Written for World Nomads
I was not sorry for staring intensely at the wrinkles folded around her gleaming eyes. What is it like to have peepers that have captured one hundred years of images? It is not every day that I come across a 100-year-old human being. Her visage was worth inspecting even at a price of being perceived as rude. The flesh on her face receded over the years, reducing her looks to nearly a skull wrapped in well preserved skin. Her face broke into a million lines when she smiled. She was a native who never left Taoping Qiang Village- a place that managed to stand against currents of modernization.
I was not sorry for staring intensely at the wrinkles folded around her gleaming eyes. What is it like to have peepers that have captured one hundred years of images? It is not every day that I come across a 100-year-old human being. Her visage was worth inspecting even at a price of being perceived as rude. The flesh on her face receded over the years, reducing her looks to nearly a skull wrapped in well preserved skin. Her face broke into a million lines when she smiled. She was a native who never left Taoping Qiang Village- a place that managed to stand against currents of modernization.
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| The 100-year-old native |
I smiled back and gestured if I could enter a room. She
mumbled in her native language which I assumed was green light for me to go
ahead. The lower-than-normal door made me hunch before I arrived in a dim space
with musty smell. I looked up and for a moment, thought that I would never make
it out of the room alive! It was a whole carcass of a yak hanging from the
ceiling, mouldy and unnerving. I then realized I was in a medieval freezer. The
villagers still used air drying in place of refrigeration. Their way of life remained the same as it was
1000 years ago.
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| Drid yak meat |
Although there was no need to, I walked stealthily around
the room. I touched the very walls that protected the people from wars and
earthquakes for 56 generations. The walls were still burning with the same
spirit it had a millennium ago but it felt cool. Fresh water from the mountains
channelled through the house underground and flushed heat way. As if
apologizing for the initial scare, the ancestors decided to impress with their
intelligence of creating bill-free air conditioning. It is funny that
everything was managed to be inherited in this village except the technique of
building their houses. What a waste of a precious tremor-proof solution that could
even put some modern construction to shame.
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| Taoping Qiang Village building structures were unintentionally built to withstand earthquakes |
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| Narrow passageways |
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| The kitchen 1000 years ago was pretty much how it is today |
It is pretty bizarre to me that this part of China was stubbornly
unconsumed by urbanization albeit being just next to a highway. Coming from a
fast-paced life, it was an eye-opener that time stood still in Taoping Qiang
Village. I am glad to have travelled 1907 miles away from my wi-fi radiated
home to discover how people lived in the past and more amazingly how irrelevant
the things we modern people chase are to the dwellers whom have never left their
village.
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| Unconsumed by urbanization although next to a highway |
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| Backdropped by pristine landscapes |
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| Animism portrayed in the marble statue that is believed to protect homes |
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| Corn dried as animal fodder |
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| Olden locks are still used |
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| The goat is worshiped as provider of life |
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| What used to be stairs |
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| Thanks for being a little lenient on me |
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| Traditional costume |
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| Handicrafts made by villagers |
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| Panoramic view of Taoping Qiang Village in Sichuan Province |
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