In 2003 my brother, a childhood friend, and I traveled though various parts of northern China. My friend spoke Mandarin Chinese, but my brother and I could barely buy a bottle of water at local shops.
We made our way by train and bus to a tiny farming village on the edge of Inner Mongolia, far from major cities. The village was located next to the Great Wall of China, and some of the structures were built with bricks from a fallen section of wall. As we arrived in this village it was nightfall and cold, it was almost winter. Realizing that there probably wouldn’t be any accommodations we asked if we could stay on the bus to continue on. The bus driver refused to take us any further and we were stranded in this village, which amounted to just a handful of buildings.
A small makeshift hut with smoke rising out of a metal pipe in the roof was near the road where we were dropped off. It appeared to be the only inhabited structure, so we headed for it as our most immediate option. As we entered the shelter, which could barely contain the three of us, we realized it was a shop that had a few basic necessities like rice and water and a wood burning stove. A woman was huddled in the corner, and my friend politely asked if there was a hotel or somewhere to stay nearby. The answer was essentially no, but that we could stay at her house down the dirt road. We said ok, as we didn’t appear to have any other options.
After some waiting, a man arrived, apparently the woman’s husband, and we follow him to a one room candle lit house that contained a Buddha statue near the entry, a brick wood burning oven/fireplace, and a bed. The bed was built out of bricks, probably taken directly from the nearby Great Wall, and was attached to the stove so that the heat from the stove went under the bed. The bed was about queen sized and took up almost half of the house. Little else was in the house. We asked about a bathroom, at which a bucket along the wall was pointed out. We couldn’t engage the man much in conversation as he could not speak Mandarin, because only his wife knew Mandarin.
The man left the house abruptly without further instruction. I quickly went outside to use the bathroom as I didn’t want to use the bucket. Not knowing what to do next we decided to get in the bed and try to go to sleep. About 30 minutes later we heard the door open, the man was soon crawling into bed next to my brother, and we all went to sleep.
Chinese couple with my friend and me the next morning. Yes, it was cold
The main road in the village - notice the pig eating trash
The next morning we showed much gratitude to our hosts, took their picture, and were off to explore an unrestored section of the ancient Great Wall.
We were probably some of the very few foreigners to ever arrive at that village. At much more populated cities, people greeted us as though they had never seen a foreigner before. This generous couple opened their humble house and bed to us, and the woman stayed in her small shop through the night. By western standards they were very poor. However, it left me pondering, how many of us would be willing to be so hospitable to foreigners we had never meet before?
Below are some pictures of the remote and abandoned part of the great wall that we explored. It was an awesome adventure:
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