The business trip sometimes offers the best chance to see and experience a life we would hardly know in Shanghai. I've been out home for quite some time, with curiosity to satiate, missions to accomplish, and of course, fieldwork to perform. Exam days are coming fast, but the whole package of prep materials I take along with me does not in the least sense render any anxiety which I thought should have been coming out of nowhere. Perhaps it's because of the weather when I travel, the people I work with, the landscape I look at out of the bus window, and the serenity of solitude that I really enjoy.

Zhou Zhuang: I've been to many of China's famous water town resorts, many of which are commercialized to a very great extent, including Zhou Zhuang. With efforts made to exclude as many people outside of my shot frame as possible, comfort of paucity can still be captured.

Trip to Gu Yao Village, Wei Ma County, He Shun Town, Jin Zhong City, Shan Xi Prov., P.R. China, Earth. It's being so long a name, right? No wonder some of my colleagues call this place the countryside of the countryside. Textbooks taught us "fall is the season of ripeness", but in here early Nov. the fall I see is the season of baldness: dried up mountains, withered trees, barren lands. Uncivilized might be the best word to describe the rurality. People that spit at will, leafs that are incinerated sporadically, water we drink that contains submerged unidentified oily substance, and room service that does not make up my bed.  I am not complaining about all of these, but I am telling that people are living at a difference.

It would be a disappointing journey were I not to take some photos to help myself memorize the place once I had been to. Contrasted to the azure sky, the sterility per se reflects some beauty.

On board the plane to Tai Yuan, the capital city of Shan Xi Prov., I got a bird view of the mountainous area which I knew later is the Tai Hang Mountain, a name so familiar to Chinese who are educated to remember a war against Japan occurring in this place decades ago. Now, I am looking at the spectacle more closely than up in the sky, and the sunny weather is doing me a great favor compensating for the poor performance of my shaggy Kodak EasyShare.

My field work is located right beside a coal mining site, so I have a chance to get physically close to coal miners and the legendary mine entrance.

I bet those workers have their dreams to live with, as I have mine. Humans struggle alike, urban or rural. Thanks to those workers, we get our laptops switched on to work; and thanks to their boss, the sea level keeps rising up every year. I recently read a National Geographic article about the global warming. The article attributes the global temperature increase mainly to the emission of too much carbon dioxide released from human activities like burning coals. China now is ranking the second of carbon dioxide emission in the world, and may exceed Uncle Sam in near future. Although global efforts are now being made to solve this conundrum, the door of chances to reverse the environmental propensity is closing up fast.

Project finished within a week, I am returning home on weekend. Once again, I will soon be joining those who live a life of insatiable desires in the city landscape that is totally different from what I saw this week. Beyond prosperousness, shall there be another interpretation for life I am living? Or is what I saw what they really are? Yet, I am departing for another destination the week after the next to further seek for the answer to questions which are never meant to be answered.