Turned Rustic Into Mulan

Paradise?  Looks rather lovely in the pictures on the internet.  I’ve never been.  A friend who’s coming to town has developed an affinity or Feng Huang in Hunan.  I’ve found a train we can ride out there.  We’ll be on our way Friday morning.   Just throw it in Google Images and see what you think. 

There are other old trading towns in Hunan, with remarkable architecture as well, nearby.  We start comparing them all and begin to shore up how we’ll spend the few days out there.  Together buy our train tickets and start trading ideas on hotels.  Ahh, but wait.  He’s found a few people suggesting that Feng Huang used to be cool.  However the arc of cool, they plainly assert has moved on and what was remarkable has become commercialized.  An opportunistic make-over has turned rustic into Mulan. 

I tell my chum not to worry.  China’s like that.  This person may be spot-on and then again, it may not matter.  I realize that, under nearly any circumstances, certainly the sort of circumstances the article’s author was complaining about, I’d still be interested to see what’s there.  It is almost always interesting if not pleasant to see how China changes. 

It will be my second time to Hunan in a month.  Before that I think I’d only ever been to Changsha once or maybe twice.  Once again, we’ll be in the Xiang countryside.  My wife, a northern gal, grumbled a bit about the people we met, but I thought they were all quite lovely.  And the town of Nanyue we’d visited was a bit made-over but beside the road paved up to the top of the sacred mountain, (and that was a big one) they hadn’t ruined anything, more than any other Chinese tourist site had.  This Friday then.  We’ll see.  I’ll let you know what Feng Huang is all about as a two-and-a-half decade, veteran of striking out into the countryside.  I suspect I’ll find something to like or at least comment on.

Saturday, 5/05/18