Frozen in time
As my train hurtles northwards, I can see my breath freeze on the window panes. I am heading to the North Pole of China literally, village of the northern pole or "Beiji Village".
Colorful wooden cabins along the street of Beiji Village provide a pretty contrast to the white background. |
At the tip of the cockscomb on the map of China, the village, with a history of 150 years, overlooks the Chita and Armu states of Russia, a few hundred meters across the Heilongjiang River and Wusuli River. The tiny village houses just 1,396 residents.
My last trip here was 20 years ago, when the village was still named Mohe, or "ink-black river," after the dark color of its rivers.
As I approach the entrance of the village, I see a huge rock on which are engraved three red Chinese characters spelling out its new name. The village renamed itself last year to attract more tourists. The once muddy roads have been replaced by paved ones and wooden planks cover the sidewalks. The colorful wooden cabins provide a pretty contrast to the white background.
Yi Tongfa and his daughter who holds a picture taken by the Beijing reporter 20 years ago. |
On the surface, the village has changed, but underneath, life goes on just as it always has.
When I knock on the doors of households I visited 20 years ago, they are answered by strangers. Many of the residents, especially the young, have moved to town to work. Even among those families that have chosen to stay, few have their children around.
I decided to try my luck to find Yi Tongfa, a man defined by his high nose and deep green/grey eyes. In this village on the Chinese-Russian border, there are many elderly villagers who look more European than Asian, a legacy of the gold rush of the 1860s. Before gold was discovered, the land on which the village now stands was an untamed wilderness.
I first met Yi when he was on his way to plough the field, 20 years ago. His foreign looks caught my eye. I asked him if I could have a look at his home and he agreed, displaying a hospitality typical of the people of this region.
Like most houses in the village, his home was a wooden cabin nailed up with logs. Moss was stuffed between the logs to protect against the wind. Inside, a heated brick bed, kang, stretched across the room. "Have a drink!" Yi said, offering me a shot of liquor, almost forcing me to drink. Yi loves liquor, for it gives him extra warmth in this prolonged winter.
In Beiji, the coldest place in China where temperatures |
"Still remember me?" I ask, hardly expecting a positive answer. He looks at me for a moment and rises in astonishment. "You are the reporter from Beijing!"
"Have some more," Yi said just as he did years ago as he pours me another shot of liquor. Yi likes to have guests in the house, as that gives him the exceptional reason to drink. His wife has kept him from liquor ever since he was diagnosed with cerebral thrombosis.
The next day, Yi summons his two daughters back from town. Last May, his older girl got married in town; his younger girl has also left for a restaurant job in town.
The girls giggle at the picture I took of them 20 years ago, when the younger one was still being rocked in a cradle dangling from the ceiling. Yi's wife Zhang Suzhen points to the iron ring on the beam of their house. "The ring by which we used to hang the cradle is still there, but the cradle has gone."
Short, short days
I spend five days wondering around the village, visiting 20 families. Wang Weihan, 86, is one of the three oldest living residents. Age has not dimmed his memory as he regales me with legends about the village.
Winter days are short in Beiji Village. Dawn breaks only at 9 and sets by 3 in the afternoon. But lights don't go on until 5 the village is powered by electricity only in the mornings and evenings.
All through the winter day, a sluggish sun hangs low just above the horizon. Long shadows on the snow-covered ground, glimmer in the yellowing afternoon sunlight.
I startle when villagers tell me "it's 41C today" and a blink of the eye can cause the upper and lower eyelids to stick together with frost. What they mean, of course, is minus 41 C. In 1969, temperatures hit an all-time low of minus 52.3 C.
Several villagers pull out their fishing nets from ice holes. Some small fish can be seen around the hole, already stiff with cold.
Children enjoy themselves on the ice, skating, driving the sleigh, and making snowmen.
The villagers store their Chinese cabbage, turnips, potatoes and fruits for the long winter in underground kitchen cellars.
Tourism booms in the summer, from May to September, and does not thin out until after the National Day "Golden week". Polar days fall around the time of the summer solstice when "the sun never sets". And if one is lucky, one can catch beams of northern lights in the sky.
But the summer is only a little better in terms of the cold. I recall villagers warming up by a fire in the "hottest" month of August after fishing in the Heilongjiang River.
Unlike those tourist sites where non-locals move into the "for rent" houses of the residents to sell cheap souvenirs, the Beiji Village remains largely a village of the original inhabitants.
As busloads of tourists arrive despite warnings that their cameras could freeze to "death", young people are leaving the village to earn their living in towns.
(China Daily 01/25/2007 page18)
