My Life in Huzhou (May 2011 -- May 2020) |
Huzhou is located some 200 km southwest to Shanghai, in the northern part of Zhejiang province, China. Huzhou was a 100 000 people town at time when I was a student, and now it’s a million people city too. I was born to a farmer family about 20 km south to Huzhou town, at the border to Deqing county, also within the Huzhou municipal district. I left this city in 1978 when I was still a youngster at the age of 15, to attend the Tongji University in Shanghai, by a powered boat which took about 20 hours to reach Shanghai – now only 2 hours by highway. Yet I have never imagined that one day I will return home but since May 21 2011 I am settled down in a small flat in the old living quarter of Huzhou, close to the old bus headquarters, from where I took my buses to Shanghai back 20 or 30 years ago to Tongji University or the companies where I used to work. Here I tell you some stories after my coming to my hometown. |
| I am currently writing about my biography in downtown Huzhou, and I hope it will be completed in about six months, and then I will upload it to this site so that you may see how my life was there. |
| Occasionally I will also post somethings about my day to day life here in my home village, some 30 km south to downtown Huzhou, where I am currently living now. Just wait a bit ... |
Huzhou |
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A Bit about HuzhouThis is not a comprehensive picture of the city of Huzhou and its jurisdictional areas, its history and its position in China. Rather it is a short description of what I find and feel as a native Huzhouer. You may find some more information about this city and the surrounding land by typing “Huzhou” in google search and you can also find some information at some of the popular links valid at time of my writing, such as those here: Wikipedia: These three are the only sites in English about Huzhou. There are several Chinese sites of course, but I will not provide them here. Huzhou is located some 200 km southwest to Shanghai, in the northern part of Zhejiang province, China. Huzhou was a 100 000 people town at time when I was a student, and now it’s a million people city too. This city of my hometown, used to be only a small county capital of about 100 000 people, now has become quite big – with an area of about 1/3 to 1/5 of Hangzhou – and now is also very populous – with a population of about 1 million, therefore it’s become a metropolis alike. In my opinion, it may surpass Hangzhou or even Shanghai to become one of or the largest city in the region. The city, at least in some parts of the city, is largely modernized, with new buildings everywhere, mimicking those in Shanghai and Hangzhou. You can’t tell the difference whether or not you are actually in Huzhou or Shanghai when you walk in these areas. Huzhou, also considered only as a tier 5 city in China (tier 1 Shanghai and Beijing, tier 2 Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin etc, tier 3 Hangzhou, Qingdao etc, tier4 Ningbo, Jiaxing etc), with a population of about 1 million in the city proper, is strategically located at the very center of China’s most powerful economic engine – the Yangtze Delta Region including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and some of the other economic giants. However, Huzhou is unique in many ways. Today I only want to talk about rivers. In Hangzhou, and in any other cities in China, you cannot find so many “big” rivers nicely navitable, and relatively quite. Suzhou is nicknamed China’s Venice, but there are no big rivers, and in Shanghai there is only one river now, but not navitable nor quite. Here in Huhzhou, the river is still naturally running, with ships moving here and there, full of life. There is also not much noise and traffice around the river, while the passage ways are nicely paved newly. I don’t know how many rivers there are, but certainly many. Huzhou, close to Taihu Lake, is called land of lake, therefore it is full of water – rivers, lakes and pools. It’s unique in China, and therefore I consider this as one of the key attraction to tourists, people and investors. Huzhou is a nice place to live, very much like the city of Dusseldorf in Germany. If it is properly managed, it should be a nice alternative to living in Hangzhou or Shanghai. Huzhou has become a large city now a large city, with more than a million inhabitants. It is extremely impressive with its new streets, buildings and industrial parks like everywhere in China. Living here is easier than those metropolises like Shanghai or Beijing, which are too crowded and populated. Here in Huzhou one still can buy things from small sellers on the streets, in the living quarters and prices sometimes are cheap - Huzhou was small, very small, when I was a youngster. I don’t know much about the city or rather the town, because I was not born in the downtown area, but in the suburban area about 30 km south to the town at the border with Deqing county (德清), also within the jurisdiction of the Huzhou municipal government. At the time of my childhood it was named Wuxing county (吴兴县), and the county capital – I don’t know how it was called then, perhaps already Huzhou town – was a small town of about 100 000 people, and it was shabby with narrow streets, low houses. There was no big buildings – the only high rise building was built in the late 1980’s – the Zhebei Mansion with 20 storey’s. I was raised in a farmhouse in the rural area, and at the age of 15 I was moved to a nearby town – smaller than the Huzhou town but also under it – to continue my high school studies. This little town – called Linghu (菱湖) – is about 10 km