They are tearing down a small village with a name that translated to “Five Shop Town” in English. Ditches ten feet deep expose centuries of clay in varying shades of red. I see a half-torn barber shop with men’s hairstyles painted on the white tiles with nail polish. I find a counter where a fishmonger used to gut and clean his ware. Underneath, well used steel basins have left rings of rust on the floor. I peek inside abandoned houses where only the sunlight plays with dust motes. I wonder if the rubble of demolished terra cotta houses was made from the same clay the very houses used to stand on. Less than three feet away from the demolition, they have started working on the new ancestral houses. In China, new ancestral house is not a paradox.
The construction workers and the demolition workers wear the same dusty denim overalls, yellow hard hats, and thick, previously white, now mud caked cotton gloves; but the rift that separated them was not only an opposing and contradictory role but also a temporal dichotomy.
We are not the only touring group. My hosts were among the families that the government bought out of old homes. They didn’t really live in them anymore. They all had condos. The old houses will be torn down and replaced with architecturally sound and aesthetically pleasing ones. We cross paths with another group, elderly men in business suits and aging women in wool lined coats over studded slacks. I look around my own group and most of us are over sixty, except me. My age matches the workers’ better.
The construction workers are building a park of houses. They are made with glazed precast concrete made to resemble marble, tarred pine made to resemble ebony, and stainless steel that no one would mistake for anything other than from this century. Each new ancestral home has a small courtyard with a central garden of flowering plants and those curious small golden citrus fruits that the Chinese said symbolized money. Wide doors house a temple to Buddhist saints and ancestors. Old photos are reprinted directly onto black marble; the names of the family tree properly labeled in gold leaf. Sofa, mahjong table, pool table, dining table and tea table can entertain guests but no one can really call this home. Two pairs of scissors were painted on several pieces of rice paper; these are pasted on the walls and pillars. I ask what these were for. I was answered only with “tradition.”I reply with a nod and an honestly amazed and unquestioning ah.
