Day 16; Jiangmen (Sun; 13 Apr)

 Tour 2; Day 3

Today's schedule:

• Bus to Jiangmen
• Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province
• Tom Ancestral Hall
  
• Three Tans Pagoda
• Crown Plaza Hotel
  

Today we rode the tour bus from Guangzhou to Jiangmen with an en route stop at the "Red Culture" tourist village of Mingyang.

The Mingyang Village, formally know as Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, is a showcase  for the Chinese government and noticeably different than any town, city or village we've been to so far. By noticeably I mean Mingyang was pristine, so much so that I wondered if the communal "store" we visited might have been scoured before (and after) our visit. We were the only "customers" for the 40 minutes or so we were there. Moreover, as we walked through the village to the restaurant, the streets and alleys throughout the village/town were spotless - not one piece of litter nor was anything out of place. There was a noticeable lack of people (other than us...) about as well. About midway through the trip we stopped at what I think I recall as being the Tom Ancestral Hall. Tom is the clan that the tour organizer belongs to and I recall being more than a bit annoyed that this was day 2 out of 3 that the tour route seemed to cater to the tour organizer. However, I didn't know, at the time, that there several other Tom Clan members on the tour so I would/should say that my being annoyed wasn't really warranted, but I was annoyed at the time... After what I'd guess as a 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk we got to the restaurant, which was very busy. One very obnoxious thing about Chinese restaurants so far is that people smoke in many of them. In most, if not all, of them there are "No Smoking" signs but they're blatantly ignored by the customers and staff. In this restaurant the smoking was bad enough and the food not good enough to stay so I went outside. I took a long look at the pagoda and the Three Tans statue beside it. The following taken from an introductory poster at the visitor center

 The 'Three Tans' refer to Tan Pingshan (1886-1956), Tan Zhitang (1893-1952) and Tan Tiandu (1893-1999). Born in Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, they are all outstanding figures in the history of Chinese revolution and have been known as 'the Three Tan Revolutionists'

I take "Outstanding figures in the history..." to mean they were on the side that won and is presently in charge...

From Mingyang we proceeded on to Jiangmen arriving at the Crown Plaza Hotel about 4 PM. Donna took pity on me and agreed to eat dinner at the hotel where I was game for anything other than Chinese Banquet food - I had a hamburger and Donna had pasta, which we waited over a half hour for as the restaurant, set up for Chinese buffet, didn't seem to be ready for menu orders.  In any case, both dinners were better than average but nothing to write home about (... but writing in a blog about it is OK...).

This "highwheel" bicycle in the Voco lobby, didn't see anything remotely close to this on the street but I thought it warranted mention here...

From the bus on our way out of town relatively early, folks are out and about shopping - that's meat hanging under the lights...

The Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province Visitor Center

 A notional map of Mingyang Village - "The Three Tans Hometown and a Red Culture Tourism Attraction"

A "typical" food store in a "typical" village...

This is us, listening to, I think, some political leader representing the village complex. Some of us are "shopping"...

... done shopping, we start on a walk through the village...

... all these folks are part of our group. Note the electrical wires, the village was quite old. I don't know how old but older than household electricity provisions that were clearly an afterthought

The streets and alleys were clean, suspiciously clean, more clean than any we've seen (or will see) in all of China. This is interesting as most of China that we'd seen to date was devoid of litter, more appealing than most streets in the US and something China's people and government could/should take pride in. These streets and alleys appeared to be "staged" as they were too clean.

We saw only a few people one might consider to be "residents", most of the homes appeared to be quite nice - the doors were metal, sometimes stainless steel.

We stopped here, I think this is a Tom Ancestral Hall...

... which was quite nice inside with several wall paintings and thousands of ancestors listed along the walls

This is a movie theater, I don't know if it is in use...

... as these movie posters looked quite old - all depicting movies about the glory of the revolution (I'm guessing...)

Old village, new tech (note the QR code to order...)

Still making our way through the village, hadn't seen anything like this yet (and won't again...)

I assume the woman on the scooter is a resident - note the little girl up front and that there's someone sitting on back, hiding under the box...

Here we start down the main street of the village. There were a few open shops and restaurants and a few more people, who appeared to be mostly visitors...

This is the Pagoda in Mingyang Village - full disclosure, I think we're still in Mingyang Village but we could have transitioned into Mingcheng Town, it's all soooo confusing...

 

Statue of the "Three Tans" adjacent to the pagoda.