Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Chicken bus rides and the Daoist concept of feng shui;
They do actually work together, if in the right direction!

After a bumpy chicken bus journey we stopped and I was told that I had arrived at my destination and even after yesterdays visit to Licha Village after departing I became a little confused as I found myself walking around yet another normal Chinese small town, that of ugly white tiled buildings and thankfully also with vibrant street side market places and no matter where I went I couldn't find the Bagua village.

Thankfully after a short time of zig zagging around and a handful of snacks the locals stepped in pointed me in the right direction.

A squawky old lady then befriended me and after drawing a circle in the dust told me to follow the road around until I returned to her and that’s when I began to find the Ancestral Temples and that the road did take me 'around’ a much larger circle than I expected. After returning to her she took me by the hand and starting pointing out different lane ways to visit as most of the lanes that I first started trying to duck and weave my way around in ended in over grown crumbling homes that made it impossible to pass.

BAGUA VILLAGES

Sadly here in China just like the rest of the world the old has given way to the new and including the Daoist concept of feng shui into the present and future construction of mega cities has been forgotten. But found outside Zhaoqing city the historic gems of Licha and Xiangang are two Bagua Villages which are Ming Dynasty villages constructed in the shape of the eight trigrams of the Dao that represent changes in eight different phases of life.

I’ve included the ‘main Lichacun village picture’ in this entry as once again it is simply impossible for my photos to offer any sort of explanation as to what a Bagua Village actually looks like. In fact even after reading about them I still had only a basic idea of what to expect, that was until yesterday when I arrived and looked at the picture of Lichacun Village.

Feng shui influenced the organisation of the village buildings and spaces to maximize qi which is the current of energy Taoists believe flows through the universe. Harmony is crucial to this concept and manifested in the symmetrical spacing of the houses that appear to expand out from the village centre toward the edge of town.

Xiangangcun Village:

Built during the Ming Dynasty, Xiangangcun Village is larger than Lichacun and much further off the beaten path, in fact down a road that passes rice paddies and banana groves. Unlike Licha, Xiangang has not been earmarked for tourism. While entrance is free, nature has been extremely busy reclaiming much of the village whilst locals relocate to the new side of town. It’s certainly more decrepit and difficult to explore than Licha, though it does boast sixteen ancestral halls that are opened on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month. Also unlike Lichacun, the locals seemed rather amused that I actually came to visit their crumbling and overgrown Bagua village but during my stay in what is a still partially inhabited village I began to see what distinguishes Xiangang somewhat from Licha.

It was nice to hear and see the few that were left going about their lives just as they did many hundreds of years ago......Beers N Noodles toya...shane

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The Soundtrack to this entry was by A Perfect Circle
The album was ‘The Thirteenth Step’
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