Li Keng – No Hustle, No Bustle

If your only view of China came from the media, you might picture it as a massive ant colony with some freshly-poured honey on top. That’s because most of the journos report from Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, the rumbling engines of China’s drive to economic power.

But this is a land of yin and yang, with settlements as sleepy and peaceful as any Golden Pond. Not stage-managed tourist destinations, although there are plenty of those too, these places simply ride the wheel of time, contributing to China’s destiny but by no means swept up in it.

The village of Li Keng is such a place. Sitting smack-dab in the middle of lush, land-locked Jiangxi, Li Keng is not so much forgotten by time as unaffected, and thus a superb getaway for the advanced China escape artist.

You roll into town on a flat valley road flanked by tilled fields spreading up into green mountains. Given the Chinese penchant for grandiloquence, you’d think such a place would be named “Paradise Valley” or “Town of Ten Thousand Abundances”. But in this neck of the Middle Kingdom, keng refers to any significant stretch of cleared bottom land, and this stretch has a disconcerting number of residents surnamed Li. Pragmatic name for such a beautiful spot, kind of like calling Great Britain “Smith Island”.

A classically styled Chinese arch bears the village name to visitors, Li Keng’s only spot of pretension. Everywhere else is a beautiful understatement of green fields and ancient clustered dwellings. Rather than the dismal brick or concrete of so many rural houses, Li Keng’s are limed white, with black slate roofs. The color scheme lends a certain stateliness to the quiet riot of nature’s growth around it.

Camphor trees perfume the air, starting with the twin giants gracing the entry arch. Village custom dictates that a new daughter obliges her family to plant a camphor tree at the front door. When the girl reaches marriageable age, the lumber can be used for dowry gifts, jewelry boxes, bedsteads, and all else improved by scented wood. Pity the family with a daughter whose camphor tree didn’t grow well; their feng shui was obviously too skewed to merit a dignified suitor.

The monsoon season alone could feed the farms, and affords Li Keng a special view. Dawn to dusk, fog obscures the tops of the mountains, and floats down in discrete, amorphous blobs that can hide half a house, and leave the rest in stark relief.

Not poets or acrobats, but businessmen are the proudest human product of Li Keng. Long ago, some of the region’s richest merchants built mansions in and around the village. These grand houses, with their carved windows, ornate doors, and sumptuous furnishings still bear testament to the worldly people who lived there upon a time, government officials and influential merchants. Fortunate for us the glory days faded before an enterprising developer thought to endow Li Keng with a spread of cookie-cutter condos.

Even though they were men of substance, Li Keng’s rich didn’t look down on the commoners. They unfailingly left one corner of their mansions rounded, to reduce the piercing feng shui and show respect to their more humble neighbors. A home built later than one’s neighbor’s would also have a recessed door as as further sign of deference, regardless of the earlier tenant’s station in life.

Such diffidence never harmed Li Keng. The village boasts over forty stars who worked their way up to court official status. It even boasts a Wu Zhuangyuan, the highest ranking scholar on the nationwide imperial exam. Li Keng’s Wenchangge temple is frequented by parents who want the best for their future smartypants. The temple features eighteen portraits of scholars who made it to court official status by dint of scholastic excellence.

But the life of Li Keng lies in its market. Flush on the banks of the town river, many do business on boats. Big red lanterns hang from riverside storefronts, and bustle with merchants and customers the livelong day. At night, the pace slows, and the riverside teahouses fill as the merchants’ stalls empty.

There are boats for hire, allowing a leisurely trip through the village and into the surrounding countryside. Farm wives wash clothes by the river as their children splash nearby. No one locks their doors, and you’re as likely to be invited to tea as you are to catch a brief rain shower. You can’t drift much further from the China of newspapers and burgeoning GDP.

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