Connectivity matters in Shanghai's first long, rural rambling route
It all began with a cup of ginger lily coffee I ordered out of curiosity on a quiet April afternoon in an ancient pristine village in the western suburbs of Shanghai.
I'm not a big fan of coffee. When I occasionally drink a cup of coffee with a friend, I usually gulp it down, sometimes in one go. Unlike tea, coffee is not something I would enjoy sipping slowly to seek a possible sensory connection with the surrounding environment.
But the coffee mixed with ginger lily powder, which I tasted for the first time in my life in early April, was different. The moment I began to sip it, it created a mild but penetrating and everlasting floral scent on my taste buds – a scent that made me feel as if I had become one with the village's atmosphere, which was fragranced by sprouting spring plants.
The rural courtyard at Dongshe Village where I enjoyed a cup of coffee mixed with ginger lily powder.
A rural rambling route
In a sense, the difference between gustation and olfaction disappeared as I relished my cup of ginger lily coffee in an outdoor courtyard, with the smell and scent of nature merging in my newly discovered mental pleasure amid the idyllic rural scene.
My trip to Dongshe Village was not about coffee, though. I went to the ancient village in Liantang Town, Qingpu District, on April 15, three days after I learned from an official report that the village would be at the heart of a rural pedestrian path designed to connect different villages.
Eastday.com, a leading local news portal, reported on April 12 that the 21-kilometer rustic rambling route along 10 pristine villages in Liantang Town would be adapted from existing country roads that mainly serve motor vehicles.
In other words, the current motorways along or through those neighboring villages will be upgraded to accommodate pedestrians, runners and cyclists. At the same time, some vacant houses in the villages along the future rambling route will be revamped to become public places for rest and recreation for farmers as well as urban visitors who prefer immersive tours in the countryside.
In my previous reports about the city's rural development, I had noticed a missing link: Individually, many villages are idylls onto themselves, but collectively, they haven't formed a continuous landscape that ramblers need for immersive country tours.
If you go from one idyllic village to another, you often have to pass through dusty motorways and endure the rumbling of heavy-duty trucks. Many beautiful villages look like pearls scattered randomly, without a "necklace" – a rural rambling route – to weave them into a connected countryside landscape.
For example, the 19km Beiqing Highway in Shanghai's western suburbs separates many villages in the vicinity, some of which are close to each other but are not easily accessible on foot. You've got to make a detour around many dusty parts of the highway.
To be sure, rural road connectivity in Shanghai has improved a lot over the past few years, but most roads are for motor vehicles. Call it the 1.0 version of the city's rural road construction. Now there's a need for the 2.0 version: connected rural rambling routes.
While the current motorways help farmers travel or transport local produce more efficiently, there's much room for improvement when it comes to attracting urban visitors for immersive tours – a low-carbon practice that is at once a steady source of income for farmers and an important impetus for overall rural revitalization.
The reception center of a future guesthouse complex, where I ordered a cup of coffee out of curiosity
Behind a cup of coffee
I went to Dongshe Village to check how things were panning out: Where does the 21km rural rambling route – Shanghai's first of its kind – begin or end? How do Dongshe and nearby villages look like now? How are they going to change accordingly? What do local farmers think of the future route?
It turned out that I got all the answers because I bought a cup of ginger lily coffee just out of curiosity.
As soon as I entered the village, I was attracted by what appeared to be a fancy cafe in the shape of a farmhouse sitting quietly near a stone bridge said to be first built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). I came closer and found it was serving coffee with a brand name, Yejiang 野姜.
Due to my limited botanical knowledge, I immediately interpreted the two Chinese characters ye and jiang as meaning "wild ginger" or "freshly picked ginger" that would be good for my health – ginger may help get the cold out of my body. So I decided to order a cup of coffee mixed with what I assumed to be fresh ginger slices.
"No, it's not ginger coffee, it's coffee mixed with the powder of ginger lily, a kind of fragrant flower," a young man with smiling eyes explained as he greeted me enthusiastically by the coffee shop counter. I thought he was a cafe manager, but he was not.
"This is not a cafe, it's the reception center of a large rural recreational complex we are building, which mainly caters to elderly people who have an interest in experiencing a healthy life in the countryside," he said. "Coffee is just a service on the sideline."
"Could you please show me the recreational complex?" I asked, after deciding to give ginger lily coffee a try.
"Sure, follow me," he said without hesitation.
He asked a female assistant behind the counter to give me a discount for the ginger lily coffee, as I was a first-time visitor, and then escorted me to a row of local farmers' houses located about a stone's throw away from the reception center that I mistook for a coffee bar.
Some vacant farmers' houses are being adapted into guesthouses for recreational purpose at Dongshe Village.
"We are adapting a number of vacant farmers' houses into guesthouses for recreational purpose," the young man pointed out. "For example, now you can see we have added more windows so that future guests can enjoy natural light from every side of a house."
It was then I realized that he worked for Mix Journey, a firm dedicated to the design and development of villages. His name is Jiang Qi, and his surname Jiang happens to be the same Chinese character as that for "ginger," so I asked curiously: "Is the brand Yejiang named after you?"
"No, no, no," he chuckled.
Later, when I met Bai Junyi, president of Mix Journey, I realized that Yejiang coffee is not named after anyone, but reflects a group of young people's appreciation for natural flavors in their pursuit for a life closer to nature.
Dongshe Village unveiled Mix Journey as a strategic investor last year to help revive the rural economy. Before joining Dongshe, Mix Journey had designed and created many rural guesthouse complexes across China, including those in neighboring Jiangsu Province and the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.
"We've found that Dongshe Village and Giethoorn Village in the Netherlands are similar in many ways. For example, their rural landscapes feature bucolic waterways and farmers' houses that are tucked away from the mundane hustle and bustle of the urban world," said Bai. "We will try to build Dongshe into an ever more beautiful village with Giethoorn as a model."
Bai added that a video conference had been held between the two villages and both had agreed to develop in tandem with each other.
Certainly Dongshe and Giethoorn are different in many ways, but what struck me most was their similarly secluded scene: Both villages are car-free.
For German chef Maik Juengst, who moved from Minhang District to Dongshe Village about a month ago, a tricycle and a bike are favorite transport vehicles when it comes to traveling in the village or between neighboring villages. He once rode a bike to buy a cup of coffee in nearby Dongzhuang Village.
One night, when most farmers had gone to bed, he brought his computer out to the quiet courtyard and began to work under the moonlight. "What better office can I find than this?" he asked in jest.
He calls himself "Chef Maik" and has won myriad fans on Chinese social media platforms, including WeChat Channels (the video platform of WeChat), for his story of moving to Dongshe to fulfil his dream of creating a village food paradise.
German chef Maik Juengst poses before his simple furniture in Dongshe Village.
Chef Maik points to an award he won some years ago.
Chef Maik shows a cold water pipe in a makeshift bathroom.
When I first met him on April 15, Maik generously led me to visit his rented place – a two-story farmer's house. Conditions were harsh then, as he slept on a simple bed casually placed on the ground and had no hot water for bath. But he said he could sleep like a log in the village, where everything was quiet, the only noise being the sound of nature.
I went to see him again on May 13 and found he had made quick progress in refurbishing the house. Brick stoves were beginning to take shape and he had done away with the original shower room with a view to turning it into a special guestroom for gourmets. With the help of a young Chinese friend, he had also spruced up the grass slope that leads from the backdoor of the farmer's house to a river that runs along a vast rice field. The sloping riverside area will be a spacious gathering ground for guests who are big on barbecue, Maik said.
"Hopefully my rural canteen will open on June 1, Children's Day," he told me. "When I cook, I will use local stuff, from vegetables to chicken meat to mutton. Don't ask me whether my food is German or Chinese style. What matters is I offer local fresh food."
Chef Maik (left) has made quick progress in improving his rural canteen ahead of its expected inauguration in early June.
Provided by Chef Maik.
How chef Maik works hard to improve his rural canteen.
Cooperating with Mix Journey, Maik doesn't have to worry about the sustainable supply of various fresh food materials. The secret is: It's Mix Journey that has helped design the 21km rural rambling route that will link Dongshe with nine other pristine villages, which produce a variety of food stuff.
These 10 villages, like pearls to be hooked up with a "necklace" – the future rural rambling route – yield a wide range of local produce, from rice to fruits, from crabs to mushrooms – almost an infinite and diverse source of food materials for chef Maik and people like him who want to eat local.
Chen Yingchun, head of Dongshe Village, said at the end of last year that Mix Journey had been introduced to help invest in the overall upgrading of the village into a haven of recreational guesthouses in the bosom of nature. And in addition to lifting the individual image of Dongshe, Bai from Mix Journey and his teammates had come up with a detailed plan about how to connect 10 villages with the 21km rural rambling route, a plan eventually endorsed by the government. In designing the route, Bai said, they also bore in mind that it would be able to host half marathons.
