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Our own Jiaojiehe House:
Jiaojiehe environs:
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In Britain, I lived in the Wye Valley for 20
years, quite rightly it was designated an 'Area of Outstanding Natural
Beauty'. However, compared to the Jiaojiehe Valley it was nothing. In 'Money
Talks 2007', I tried to show that the words 'environmentally sensitive'
don't always translate easily into Chinese and in 'Beauty
and the Beast' I introduced you readers to our new neighbours who had started construction in the summer of 2007.
In parallel I have chronicled other developments in 'Money
Talks 2008'
Now in late 2008, it looks like they are maybe on the way to completing the job with a bit of sympathetic gardening. By mid-Summer, they had already decided that the area they had filled in front of their house was too small so they demolished the big (south facing) wall and rebuilt it a few metres forward. At the same time they built a two metre high wall on their western boundary at the lower level.
At this point and rather late in the day, we believe they decided a Feng Shui expert was needed and as always with any expensive consultant he must have said "Tut tut, you'll have to make some changes". It seems that the three walls on the west side just didn't line up properly and would all have to come down. And since that meant bringing in the wall builders again that it would be a good time to erect the exterior south wall and indulge in some serious landscape gardening. Never mind that nature had done not too bad a job over the last tens of thousands of years, they knew best.
Two large earth movers were hired for two weeks at a bargain price, reliably reported, of only 3000 Yuan, each, per day. And since large amounts of infill were needed, what a clever idea to dredge the local stream bed! In almost no time, the boundary wall was racing upwards.
The east end was left open so that the necessary earth and stones could be brought in, it would have been so much easier without all those ugly trees getting in the way.
My God, that's a Chinese JCB in our neighbour's garden!
So down came the west walls, not seen here is the smaller wall on the opposite side of the lane next to our house, shown later.
This is what it looked like just before we went filming in Jalainur:
And this is what it looked like when we got back 3 weeks later, magnificent isn't it?
But it's not a patch on the new south wall, six metres high and the best part of two metres thick, soaring heavenwards. Now, who said 'Made in China' meant anything other than doing the job properly and that the Chinese have a poorly developed sense of humour?
I think someone must given them a book on the medieval castles of Europe, the final effect is absolutely stunningly authentic, I couldn't have done better myself.
It now just remains to be seen how they use their stockpile of more than 100 two metre plus tree trunks to top everything out with an appropriate fence.
Still every cloud has a silver lining, in this case we may have solved the problem of our son Yiran's career choice - he wants something which will allow him to retire at 40. The Chinese army must pay very well because it seems from their vehicles that our neighbours are in the military.
It's so nice to have suitable free transport available when you have some bulky households items to deliver.
Quite why they have started to park in the valley road below and cover their numberplates when parked in the lane is quite beyond me, maybe this was the car with registration 60004 I saw below the day before. Note how the wall on the left has 'moved' outwards since the first picture! That's money power for you...
Here is a May 2009 updated bird's eye view to show how they are continuing to make progress in turning their land into a desert, the small areas of green are their caretaker's vegetables.
The good news is that they still feel so guilty they remove their number plates and they always park in the valley below when they very occasionally make a visit. |
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Rob and Yuehong Dickinson
Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk