Visit to Xinjian's home

Now when I'm in China I want to take the opportunity visit places and meet people that otherwise is very remote for me in Sweden. That's one of the reasons for me to visit Xinjian's parents. It's also very interesting to come to the place where he has grown up. To see and feel it!This is Xinjian's father (57), mother(56), grandmother(76) and him self(30). This is their house. Grandma' lives in a house next to this, by her self. They have a garden where they grow some fruits and vegetables. They also keep ducks and chickens.
The neighbours were very curious about the "laowai" visiting. I had to be a photo model with the three cute little girls that actually are 13, 11 and 8! It's so hard with telling age in China... Xinjian has brought foreigners here before, to of his Dutch colleagues have been there. Of course the "whole village" knows that Xinjian has been to The Netherlands to study. My room, the bed was hard and they don't use bed sheets but the sleep on this kind of bamboo mat. It was a little bit hard to sleep the first night. But it was mostly because of the heat (not under 30 degrees) and the never ending barking dogs outside.
Before we got there we made some shopping in the nearby small city. I don't know the name of this city but the village is called Tai Pin. The closest bigger city is YiXing and it all is in JiangSu Province.

In the market place in the close by village people recognize Xinjian and we did some shopping in "sort of relatives". They didn't want him to pay anything, they refused! It's the same story every time and it's probably because he help their son to get a job in WuXi another close by bigger city. At this market they had lots of vegetables meat of different kinds, like here - frog!
Dinner was served in the big living room or outside. It is always a lot of food. Partly because I was there but also that you never know if some cousin or grandma' are coming for dinner. But this creates problem, because they haven't got a fridge. So Xinjian’s mother has to put the food in the neighbours’ fridge... But that life, not problem with that.
When we had dinner outside it was very convenient with the rests, his mother just released the birds and we threw it on the ground for them to eat. When we ate inside we took the rests and threw it to the birds in their little fields.
After lunch or dinner it's watermelon time! Yummy!

We had a walk up to a temple close by. It was very hot! Around 38 degrees in the shadow, just look at me, I'm sweating like a pig...
It was nice to get up there and hear the monks sing. But the illusion broke when they took of their robes and put on the TV and started to look at soap operas with high volume...

Isn’t it beautiful so say!The big living room. A place were you socialise, eat, relax. The fan saved my life several times... Xinjian will give them an air-conditioning next year. "The summer is soon over, we don't need it now".

We visited some caves in the area, really cool and big, but most of all cold! I didn't get any good photos from there so you'll only get the entrance.
The cool guys doing the typical Chinese summer shirt style...
On the way back from the village after buying some groceries we rode this three wheel truck taxi. Instead of 20 RMB for a regular taxi - 1RMB!
The next day we brought umbrellas. Smart... The sun is really hot and it's humid. Just standing in the sun will make me sweat.
We went out to have a look at the tea fields. This is partly what Xinjian's parents have worked. They are now almost retired but they did also work in the bamboo forest and some other places. The problem is the same as in many other places. The raw goods are not valuable (they sell the tea leaves to the "tea factory" for almost nothing) but the treated goods are more expensive. The dried tea is then sold to a greater price...