northeast to my home and I (with other three pupils) needed to run for more than 1.5 hours to get there. And I didn’t get to Huzhou town until early 1980’s when I was admitted into the Tongji University in Shanghai and Huzhou was the place I took long distance bus to Shanghai for about 3 hours (during the first years however, I still took the motor boats from Linghu to Shanghai, a journey of more than 17 hours from 3:00 pm to 8:00 am the next morning). Although during the next decades I very frequently dropped into the city of Huzhou from Shanghai by bus, but very rarely would I stop in the city and have a careful look at the city streets. I just arrived here and transferred to another bus to my home and I have only spent one night there one day because I can caught the last bus. Therefore I have no good acquaintance with the city. I have also no relatives live there. All our relatives are living not far than 10 km from my home, two in Deqing county, three in the nearby villages, and those far away are really far away, three or four in Shanghai, one in Haining, also Zhejiang province and another in Taiwan across the strait, with whom we have lost contacts and never recovered. So Huzhou to me is unknown. When I grew up, I was moved to Shanghai at the age of 15, and I was like a little child then and my body was still not yet fully developed. Therefore I don’t have much impression of the city and my hometown. Of course, during the last 35 years since 1978 when I went to Shanghai to begin my university, I returned to my hometown at least once a year. But while at home, I only stay with my parents and I did not leave home for travel to nearby cities or towns, and I even didn’t leave home to enjoy society of people in the same village and most of time I enjoyed my indoor activities. Reading, chatting with my mother and so on. Such was my acquaintance with my hometown until May 2011, when I resettled in Huzhou after leaving Hangzhou on May 11, 2011. I stayed in Huzhou town proper for about 21 months (May 11, 2011 to March 5, 2013), and what gives me the most impressive ideas is that Huzhou is now a big city, a million people metropolis, not much unlike other big cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou etc from outer appearance, at least. There are wide and new streets, high buildings everywhere, luxurious shopping centers, theaters, parks, night clubs, restaurants etc. You feel like somewhere in Shanghai, and you can find every comfortables in the city, only if you have enough money. Most of my former high school teachers at Linghu Middle School were resettled in Huzhou, many of my high school classmates are working and living there, some with quite good life. A large part of rural population are transferred to the city center and bought apartments and houses there (houses are no more cheap here, costing about RMB 15000 a square meter). The city streets are full of cars. However, air is much cleaner than those in Hangzhou and Shanghai. Still you can find many cats in your living quarters, which is rare in Hangzhou. Historically Huzhou has been among the richest regions of China with its favorable land. 30 years ago, the rural people of Huzhou were richer than those in rural Shanghai and Suzhou and most part of China. While most farmers have only flat, one-floor houses, people in Huzhou have been living living in two-storey, mostly wooden houses for centuries already. Here in Huzhou, prior to the industrialization, were enjoying a comfortable lives with the moderate climate and rich natural supplies. Here there are lots of water space with lakes big and small, rivers everywhere, rice fields, cocoon fields, and it’s a land without major natural catastrophe. Water is the characterizing element of this land and hence it name – Huzhou literally means the land of lakes – it is true that it is the land of lakes. Right some hundreds meters distant to my home there is a small lake of several square kilometers, where I used to go fishing. Several meters in front of us is a small river which is now shrunken to a small ditch. That was the past, however. And now the situation has been changed radically. In comparison with the noisy, boisterous and new rich areas of Guangdong, and other areas of China, I personally prefer my home countryside of a quieter life, with cleaner air and less traffic. Of course there are also many many cars on the roads, and this is to me very annoying, but compared with those in cities and in other richer regions, here there are still not so many vehicles. As I will mention in my storey to follow, there are also many negative sides of my hometown. In fact, I have never liked this place at all, as I am a person without geographical taste, instead, I feel in Shanghai and German more at home than here in my hometown, because I was educated in Shanghai and my main career and life activities were in Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou. Prices of most commodities except housing are higher than those in big cities, the smaller the place, the higher the prices. Farmers are not necessary nicer than city residents, and your neighbors are not necessary kinder to you than your distant friends in Shanghai or Guangdong. So it’s hard to tell you whether I like it or not, whether it’s a nicer place to live or not, although there were poets and politicians who praised Huzhou as the best place to live back hundreds or even thousands years ago. I disagree with them. There are certainly much better places to live and to work, in China alone, much more elsewhere in the world. Yet one does not need to find the best place to live. One just needs to find out how to live best at the