North of the east

The leap of the whooping crane took us over lush valleys and warm tropical forests. The hills and mountains remained, the familiar waters of our Pacific remained, the sun and the sea were left. Changed the color of the ground, the smell of the wind changed, the taste of the water changed. Now it is a calm, greyish sun that illuminates the new city, but with an overwhelming feeling that it has not moved from its place, like a dog chasing its tail.

We arrive in Anhui, the central province central cinema, as has been explained to us countless times. This is a transit point for everything the country has to offer, and it shows this with its cities developed from the ground to the sky. ‘Anhui’ is a word made up of the traditional name of two tribes that merged into one mountain range divided by the Yangtze. Anhui is a mixture, a fusion of two cultures divided and united by the dust in which they live.

The Yangtze rises at the top The Himalayas, fall like a long lightning over the Chinese territory.

It stretches for more than 6,300,000 meters, it is a blue river road for ships, boats and boats.

Life on the shores of the water massif is calm and busy, time flows at the speed of waves colliding with the stones of the shore. The fishermen sneak away among the reeds of the wetlands and businessmen raise rivers of concrete and steel to attack the clouds. Life on the banks of the Yangtze is calm and busy.

The cold, brown lands of Anhui open up to give us access to its bowels. It is typical, usual, that the colder the place, the warmer the welcome and this place is no exception. Banquets, lunches and dinners dominated agenda, they feed us like sparrows with all the dishes that the years of history of this place reveal to us who deal with its culture. In China, one eats quickly and drinks little, and those long dinners to which our Hispanic roots have accustomed us here have remained an anecdote.

In this place and as a foreign observation, on food, it doesn’t matter if it’s fruit, stew, soup or bread, has a surprise for foreign palates. Everything you put in your mouth, everything you chew has a bitter taste that appears after you eat and binds to the palate. And you can’t wash it off or hide it, it stays even if you cover everything with honey or sugar. This only happens with homemade food, and not with those pompous lies they serve to us children of the West. Perhaps it is a unique spice to which they have already accustomed their tongue or, perhaps, a bitter memory of the cruelty suffered.

As I explained earlier, China is a country covered in fairy tales and stories, superstitions and beliefs, which are repeated throughout the Asian giant. One of the things that captured my attention most deeply was the constant presence of what could appear to be a ritual, the little woman replicating herself like a bell wherever we went, constantly sweeping under what we passed, as if trying to erase the traces of us from there.

But the more than a thousand kilometers we traveled with the rudder and the diesel made me remember a Anthony Bourdain’s quote “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things little by little, you leave traces, no matter how small. And in turn, life – and travel – leaves its mark on you.”