Zhu You

It’s probably hard for anyone to imagine what modern, rural China is really like. While people might have peeks into China via Chinatown or movies that depict ancient palaces and temples, these don’t exactly explain Sharon’s hometown.

This is Sharon’s parents’ house. Like many homes in rural China, the family business is located at home. Sharon’s parents have a refrigerated storage facility that is mostly used as a store for fish feed. The entire courtyard is private, and the left part of the picture is their home and the right part are the freezers. Out of the picture and farther to the left are more freezers and some offices.

As you have probably guessed by now, not far from Sharon’s parents are many fish farms. They live in the edge of town, and if you head towards the ocean you run into plant and fish farms.

 

Surprisingly, the main product of these farms is sea cucumbers. They are supposed to be really healthy to eat, so they fetch a nice price.

 

 

I'm pretty plant stupid and had to ask what this plant was. It's wheat, and it turns out China is the world's largest producer of it. Corn is also a huge product up here. Lots of rice, too, but that's more in the south.

In the opposite direction of Sharon's parents house is the main town.

It had just stopped raining that day, so there were hardly any people out. Usually it’s a lot more crowded.

It may or may not be surprising to you that there is a lot of trash. The pole that Sharon is standing next to is sort of like a sanctioned trash pole. It’s like the community trash can and when the trash truck comes they shovel it up into the truck. However, there ends up being lots of trash in other places too, such as the hillside in the picture below. When we were driving back from the airport, Enoch had a poopy diaper, and one of the family friends who helped Sharon’s mom make the drive insisted on throwing the diaper out the window. This sort of attitude is pretty normal here, and the idea of keeping trash confined to trash cans hasn’t caught on yet.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of this little town called Zhu You. Tomorrow, we are heading off to XiAn! It's an 18 hour train ride, hopefully we make it through all right. Enoch has gotten used to the milk here, so that's one less thing to worry about. Updates to follow later.