navneetkumarbakshi / Blog / Posted at Sulekha.com on 03/04/2014
Some days ago a good friend of Xubing, who lives in Beijng, sent to me some excellent pictures of his village in Guizhou where he says he went sometime in February. He made a thousand 1000 Km trip through Guizhou. Let me check where Guizhou is. Guizhou (贵州)Province, I find is in southern China. It is one of China’s less-developed provinces and is home to many of China’s minority communities. It is landlocked and located between Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing municipality, Hunan and Guangxi.
Journey taken by Xubing
From the pictures too it seems to be quite a remote place. There are a hundred and thirteen pictures of the trip. Xubing is an excellent photographer. What he captures with his lens is hard to explain with words, at least for me it is. He has sent to me hundreds of pictures on earlier occasions too. His job takes him to the villages regularly, wherefrom he gets pictures depicting the life of country folks.
I have been almost regularly posting blogs on China’s cities and have been telling about the great strides that she has made in developing infrastructure for bettering the day to day life of a common citizen, of hoi polloi that make a large chunk of populace. Whether that glitter and imposing cityscape is what happiness is all about can be debated.
Setting out from Beijing
Whether modernization, commercialization, industrialization and summation of all such “ations” that man has been chasing in his search of happiness have provided him that illusive gift, so unique to the human beings or has it distanced him from that is a moot point.
Looking ahead and contemplating
Our minds are moored to the thought that material wealth translates in to happiness and we don’t even, stop to think whether what we are doing is indeed what we would like to do to be happy or we should explore within to know what will make us happy, but carry on with our monotonous routines till we drop dead.
Smoke rising from the houses or is it the mist? A new house coming up in the village
We have immured our minds within the four walls of our distorted thoughts. Well, those who were born in the cities may not know what they are missing but many of us left the laid back, carefree life of the villages and chose this fast paced city life of maddening rushes and chaos in the cities because we confuse happiness with money. But is the life in the villages, the life of merriment, of joy, exuberance and pleasure? At least these picutres belie that.
A set of village houses, homes to many.
The cities have little of what is there in abundance in the villages- the calm, nature at it’s best and simplicity of life. Perhaps, the cities reflect to a great extent the progress made by a nation, the growth of GDP, but do they really reflect the growth of human personality?
A village in the valley
Can we measure the happiness, the feeling of well-being from the heights of the skyscrapers, so high that even the sun has to touch the zenith to conquer their shadows?
A narrow passage or a village street
Lost in their shadows or swallowed in their interiors most of us spend our lives, day after day, looking at the changing data on the computer screens, oblivious of the joys of seeing the sun play hide and seek with the clouds, of seeing the young birds take lessons in flying from their mothers, oblivious of seeing the new buds sprout, too busy even to think what joy is all about.
I remember once a friend of mine said that in Mumbai, people can’t tell the heights of their children but they can tell their lengths because they only see them sleeping. They are sleeping when they leave for work early morning and they are sleeping when they reach back home after work. This is the truth of living in the cities- sad but true.
A touch of modernity- Cables criss-crossing, a solar heater and a sun umbrella
For making a real study of how much a predominantly rural nation has developed, one needs to go to the villages and see the conditions of roads, the access of people to basic needs of water and sanitation, the availability of health services, electricity and schools to the people living in the rural areas. If the people living in the remotest parts of the country have these, then only can we say that the nation is developed.
Family laundry hung out for drying, awaiting sun
Whenever I think of these pointers, I feel that my blogs on China are just pretty pictures. They don’t present the true picture of the nation. On the whole, they could be labelled as showcases, like those of glitzy shops displaying things like Bikinis, flaunting prices more than a year’s earnings of a small family.
A new house coming up- All timber and stone
So, whenever I get some pictures of the villages, of the life in the villages, I am thrilled. In China, like in India, millions of people have left their homes, with their old, uneducated parents tilling, small patches of earth for living, to feed themselves. The
children have moved to the cities which promise better opportunities.
Terraced farming- On the slopes of the mountains, small patches of land flattened for growing crops
Some of them, do well, some very well and some have success stories which make rich materials for block buster movies and TV shows. Those stories sell well because those translate in to riches for their producers and those stories attract millions more to try their lucks in the cities.
No machines can work here- Difficult but well, not impossible
But there are far more stories of the people, who couldn’t make it, who perished. We know of the great flights of arctic terns, who fly thousands of miles across the seas, year after year, but we don’t ever think of those, who don’t make it, in some flight they perish. When their wings can’t carry them on, they fall down in the sea and are devoured by fish.
Enchanting landscape but tough living
When I was sailing, I would sometimes see migratory birds flying towards unknown destinations. It was amazing to see tiny birds, thousands of miles away from the nearest land, flying with nothing but hope.
Looking back? There’s nothing much to look forward to.
But it was at times, all the more surprising to see a few pigeons, caught in severe storms and gales, landing for short whiles on the deck and taking off again in raging storms to unknown destinations, so sure of strength of their little wings, so sure of their global positioning radars in their heads.
Slaughtering a pig- I have removed the next picture which gave a closer look of butchery because most of my Indian friends will be offended.
