ceased to be amazed by the changing landscape here. Not so long ago, Huxian would have been a small town, surrounded by small villages and miles and miles of fertile, flat farmland, with the Qingling mountain range to the south in the distance. Now, the last half an hour of a the journey, much like the first half an hour, is noticeable for the landscape - a mishmash of huge flyovers, highways, farmland, cleared lands waiting to be built on, the remains of old villages, and the blurred silhouette of the mountains. From the bus, you can see farmers working the land right up to the enormous 4 lane expressway that has been scytched through their fields. Huxian town itself is like a mini-Xi'an, hard to imagine what it was like 30 years ago.

I address my friend's father as 'shushu', uncle, in accordance with custom. He's very keen on ancient Chinese history and culture, and revels in tellng not just the 'laowai' (foreigner) about it. He's also extremely hospitable and generous, as most Northern Chinese are. I guess you could call him 'old school' - bought up in the Cultural Revolution, and with almost nothing in common with young Chinese. A lot of the time its hard to understand what he's saying, but I wouldn't want to disagree anyway, so a lot of head-nodding aids conversation.

He wanted to show me a small shop, which specialises in collecting and selling items that have been dup up around Huxian. In ancient times, Xian was the capital of China, and Huxian, being close to Xian, was also highly advanced, meaning its an archeologists paradise. The shop was located down a small, leafy side street, and without local knowledge, I would never have known about it.

Inside was a treasure trove of often remarkably preserved items, packed onto shelves in no particular order. Being the site of the ancient central bank, the land around Huxian is awash with old copper coins, with more than a few more than 2000 years old. Most of these coins are on sale for less than 20p. Also on display were all sorts of everyday items, bowls, plates, etc, including one item that looked like a squashed, flat hour glass, but turned out to be a container for spitting into. Outside were similarly old stone ornaments used for tieing up horses with monkeys carved on top, as monkeys were the guardians of horses in ancient China (so I'm told). Several items, kept out of view, were of such value as they are not allowed to be taken out of China.

However, there was a catch. Even though my 'shushu' is friends with the boss of the shop, he wouldn't normally allow people just to come and look. So my shushu said that I was the Xian representative of an English travel company, looking to bring foreigner tour groups to Huxian. He seemed to have no qualms about telling whoppers to his friend, and by the end of it, I was getting quite into it, asking the boss about what he could promise my clients, future investment opportunities, etc. I felt a bit uncomfortable 'pian' - lying to - this guy who was being very hospitable and giving me 1500 year old coins as a gift, but there wasn't much I was going to do about it. And besides, they make a fantastic souvenir.

I wanted to know how they could be so sure all the items were genuine and how they knew how old they were. It seems they just 'know', and I didn't press it too much. The stuff is literally dug up in the field by farmers, who then sell it to the boss. When I was there, a boy comes in with a grubby looking pot, unearthed that morning. The boy wants 50, the boss is not budging from 30. It's sold for 30, and later I'm told that its worth at least 200 in Xian, maybe 500 in Beijing. I feel less bad for lying. It may be a place for culturalists, but there's also money to be made.

In the afternoon, we walked down the same narrow street which houses many different workshops and residences of various artisans, collectors, etc - a street of genuine culture, I found, rather than the awful 'bigness' of Chinese cities. One shop had on display old shoes, about 8-10cm in length, of the type worn by Chinese women over a hundred years ago. In feudal China, upto about 1911, all women from the age of two or three had their feet bound to prevent them growing. I'm told that is was mainly done because small feet were considered beautiful, so much so that a woman with 'big' feet would 'jia bu chu qu' - not be able to get marrried off. How times have changed - know the key is to be tall, which is a lot less pain-inducing than foot-binding.

One workshop was that of a middle age woman doing traditional Chinese paintings. The workshop itself was nothing more than a room with walls covered with hanging paintings, calligraphy, a table for painting, a whirring ceiling fan to alleviate the heat, and behind a curtain, a small area for living quarters. The table looked onto a window, from which could be seen people playing mahjiang outside under the shade of the trees. A girl about my age came out and started talking to me. For consistency, I kept up the 'tourism' facade, but when my 'shushu' came out with the tea, he said who I really was - turned out the woman was his sister, and the girl her daughter, and we didn't have to lie to them. Conversation was in Mandarin to start with, but then drifted to their first language, local language, at which point I gazed around at the huge paintings of flowers and mountain scenery, and indecipherable characters written in black brush on red backgrounds. After some more tea (and an ice-cream with the daugther) and browsing more antiquities, it was back to the home to the smog and breath-defying heat of Xian.

It was great to actually see some of the 'culture' that people here love to talk about, but rarely experience in everyday lives. There is a lot of culture here, you've just got to dig a little to get it.