about dazhengzhao
Chinese civilization first saw light in Henan around 5000 years ago. Yanshi, (ancient capital of the Xia dynasty), and Shao-lin, (cradle of Kung Fu martial arts), are less than 100 miles from Dazhengzhao village. The semi-mythological Yellow Emperor - first ruler of China - was said to be born only 30 kilometers away. The following series of images were taken during two trips that dancer Yu Wei made to the village in 1999 and 2006 to meet her Aunt Fu-Li, who had raised Wei's orphaned father in the small community after China's civil war. . . . THREE KINGS: A cemetery is being constructed 2 miles from the village. Some of the buildings are imitations of Han Dynasty temples. Ancestor worship is real in China and people travel great distances and spend long hours visiting the dead. Bricks from the village are being used to make roads and walls. Village men get up before dawn and walk the 2 miles to the site along the Sui Po River. Temple roofs can be seen in the distance. . . . DAZHENGZHAO: Thought to be 1000 years old, although it may be older, the village doesn’t appear on any maps. The number 1000 is a frequently used measure of age and distance in China. People prayed for an Emperor to enjoy 10 times 1000 years of life; the great wall is expressed as being 3 times a thousand li. A thousand years or yards or words in China don't easily fit into western systems of exact measurements. Dazhengzhou's location on the well-traveled plumb line from the Yellow (north) river to the Yangtze (south) river, argues that villagers have lived in this area for a long time. . . . END OF DAY: A Farm Family Returning Home. Night settles fast, houses offer shelter but little warmth; open stove fires come later in winter when the real cold descends. Wood is dear, the native forests of indigenous cedar were forested hundreds of years ago and replaced by swiftly burning scrub. When the cooking fires are extinguished Dazhengzhao experiences a collective intake of breath. Soon the ground will become hard, the river ice over, and families withdraw into their compounds. The dogs and chickens sleep outside huddled together for warmth. . . . THOUGHTS ON A TRAIN: Chinese classical dancer Yu Wei returns to Dazhengzhao, her ancestral village in central China, to visit her Aunt Fu Li. The village is hard to describe, part Brigadoon, part Tobacco Road, left behind by the great leap forward, isolated from the Cultural Revolution and completely unaffected by China’s new economic resurgence. There is no plumbing, no heat except for open stoves in winter. Illumination is bare bulb, the few phones are rotary, transport is a variety of wheeled carts, sledges, jitneys, putt-putts, scooters, bicycles, diesel trucks, road graders, tractors, donkey pulls, and 3 & 4 wheeled cars that provide a tableau of Chinese transportation history for the past 1000 years – all sharing the same tiny roads, kicking up individual trails of the red loess dust of central China. Generations of the Zhao family stretching back into the mists of history have lived here. Yu Wei’s father joined the Red Army as a teenager and eventually settled in Wuhan city on the Yangzi River. Wei grew up to become a world famous dancer who now lives in America; but when she thinks of home it is Dazhangzhao that appears in her thoughts. The fact that she has never been to the village before may explain her thoughtful intensity as the train brings her closer to her destination. . . . RIVER FROST: The next day before anyone wakes I walk out by the river. The sun rises through a distant line of trees infusing the pre-dawn grayness with a rose and apricot light. Mist shrouding the yarrow stalks on the riverbank transforms the scene into an ancient Chinese scroll painting. I can’t believe I'm visited with these images. Knowing they will evaporate when the sun appears I aim and click like a man obsessed. I want to make everything stop in place so I can carve my initials on the moment and make it eternal. . . . APOTHECARY STORE: The local drugstore. The practice of medicine is still in the hands of traditional or country doctors, who use potions, concoctions, herbs, lineament, acupuncture, moxibustion and chiropractic to cure ailments. The nearest hospital is 30 miles away in the provincial city of Chongge. . . . MAN ADMIRING HIS HOUSE: Brick making is Dazhengzhao’s only industry. Bricks are stacked everywhere in the streets. The compound walls are made of bricks, the houses and parts of the sidewalks are brick, and linings of the upscale latrines are brick. A significant percentage of the breathable air is pulverized brick dust. The bricks are made from a combination of local earth and straw from the fields and water from the Sui Po River that has the high alkaline content necessary for binding. The glow that permeates these photographs has much to do with the interaction between the floating dust and differing angles and intensities of slanting sunlight. . . . SU FAN WALKING HOME: Su Fan is Fu Li’s adopted son. His exuberant love of the Dazhengzhao countryside was obvious from the beginning. He was generous in showing off the secret places he had discovered as a boy. One in particular, a grove of 'Han dynasty trees' across the Sui Po River that I thought were apocryphal until I looked in an encyclopedia and found they were exactly as advertised - Chinese Lacebark Cypress that live to be over 1000 years old. In this picture Su Fan is walking home at end of day. The Zhao house is barely visible in the middle distance.