Journeying to an unknown place was exhilarating: my fingers and ears tingled with excitement. While the headwind pushed against me, I took in the fresh scenery as I biked out of the university bubble I had lived in for the past four months. Oriented towards Kuilei Lake, I stopped to smell the crisp air that excited my senses like peppermint.
I inspected a white structure that was on the verge of blending into the expressionless sky: a three-storied mansion accented with an adobe tiled roof reminiscent of the Spanish missions in California. Immediately to its right was a collection of three-storied buildings, all of them white and modern in style. Jutting out from the upper levels was an arrangement of windows that formed a greenhouse through which the sunlight projected a green glimmer. The architecture was minimalistic, the only exception being the black tiled roof with a dragon-like protrusion at the edge—seemingly a sign of good feng shui.
At the edge of my vision, I thought I saw several children running around. Turning my head, I discovered it was a red shirt and yellow pants on a drying rack dancing back and forth with the gentle breeze, like a little ghost family. My eyes glazed over the entire scene, and I spotted a short and black figure that was as still as a stone statue. My quiet surroundings looked like a still picture, a snapshot of the past. A small motion caught my attention, and my eyes darted back towards the figure, finding it to be a fragile and small grandmother who was slowly staggering towards the building. She faced me and stared as if I were the first visitor in years.
I approached her, and her once blurry and distant figure came into focus. I looked into her eyes—one of them shut closed—and asked where Kuulei Lake was. She shook her head, and I asked again. She withdrew her hands from her pockets, revealing withered and scarred skin painted with freckles and sunspots. Perhaps confined to tilling the crops under the blazing sun for most of her life, I was sure she had gone through hard times. She directed me to her right-hand side, opposite of the direction Apple Maps had provided me. I asked her where we were, and she responded by shaking her head. I knew she did not understand.
As I paced down the row of buildings, I came across another grandmother and once again asked for directions to Kuilei Lake. She spat out a jumble of words in a dialect similar to Shanghainese and then told me that there was no such place. Hoping for more conversation, I asked her where we were. She replied quickly and apathetically, lao lei liang. I repeated for reassurance, lao lei liang? She nodded and indicated a sign with loud red letters “老李蟹莊” or “Old Lee Crab Village”.
I explained to the old grandmother that I was a student at Duke Kunshan University and asked whether or not she knew the school. She shook her head. The villagers seemed to be living in an unaffected reality, secluded from the outside world, just like I was at university. Seeing no other way to communicate, I thanked her and waved goodbye.
I biked back along the road, and my eyes traced each house. I found an array of potted plants, a colorful rack of clothing, a small gray dog monitoring me silently, and a pig leg and chicken carcasses. A pig leg and chicken carcasses? I stopped and looked closer. Shivers shot down my spine. It was in fact amputated pig limbs and featherless chickens, hanging on the rack as if they were another piece of clothing. Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun instantly came to mind, and I tried to push the thought out as I bid the village farewell.
I caught sight of the long river that separated the community of white buildings from a vast expanse of trees—some vibrantly green with life and others completely bare. The spectacle in front of me was a panoramic postcard of an ancient Chinese village, a scene from a historical drama. The tranquil emerald jade water reflected the white buildings stationed along the bank. A canoe was floating on the waterside, fishing ropes entangled at the front, but inundated with water and algae. With cold becoming increasingly impatient and vicious, I hurriedly left the village I had time traveled to, back to my reality.
Section Editor: Emily Gonzales
Section: Travel & Culture
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