When The Field Wakes Up – NRK Urix – Foreign News & Documentaries

-Sister, come here, sister! Did the sister get up? (Jiejie! Jiejie guolai ba! Jiejie qichuang le ma?)

– Big sister, come on! Is the older sister awake?

I try to keep sleeping, but after several minutes of yelling, he starts banging on the doors. I’m afraid the door will fall off the hinges and will yawn in the light.

The six-year-old boy stands there and stumbles. He’s been awake for a long time, ready to play and have fun.

– No, the older sister is not awake. You can come back at ten, in four and a half hours.

– What, four and a half hours! No, it doesn’t last, it’s too long. Let me in then, I can wait here in the yard, me.

Sleep in front

Finally, the neighbor walks away and I go in and cover my head with the duvet again. Only a quarter of an hour later, he is back, and I am as kindly as possible to explain that we don’t get up as early as he does.

It is not with me that he wants to play, but with the young people of the house, who have not woken up. She is older than him and thus becomes a real Chinese way, called an older sister.

And of course she has met with several local siblings this summer. But there is something about the almost teenagers. They prefer to stay up late and sleep throughout the day.

During the day I usually get up around six, but when it is a holiday or weekend you have to let sleep in front.

No one in the Chinese mountain town understands this.

Does not apply

My first vacation began with the sounds of banging and loud voices in the dark. I climbed up the wall and yelled to the workers behind the wall of our house that it was five o’clock, and then you couldn’t wake up the whole neighborhood with construction work.

Neivel, and when did I think they could start?

– According to Chinese law, they can start around eight, I replied, ready in my case.

Dei lo. Eight o’clock? No, then they wouldn’t make any money, so I could just forget.

I asked one of our neighbors what she thought of my request to wait until eight, or at least seven, and she snorted.

– You can consult the law in the city, but here in the country you don’t have an audience for that guy.

Surrounded by the wall

Workers could still agree that it was not so nice for someone to be overwhelmed by a two-stroke engine outside the wall of the house while it was still dark, and move it.

Despite the different circadian rhythms, we have become friends.

I offer tea and they show me how local herbs can be used in food that they cook on a portable gas stove in their store.

The old farmhouse we borrowed is in a beautiful setting, surrounded by the Great Wall of China, which runs up and down steep mountain peaks.

The building is beautiful and traditional, but it is not isolated. When the workers talk to each other before dawn, it is as if they are in our bedroom.

Karaoke

And it’s not just because he’s strong, because the Chinese like to speak out loud.

– Foreigners like to be quiet, Chinese like life and excitement, my friend from the local inn tells me, when I comment on the karaoke that resonates through the town at night.

Both she and the guests love to sing with empty lungs, without shyness, both with and without singing voice.

It is only to enjoy this joy song in a good mood. Most take the afternoon, and generally calm subsides by ten o’clock, with the exception of a few visitors with a little alcohol on board.

Wake up with a grunt

I thought it would be wise to keep up with the permanent residents to get enough sleep. Perhaps I could also wake up in time to follow the visitors who, in joyous and noisy flocks, pass us and climb the wall to watch the sunrise over the tallest nut.

But, in a way, it’s against Christmas tradition to go to bed at nine o’clock, so I don’t quite understand it.

It is punished every day, also because the peasants get off at work alive and wanting before the sun goes down, just above our fence, just at five in the afternoon.

The field is the meeting point of the town at dawn in the morning.

I wake up with a grunt and want to politely ask them to speak in a slightly lower voice, but I know it will be too stupid. I can gladly ask for visas from the workers on the neighboring farm, but the permanent residents now have their routines.

Reeds and weeds

Although little by little we are getting closer to the locals and often we sit on the same bench and chat, we are guests and we have to adapt to local conditions.

Our closest neighbor is always happy to see us and is happy to invite us in. He is in his 70s and has long since retired.

He complains of back pain when he helps me break down beetles that want to eat tasty maples but have little understanding of grass.

None of the neighbors understand. This summer I wanted to replace the old one, because it had received very little care and was full of reeds and weeds.

Easier said than done, because even though the deal was in place, the one who had accepted the job delivered a load of turf with so much grass that I had to call it a breach of the deal. I refuse to accept.

Good enough

The farmer, who had been hired from another town, had spent, together with his wife and son, a whole day spawning the old grass. He thought there was nothing else to achieve, so it had to be good enough.

He was completely sad that he understood what he had asked for and had delivered something else, but he did not understand himself on the lawn, and now there was little he could do about it. I had to stop paying and he had to bear the financial burden with the herb he had bought.

I did not agree with that. What should I do with a dirt-only patio? I tried to be strict and said that I had to deliver the weed that I had promised or compensate me for the torture and burning.

Then the son got angry. The law is not the same here as it is abroad, he said, and he would go against it.

After much deliberation, they still found a good lawn, and when we spread it out with us, we were both satisfied.

Store eye

One neighbor after another comes constantly with big eyes and looks at this lawn, because it is inconceivable that we have used all the land for grass, when we could have grown vegetables, like them.

– I have tried but I have not succeeded, I explain and say that I have to learn from them. Meanwhile, his lush greens grow over the fence for us.

Sometimes they come to collect them. Other times they come with a lap full of cucumbers and beans as a gift.

And that’s what the neighbor does the next time he’s at the door. He stretched out his arms with vegetables and looked at me with a blink of his eyes.

– Please! Are you awake now?