A few years ago, National Geographic published a signed article, describing Giethoorn Village as follows:
In the tiny Dutch village of Giethoorn, the tranquility is almost dreamlike. That is, until you remember why it's so quiet – there are no cars. In fact, there's no way for cars to get around, because there are no roads. Locals and visitors to Giethoorn navigate in whisper-quiet ways: by bike, boat, or foot. In this hamlet – a collection of small peat islands connected by bridges – there's not much to do except slip into solitude among thatched-roof farmhouses and footbridges crossing the maze of canals.
The village's name harkens back to the 13th century (an era in which it seems to have settled). The story goes that its original farmer-settlers discovered a collection of horns belonging to wild goats thought to have died in the Flood of 1170. "Goat horn," or "Geytenhoren," was shortened to Giethoorn, and the name stuck. Centuries post-flood, water continues to define the village's living history and landscape.
Friendly farmers
Coincidentally, a towering Buddhist temple in Dongshe Village was first built in the early 14th century, and the site of an ancient tomb built in the 12th century, which I visited on May 13, has been found to contain relics dating back more than 5,000 years, even 6,000 years.
I don't know how quiet Giethoorn is, but I felt myself enveloped in quietude the minute I sat in a courtyard outside the reception center at Dongshe on the afternoon of April 15. I was slowly sipping the ginger lily coffee I had just ordered, when two middle-aged villagers emerged quietly from a lane between several farmers' houses. They looked at me from a distance, apparently wondering whether I was a stranger.
I broke the silence.
"Hey, why not come over and take a seat?" I suggested with a smile. I heard my voice reverberating around the courtyard, resonating with the rural setting.
Local residents of Dongshe Village chat with the author.
Taking my invitation, they came closer and sat down at a long wooden table where I was sitting, giving me a shy smile. In the casual conversation that followed, they told me they were the owners of two houses which were being adapted by Mix Journey into guesthouses.
"How do you like it here?" they asked me.
"Just wonderful, I like the place so much!" I replied.
"Really? Is it really so good?" they pushed for further affirmation.
"Yes, I like everything I see and feel here," I assured them.
They gave me and each other a broader smile.
"Look at the bamboo square over there, it used to be my courtyard," one of them told me, apparently appreciating what Mix Journey had done to spruce up her old house.
"You can get additional revenue from these revamped houses, which is great!" I said.
"Yes, that should be nice," they both said with a grin.
As we chatted well into dusk, an 83-year-old woman villager came over and joined our conversation. Cool wind began to ruffle our hair as we stood in the twilight. Sometimes we laughed together, sometimes we didn't say a word. In the end, I had to leave for home, however unwillingly.
"Do come back, and I can rent my house to you!" one of the middle-aged women said merrily.
Wang Jie (left), a professional taekwondo coach, and chef Maik chat with a local farmer in his 70s about the benefit of local fresh food.
A 164km high-speed railway linking Shanghai, Suzhou (Jiangsu Province) and Huzhou (Zhejiang Province) will be ready for operation by the end of this year, it has been reported. Liantang Town will be a major station along the railway.
Next time I will come to Dongshe by train, aided by the future rural rambling route that will eventually connect with the Liantang Town station. Mix Journey's Bai said he would seriously consider my suggestion to set up a bicycle center near the station, so that urban travelers getting off the train can ride all the way into the connected rural landscape that encompasses 10 villages under the jurisdiction of Liantang, an ancient watertown known for its well-preserved agriculture and intangible cultural heritage, including a unique acupressure therapy dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC).
A man casts a net into a river in Jinghua Village. He says he is looking forward to seeing Shanghai's first rural rambling route completed as soon as possible, so he can jog farther from his rural home.
In Jinghua Village to the west of Dongshe, a man a little younger than me said he jogs about 6km (round trip) every weekend when he returns from an urban community to reunite with his rural parents.
"If the 21km rambling route is completed, I can jog farther," he said gladly. "Now I have to jog on a motorway, because there is no pedestrian path between my home and nearby villages."
Everywhere I went over the past month, be it Xulian Village, known for rice production and crab raising, Lutong Village, famous for fishery, or Dongzhuang Village, known for mushrooms grown in forests, farmers or business owners told me they were very much looking forward to seeing Shanghai's first rural rambling route completed as soon as possible, so that they can visit friends or receive tourists more easily.
The owner (in white) of a rural cafe in Dongzhuang Village (not far from Dongshe Village) chats with taekwondo coach Wang Jie about how the future 21km rural rambling route will benefit the development of the countryside.
For Wang Jie, a professional taekwondo coach who's based in Liantang but has students in adjacent Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, a better connected rural rambling route will go a long way toward helping him organize regular grassroots friendship matches involving taekwondo practitioners from the three regions.
In many aspects, connectivity matters.