present place. Sometimes it is difficult or even impossible to find the optimal solutions to your problems, then what you do is just try to approximate a better solution with your resources at hand. That’s exactly my current situation. I am certainly not living the best life, but I shall try to make the best out of it and try to find the good and better sides of living here in my hometown. You will see it right through my reports and perhaps you will finally like this place at the end of my story. It's a nice place to live, I can assure now already, but don’t forget the preconditions when I say that. Let’s see how we find it. I came from Huzhou, and I have been wandering across China and the world over the last three decades, but because my parents are getting older, so I have to come back to take care of them. Although I personally don’t feel at home in Huzhou, except when together with my parents and sisters and brothers, because I’ve left here so long, but Huzhou is really a good place for living, if not under communist rule, which turns this paradise into hell. It is such a beautiful place, so why shall we leave it for other less comfortable place and country? Here we have everything you need. |
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Why Coming to Huzhou?Why did I finally come to a small city like Huzhou? Some of the reasons were talked about above in my explanations why I left Hangzhou. The main reason was of course my failure in career, for if I were successful in my career, I could ask my mother to come and live with me, and there would be no problems at all, if I have a comfortable home with a good wife and lovely kids. So this could be the only reason. And when I was unable to find enough money to support my living in Hangzhou, then I have to move to a cheaper place first, and second, I shall also be closer to my mother, as she was getting older, thus coming to hometown was the only choice. I have never liked my hometown, whether it is downtown or my home village, or elsewhere in the municipal city jurisdictional area, incl. the town called Linghu where I got my high schooling. The people in this region are wicked, tricky, less nicer and kindlier than those in Shanghai and Beijing. Particularly the women in this are very not filial to their parents-in-law – nay, they go far beyond that, they mistreat their parents-in-laws. Women in this regions only love money, and ask very high of their mal friends and husbands, and at the same time are not responsible for household business. They basically do nothing at home – no cooking, no washing, no babysitting. When they give baby, they prefer Cesarean production to natural childbirth, they feed milk from supermarkets rather than their own milk to their kids … in one word, they want everything, but want to nothing. In this regions there are many strange customs which are rare elsewhere in China. For example there is a socalled Engagement where man has to pay hundreds of thousands of RMB to his lover, and if you have not yet bought a home and a car, no woman will date with you. If you marry a woman of this region, your life will be miserable. So it is a region I want to escape from and therefore if I come back, then it is the last straw of my life and it is a sign that my career is completely in ruin. Of course Hangzhou is no better, an all aspects, expect that there are mountains where I can seek asylum.
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What Problems I Have in Huzhou?After settling in Huzhou and staying there for nearly 2 years, I found the same problems as I was in Hangzhou – no jobs were available to me in this city. This was expected before I moved to Huzhou, because I was fully aware that for people like me with my high profile I could only find jobs for me in the tier one city like Shanghai and Beijing, only these two cities, no more and in the largest multinationals, no less. There are no chances for me in any other places. What I did not expect was that here in this small town I could find no social contacts. For two years I have no friends at all, while in Hangzhou, I always have friends of some kind, and I can go to many places only if I can find enough time for entertainment. And people in small cities don’t possess high level spirit, and with them I can’t talk in the same way as I would with those in big cities. The small city people are more vulgar and enjoy more low level entertainment such as games, Majohong and similar things. Although I went to the local Catholic church several times but there I could also find no one to talk to. Most of them were old women, and they did not organize collective events and there were no discussions and meetings, so there was no chance to have individual contacts with the members of the church. Doing business in Huzhou via Internet was theoretically the same as in Hangzhou, but when you were in smaller cities, then your image will be greatly impacted as people may think you were a nobody company. People tend to do business who are situated in good cities and nice buildings. I can’t tell people that I was working in a high rising building in Shanghai. Once a time a well known yacht company wanted to talk with me, and came to Hangzhou, but I was in Huzhou and dared not to talk with them, because I feared if I told them I was in Huzhou then they will turned me down. And I have to tell them that I would not be available during that time and asked them to schedule for another day. Of course they would not do this. And other than Internet, I have no intention to try – I did not want to waste my money on operating a company and on the complicated government and interpersonal relations, and