▲A view of Fuzhou from Minjiang River

A city with attitude 来自英国的Jen Foster旅居榕城一年. 在许多人眼里, 这个省会城市在许多方面无法与厦门相媲美. 然而, 在她看来, 榕城古老与现代的结合却散发着另一种独特的魅力. By Jen Foster

Fuzhou is often overlooked in favour of the more obvious charms of Xiamen. Fujian's capital does not appear on many travel itineraries and often only then as a stopover en-route to Wuyishan. At times it can seem chaotic, loud and difficult, but Fuzhou is a city with attitude. It would shrug its shoulders and say 'So what?' to the bright lights and pretty walkways of Gulangyu.

A British friend who lives in Beijing came to visit me a few weeks ago. Showing him round my new hometown made me realise how much I enjoy living here. I'm sure if I travelled to Fuzhou with a backpack and no-one to point me in the right direction I, too, would fail to look past the rather non-descript, modern city-centre of traffic-crammed streets and shopping malls. Perhaps it's a place that you need more than a few days in to really appreciate. It's so easy to dismiss a city that doesn't conjure up an immediate list of things-to-see. Fuzhou offers some pleasant spots to while away an afternoon: Wuyi Square, West Lake, the Yu Shan scenic area. But, what I like most about Fuzhou is the wonderfully strange sights of the smaller streets, the scenes that you could never imagine if they weren't unfolding before your eyes.



Street life

Just off Taijiang Lu, to the north of the river, there is a big pool of fish in the middle of a busy shopping street. Here, people pay to go fishing. Only, even when they've caught the fish they never take them out of the pool. They simply chase them around for a while and then proudly escort them up and down. I spent about an hour waiting for someone to pull a fish out and take it home, but it seems the satisfaction is simply in the sport itself. The tables of the tens of little restaurants alongside are a perfect position for people watching. There's always something happening close by. A little further down, there's a big balloon-covered board where you can pay to shoot at a balloon and win a prize. I won a toy tiger there once. Nearby there are lots of weird and wonderful ornaments and toys lined up in rows on the ground. Customers are invited to throw a hoop around one and make it theirs.


▲Street food in Fuzhou

Old town

The Changshan area of town, in the south of the city, is a maze of steep, winding streets full of washing-line adorned dead ends. The eerie, half-demolished buildings nearby bear witness to how fast things are changing. Student street, which runs adjacent to the Fujian Normal University, is truly a street with a thousand stories to tell. It almost overflows with people, more people and the occasional slow-moving and frustrated motorist. It's clumsily lined with a colourful array of kebab stalls, mobile phone kiosks, hairdressers and clothes vendors. Sales assistants clap outside the shops to drum up customers. Every time I walk along student street I see something I've never noticed before.

Deeper into the small streets behind the university lies a whole world of intrigue. It's like taking a step back into the past. There's a woman sitting on a wooden stool making a broom out of twigs, a group of old men playing cards in a corner, a little girl peeking out from behind the big, wooden door to her house. The tiles are clicking away in the numerous mah-jong halls and the tiny temples running across the streets are certainly not just to impress tourists. A family looked on in wonder as I walked around with camera in hand. There are, of course, areas of Fuzhou that are much cleaner and much more organised, but I'm sure we're all a little bit guilty of this kind of nostalgia, this desire to stop the clocks. As China develops, every city is developing its shiny, modern area of town but these areas are what marks Fuzhou out as different. In a world where all cities seem to be morphing into one, Fuzhou is holding on to its own identity.

Vocabulary
overlook 忽略
itinerary 行程
chaotic 嘈杂的
shrug 耸肩
hoop 箍
eerie 诡异的
adjacent to 与邻接
kiosk 亭子
drum up 招徕
dart off 疾驰而去
nostalgia 怀旧
conjure up 在脑中显现