"Are you ready for the country, because it's time to go."

Two hours by bus and subway and a world away from urban China.

Jim, Marcus and I were invited (actually invited ourselves) to the home of one of his friend's parents. Both he and his parents, he tells us, are very happy we want to take the time to meet them. I am spending the week trying to figure out the appropriate gift to bring: I settle on a basket of fruit our family picks out from the local city markets because we are told that: 1) It is a traditional gift when Chinese visit hosts; and 2) Fresh fruit that is not grown in the village can be quite expensive for those who live there.
Our friend's parents are "peasants" and the only reason we are getting to meet them is because this colleague did so amazingly well at school that he received scholarships that allowed him to continue in school -- all the way through his PhD -- a literally one-in-a billion case.

So we are all together, ambling up a newly paved path ("This is no good...no plants can grow here now" says Jim's colleague). I'm surprised at this country attitude coming from a city-living PhD-er.

His father and his father's oldest brother greet us: the father in a Nike windbreaker and tennis pro cap and uncle wearing a wool suit. We walk over the path, rice fields on either side of us, looking yellow green in the distance and reaching toward the mountains. The air is fresh.
The house consists of three structures: an outhouse (a squat toilet connected to the pig stalls) an open room with a dining table, benches, a wall full of our friend's school achievement certificates with official red star stamps (the display had to be rearranged several times, as the awards kept coming), and bags of fresh rice from his family's fields (the brown for the pigs, the white for people); and a house with an open kitchen and one closed room: the bedroom.

Our friend's mom, about my size with a brown wrinkle-less face, huge smile, straight strong back, serves us duck with potatoes, chicken, a greens and tofu dish, rice, and stir-fried cilantro. We dig into the greens and cilantro though the family has strategically placed the meat in front of us. It's all just so good.

Later, Marcus and I feed brown rice and its chaff to the ducks, and chickens (which sneak into the dining area, but are shooed away by our friend's mom) and pigs. I admire the baby pigs and our friend's dad makes the slash-across-the-throat sign ie: "do I want him to slaughter it so I can eat it?" Somehow I'm able to communicate that it is not that kind of like, so the baby pig lives another day.

At some point, after several cups of tea, I have to use the bathroom, and our friend's mom worries that perhaps I should use the village toilet, and I insist that theirs is just fine. I try to balance myself and commune with the pigs and it all works out.

We are the only foreign family in recent memory to visit the village, and we try to not commit any faux pas, though it's hard to know what is or is not acceptable. We come to understand that not having third helpings would have been an insult, but we are expected at another professor's home that evening for dinner and not eating at THAT home would have been an insult: so we get away with just having seconds.

Jim and Marcus are doing well speaking and understanding the Chinese conversation. But then Marcus has a hard time at one point listening and smiling to all this adult talk (very few kids in the village as families who can move to the city often do, unfortunately) and asks to play with his hand-held game computer. I say "no." So, instead, he goofs around and starts making animal noises, and our friend's father declares he must be very bright, as any boy in the village who can do such a thing is considered very smart. I think he is being polite, but I'll accept it.

We take two long walks, one through the village center and see a few kids. One little boy starts crying because he is afraid of the foreigners. One little girl hides, then bravely says hello. I make a baby laugh by tickling his feet, so I feel I successfully communicated.

We are invited back, and I am amazed at what I saw. I ask our friend if he thinks living in the city or country is "easier" and he believes country life is better, "because you always have food."

I do hope things continue to go well for his parents. As an only child in a system with no pension, our friend will be their sole source of support should they be unable to work. I ask him what their thoughts are on his amazing achievement. His father's parents were able to afford 6 years of school, his mother's, two. "They have no idea," he says.