a shop, or a retail was also not among my plan. Finding a nice woman as my wife in a small place is much more difficult than that in bigger city, the same reason as to finding a good friend in small cities to big ones. In small cities the women are of lower quality and are more or less concerned about money than mutual life value and ideas. They are much less educated, have much shallow perspective, yet ask higher of you. And unlike Hangzhou, I could not find a lasting friend in the mountain climbing and I found quite lonely when I went to the mountain, as there were no one to talk to, while in Hangzhou, I can always find guys with whom I could talk a bit, and even I have one very pleasant guy with whom I could exchange almost all my views. Here in the small city no one is interested in topics of my preference. And more than in Hangzhou, I were further cut of from my friends, colleagues and partners elsewhere. What Were Done in Huzhou?Virtually nothing, except that I could more frequently visit my mother. While only two or three times a month in Hangzhou, here I could come to my mother three to four times a month, or nearly every month, at least in the later months. During the first year or so I came home only every one to two months, which was anyway already significantly more than what I could do in Hangzhou. As regards to social life, after so many years of bad experiences with people in China and elsewhere, I have also decided to forget all my past contacts and recreate my new social networks, right from scratch up. I will no more consider myself a student of the schools which I attended before, I will no more think myself as their colleague, friends and partners. I will resurrect myself and reborn in a totally new environment and perspective. A minor achievement was the reduction of living cost – rent was reduced from RMB 1600 a month to RMB 750 a month, and food expenditure was also slightly lowered because I could bring some from my rural home. Overall, the life mission and goals were finalized with my studies and researches of math as the eventual areas of endeavors. All other studies will be of minor importance, thus in late 2012, I was determined to give up my follow up of IT skills and my previous studies and researches in a bunch of science branches such as solar physics, thermodynamics, fluiddynamics, and several other branches of math such as functional analysis, differential and integral equations, computational math etc. English will be my main language and all others will be regarded as hobby and will be coupled with IT and science learning. So this was clear enough. For business, although no clients were won, at the end of the stay, I was clear that I will take the following strategies: language service will be my current focus in order not to starve myself, but it will not last long as the translation fees are so low that it is not worth doing it (the price is actually reduced to half over the last 10 years, while other prices were more then doubled, especially the housing prices were more than 20 times that 10 years ago in some cities). Unless other businesses can pick up, I will immediate discard my language services. And my final business orientation is the yacht consulting, particularly those of reporting. Meanwhile I will also be doing a bit trading in order to earn a little more than just for survival. |
Why Quitting Downtown Huzhou?In early November 2012, after a fierce quarrel with my sister-in-law, that is the wife of my brother, my mother and I decided to move out of the house where we have been living ever since where my forefathers have lived there more than 200 years ago. This woman i.e. the wife of my brother, is a wicked one, and makes the life of my mother miserable, and therefore either this woman moves out or my mother moves out. We choose to move out of this house and settled down in a smaller and poorer house just a few steps away, after a little refurbishment. During the four month time period (Nov 2012 – February 2013), I often came to home to spend a few days with my mother, as she has to live alone now, after she’s moved out of the old house. At that time my sisters and brother could still pay frequent visits to her, almost everyday. But I found out that each time I came back she looked sad and unhappy, and her knee was aching more severely. And she was afraid of living alone in a house as she never did before, and also as a fear of possible attack by thefts and robbers who very often act in this street. And I very much feared about her safety, not only because of the theft and robbery but also because she cannot always safely use the household appliances such as electric cooker, the refrigerators, the gas oven, the solar water heaters, the TV, the telephone and virtually all things in the house, causing severe safety risks and waste of money. And her knee is sometimes aching heavily and she has some problems in walking the stairs. And many other daily life things I have to worry about if she lives alone. By the Chinese lunar new year my brother took up a job at a nearby factory, therefore he has no time to visit my mother, and my elder sister has to go to Hangzhou to take care of her daughter there, who is married and working there. Thus there must be someone who can live with my mother and take care of her at daily basis not just from time to time. Someone has to live with her, speak with her, and give her a total security and peace. And only I can do this job, as my younger sister is also working at a bank in a nearby town and according to local customs, daughters are not welcome to live with their parents after they are grown up and married. Besides, my