Q & A (Provided by John Nelson)

Nick's visit to Captain's Farm (reference photos 57 to 92)


1. Was it a very long train ride? You look pretty tired. Train looked crowded, but not too awful.

Yeah the train ride was about 8 hours, plus another 1 1/2 hours by bus. Train up was full with some standing passengers. One guy slept under his companions' bench which I thought was pretty funny. He laid down a bunch of newspaper because the floors are filthy. As Per Mr. Thereau's book, people spit, throw fruit rinds, shells, and other flotsam on the floors of trains and occasionally buses.

Train ride back home we bought standing room tickets because that's all that was left. First three hours of the ride we stood, and for about an hour and a half (between two major stops) the train was packed like a subway in rush hour. Pressed in with a bunch of sweaty dudes. Not very pleasant. Plus they have these concession carts that they insist on pushing down the aisles even when the train is packed. Somehow they found a way. Later the train cleared out a bit and we got seats for the rest of the way.

2. Looks like you were visiting Captian's family? Are the dirt mounds tombs? What are the overgrown ruins?

Yeah we were visiting the house he grew up in, in Hunan province. The dirt mounds are tombs. They start out as dirt and then depending on how wealthy the family is they eventually surround it with a cement platform. All the tombs have the same structure. Mound with a U shaped wall around the back, plus the little shrine opening in the front for candles and incense. The overgrown mounds are very old tombs. The far away shots are just a lot of upscale tombs shot from further along the hillside. There were tombs literally everywhere. Old tombs hidden in the underbrush. There was even a really old tombstone that had been used to make a little bridge over an irrigation canal. Captain said the gravestone had his surname on it, so that's pretty exciting! I was disappointed when he said that his family had two big geneology books but he'd never read them. If our family had that kind of record I would be all over that.

3. The farm house is pretty classic, wood fired kitchen etc. What were the food items shown on the table? Nice looking pig. where was he off to?

Yeah the house was awesome. Classic chinese style bed with a bamboo mat and bamboo pillows. You pee in a bucket because they use it as fertilizer, and the "toilet" was reminiscent of the one at Punto San Jose. It's that weird mix of rural and modern because they have a TV (with an antenna) but no internet of course, but everyone has a cell phone and the reception is good even in the countryside.

The food was pretty classic Hunan style food. green peppers and pork, sauteed onions, tofu, some sliced potatoes, and spicy smoked duck meat. Apparently spicy duck is big in hunan. Captain's dad also gave me this weird seed pod thing that is like "Hunan gum." You chew it and chew it but you can't swallow it, and they have different flavors. The two that I had, one was a flavor I know but I can't place, maybe cinnamon, and the other one was like peppermint. The peppermint ones are dried and I bought a pack! so you can try it for yourself when I get home.

That old guy moving the weight on the scale was a local "boss." I think Captain referred to him as a boss. He runs a little shop down by the road and he's also the local butcher. When I woke up he was there and he had some breakfast with us. He was buying the pig from Captain's dad, although the way Captain described it the profit margin on even a pig that big was fairly low. But sometimes Captain gets messed up translating numbers into English, so his estimate might've been off.