As I think of those moments, my mind takes me to some of the verses I wrote then. Let me share those with you.
Repairing a Saddle. One has to be a jack of all trades in the village
…………..And lonely bird in an oceans vast
In raging sees and skies overcast
has nothing to worry and none to mourn
knows life is good long as it lasts
Village street- Railings made of wooden logs and vines trained on them, Trelliswork or a lesson in living in harmony with nature?
Two little wings
and the spirit soaring high
Challenging the ocean
and conquering sky
Lives every moment
till it’s time to die
resigned to its fate
without a fuss or a sigh
Hello
Hello young girl, where are you going
There’ hurry in your steps, and it’s showing
Are you late for the rendezvous?
With your friend who little Miss
Is waiting for a kiss?
Why then, just why
Can’t we live like him And try,
to be happy with what we have
‘cause happiness, money can’t buy.
But humans are not birds
They need food too
but words that make them feel they belong
And their folks
Love them too and long
to see them back home
are more important than breath
for human beings, ostracism can mean death
As we see, Xubing is deep in Guizhou- Hmong village. It will be better if I write what can go with the photographs that I am posting here. In my next blog, I will try to emote what he could be thinking while taking these pictures, or may be I will try to think how one could be feeling being there in Hmong, living the life of frugality but contentment, removed far more than what the physical distance expresses, from modernity and development, from tall claims of progress by the politicians, from noise and pollution, from covetousness and greed- still living like the people having been living for thousands of years, in harmony with the nature and being a part of it.
These commetns were received on this post after it was shared at Sulekha.com in 2014
All Comments
Karor / / 2 months ago
Dear NavnitExcellent pictures and much more than that is your narration. Some of the village(s) resemble the villages we have in Himachal Pradesh or the North East. Some friends wrote about contentment and which I feel is disappearing from the urban and metropolitan life.In India too now everyone is racing after something not knowing that the end of earth is eternal home where you have to come empty handed.
navneetkumarbakshi / / 1 month ago
Thanks Karor Sir, Yes their villages are very similar to our villages. There is some placidity in the village life, those of us who have had the fortune of being there know it but now commercialization is spreading its tentacles in the villages too. “Maya” ke peechhe sab bhagate hain, magar kyon, ye koyee nahin jaanta. Thanks for appreciating my poetry :)Navneet
Karor / / 1 month ago
And I liked your poetry too…..knows life is good long till it lasts.
navneetkumarbakshi / / 2 months ago
Nice to see you after long time. Yes, it is true that commercialization has not brought the illusive happiness to man but modernization has irreversibly changed the lives of the local people of the villages who were so contended with their lives in their small world. In the next part of the article which has a different name “Xubing’s Trip to Guizhou….” I have brought to focus, how China’s landscape is changing while one by one Shimla’s heritage buildings have been gutted by fire as the city is headed towards ruin.
Krishnan Bala / / 2 months ago
Dear Navneet, It is difficult to conclude as to which of the two is most impressive. The pictures convey a tale that surpasses ones imagination while your depiction and convergence of the nature with philosophy carries a meaning that is beyond anthropocentric ! If only all human endeavours are directed to-wards biocentrism, that would ensure a sustained existence of the planet it seem to suggest. Most of all the lesson one needs to draw in life is well summed up in the lines “We know of the great flights of arctic terns, who fly thousands of miles across the seas, year after year, but we don’t ever think of those, who don’t make it, in some flight they perish. When their wings can’t carry them on, they fall down in the sea and are devoured by fish.” We are blind to see only the birds that reach the shores ! It is a pleasure to read.
navneetkumarbakshi / / 2 months ago
Dear Bala Sir,Nice to see you here after a long time. “If the human endeavours are directed towards biocentrism” …we are all aware that we are harming ourselves and the planet but we are all complicit. We are playing a game of blaming one another for tearing a whole in the ozone layer but we all have our share.Navneet
navneetkumarbakshi / / 2 months ago
Really Usha,
The people who live in the villages, we all know lead a simple and contended life. I don’t know, how religious the Chinese living in the villages are because, I believe that the contentment to us Indians comes because of our belief in destiny but I am sure they must be simple minded people.
Navneet
navneetkumarbakshi / / 2 months ago
Hello Xiyanyang- How are you? It’s only through the contributions sent by the people that I can see and I can show to the other bloggers the places so far off and far removed from the world. Even if I come back to China, I don’t know if ever I will get any chance to visit such places.
Navneet
xiyangyang / / 2 months ago
Dear Naneeth
Thanks for sharing, It is great to see miao village here!
nice blog and picutures
xiyangyang
suchisree / / 2 months ago
Dear Navneeth,
Different in looks, culture, colour, language the whole world spread out, a mystery.
Common factor all striving to live.
Thanks for showing the hidden China.
Regards,
Suchisree.
navneetkumarbakshi / / 2 months ago
Thanks Suchisree- China is as diverse and multi-coloured like India and have similar problems like poverty and corruption.
Navneet
ushasuryamani / / 2 months ago
I would LOVE living there…Contentment is happiness…
Wonderful blog as usual..beautiful photographs…
I am reminded of the villages on the way to Badrinath and the happy chubby pink faces of the kids and villagers there….