We have finally arrived in Cheng Long. The Chinese name for Jackie Chan. And it still it keeps raining.
My body wants to be on a rural schedule down here. Going to bed by 10 and waking up at 5:30 with the rooster’s crowing and the sun rising. Unfortunately though they decided to give me a bedroom that is right next to the local evening hang out by the porch, kitchen and tool room. It is a nice room, but I am thinking I should switch. My only choice is to try and switch with the artist from Italy for a smaller room with no windows that borders on the living room of another family that plays the TV late into the night. Oh what shall I do?
Yesterday we went around the area scavenging for materials at the recycling center and along the sea coast where they keep the oyster farms. The farms are designed with rows and rows of bamboo scaffolding within which are hung lines and lines of oyster shells. The idea is to create a fake reef to attract the growth of new oysters. At high tide the farms are under water, we arrived at low tide to find them all exposed along with these giant nail like pillars of concrete that are placed to serve as wave breakers during the typhoons. The idea is that as the bamboo scaffolding breaks apart after the oysters are farmed you go out to collect the pieces left behind. The first beach we went to had none most likely due to the extra rain we have been having, at the second one we were more successful at finding aged pieces of the bamboo to recycle for our projects. It is like a post-apocolypitic landscape out there during low tide with the gray skies and factories in the distance. On the way there we passed just under a series of wind turbines, which stand guard over this bizarre landscape. As we drove below the spinning fans they seemed to me like giant creatures wielding their power over the terrain.
Best,
Michele
