Unforgettable Guling

Life in Guling is leisurely and slow. Reeds grow on the top of walls along old streats. Trellises of sprawling chayote provide cooling shade for residents. Local elders sit outside their houses and chat with their neighbors, relaxed and peaceful.

On China Today’s visit, there was an unattended vegetable stall set up under a big tree with an “honesty box.” A local villager introduced a vegetable to us named hai. This vegetable had been brought over and cultivated by Western settlers 100 years ago. It is thought its name, hai, originated from the English greeting “hi.”

Most of the elders who met with Elizabeth in 1992 are dead now, including Guo Maolu, who had been able to talk in English with her. So we interviewed his son Guo Gonghong. Before parting, he asked his wife to pick two fresh snake melons as a gift to our journalists. He also invited us to his house again next May when loquats are in season.

Maybe simple but pure friendly gestures like this are the reason Gardner found it so hard to forget his childhood in Guling. As Elizabeth told Xi Jinping in the interview in 1992, “The beauty of Guling and the enthusiasm of the Chinese people help me to better understand the sentimentality Gardner felt for China.”