The Great Walk of China by Graham Earnshaw

Author:Graham Earnshaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-988-19003-5-7
Publisher: Blacksmith Books

As I carried on towards the town, a man rode up to me on a motorcycle and stopped. His name was Mr. Yang, he was well-dressed, and told me he worked in the paper factory.

“I saw you taking photos of the factory,” he said.

“That factory is dirty,” I said.

“We’re doing renovations now,” he replied sheepishly.

The road into town was blocked by a police checkpoint, and the policeman told me the main road was impassable because so many people were in town doing pre-New Year shopping. I walked into town and it was indeed packed. The streets were lined with stalls selling bright red and gold couplets to paste on either side of the doors – ‘Good fortune and wealth, streaming in from all quarters’, was the general drift of the brightly-coloured messages. Chinese people have a strong belief in the mystical power of the written word, and these New Year strips are still pasted up on farmhouse doors and often stay in place throughout the year, becoming more and more tattered but still casting off a power to protect the family inside.

I came across a huge compound on a hillside. It was surrounded by a high brick wall and contained many small brick huts set well apart from each other and connected by paths. All were empty, and some were blackened as if burned. There were no trees or other vegetation around the huts. It looked like a retirement village gone wrong. Was it a village? But why the wall? And where were the people?

I came upon two guys having a smoke next to their motorcycles and I asked about this place above us.

“It’s a fireworks factory,” said one. “The huts are separated to reduce the risk when there is an explosion.”

Ah. It was now empty because production for the Lunar New Year had been completed and all the workers had gone home (many of them with all their fingers).

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