life in Huzhou downtown was null, yielding nothing at all. Continuing to do so is a waste of time and money – anyway I have to pay rent and extra money for daily life and transportation cots to visit my mother. I hate the city and its people there, and there was no chance whatsoever, and in the short run there was also no chance to promote myself elsewhere, therefore, considering all these factors, I decided to move out of Huzhou and came, eventually to a place of my birth. But still, my birth place is not the right place for me, and another resettlement is inevitable but I can’t foresee when and how. At the moment it is perhaps the only right transit solution to my difficult situation now but not a final destination of my life. I really don’t know where is my future and destiny. To be frank, I like no place of this world at all, because all countries with which I have contacted before and which have rejected me before are not my future locations of living, and then where? Perhaps I will choose a country and city with which I have no bad experiences and which can also guarantee the freedom of its inhabitants. I can only stay in a place where there is no dictatorship. Settled down here in Huzhou, my hometownI was born to a farmer family about 20 km south to Huzhou town, at the border to Deqing county, also within the Huzhou municipal district. I left this city in 1978 when I was still a youngster at the age of 15, to attend the Tongji University in Shanghai, by a cruising boat which took about 20 hours to reach Shanghai – now only 2 and half hours by highway. Yet I have never imagined that one day I will return home, but since May 21, 2011 I am settled down in a small flat in the old living quarter of Huzhou, close to the old main bus station, from where I took my buses to Tongji University or the companies where I used to work inShanghai back 20 or 30 years ago. And now the chance is very high that I will pretty soon retire completely to stay with my mother in my village house purchased by my forefathers more than 200 years ago – in about the mid Qing Dynasty. That small, old and humble house, now poorly refurbished, has never been inhabited over the last 100 years or so as far as I can remember. And now I can spend much much more time with my mother. I can go there every week, that is, I come back home 50 times a year to my mother, not 2 to 3 times when in Hangzhou. However, this city, like Hangzhou, also does not provide me with enough opportunities to survive in the ever pricy world. Nevertheless I am hoping there will be some breakthrough someday and the sky will reopen in front of me after so many years of stagnation. Now, I have to get familiar with the new environment and get everything done in the next weeks – new mobile, new Internet, new bank account, new gas supply, new purchases of everyday necessities such as foods, and the apartment has to be cleaned up etc. I wanted to find a shop where I can buy cooked foods and vegetables, but I couldn’t find it by running across all the city of Huzhou. I also need to buy a new computer monitor, the old one was thrown away. I need to buy a TV for my mother, she will come here pretty soon. I need also buy many other things for her coming. Most important is to think about how to earn a living here in the new place. Impression of HuzhouAlthough I was a native Huzhouer, if you consider all people born in the municipal jurisdictional area of Huzhou – which cover the downtown Huzhou, Wuxing district, Nanxun district, Changxing county, Anji county and Deqing county, then I am also counted as a Huzhouer. But we mostly don’t feel like that and the people in the downtown Huzhou also look down at us and consider us as peasants and not as of their own people. We think we are more closed to Shanghai than to Huzhou citizen. Don’t worry about that. Yet it is true that I have never a positive impression of the people, customs and culture of this part of China. Like most other Chinese women, they maltreat their parents-in-law, they are selfish, cruel, lack of feminine, very worldliness; They know only money, without pursuit of noble spirit. In Mainland China you can hardly find women with gentle mood, unless you pour out large amount of money to them. Huzhou was a land with many waters and lakes, a very beautiful place indeed, but now it is dusty all over the region, rivers are stanching unpleasantly with awful odors, many mountains are bare headed, very ugly. Streets and roads are full of dust, much severer than in Hangzhou, but there is less air pollution, though. The tap water is of very poor quality, and sometimes, particularly in the afternoons, there will be a smell from the water. Prices in Huzhou are mostly higher than those in Hangzhou, and housing prices are not so low as I have previously thought. Average per square meter price in downtown Huzhou was over 10 000 RMB. Small vendors in Huzhou are also bad tempered – if you don’t buy their goods after some looks and questionings, they will shout at you. There are only a few churches in Huzhou, the quality of the preachers are obviously worse than those in Hangzhou, and in the witness time women are just talking about their sufferings and everyday life, without any hints of Jesus Christ, their lord. 2012-12-21 湖州印象湖州虽是我家乡，但我向来没有好感。那里的女人普遍都虐待公公婆婆，自私，凶狠，缺乏女人味，很俗气，只认识钱，没有高尚的精神追求，跟杭州女人差不多。中国大陆现在很难找到温柔有情调的女性，除非你砸大量的银子在她身上。湖州本来是江南水乡，很美的地方，现在搞得到处尘土飞扬，河流恶臭难闻，许多山林光秃秃的，极为难看。马路比杭州更多灰尘，但空气中汽车尾气明显少许多。湖州的自来水质量很差，极差，有时候打开水龙头就有股恶臭。湖州的物价普遍高于杭州。房价也不比杭州低多少。作为一个最小的城市之一，湖州的房价居然排在全国第十。城区房价普遍在1万以上。湖州小商贩很坏，你不买他的东西就破口大骂。湖州教会不多，我去过的基督教，讲道人的素质明显不如大城市教会的水平。见证会上妇人们拉家常，天南海北，乱吹一通，耶稣早不见踪影。 |
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