Western-style building in Baishi Village▲
There are many villages with "Baishi" as the name of the village, and there are several in Taishan. On one of my visits to Taishan, I met two Baishi villages in Doosan and Duhu over the course of two days, the latter being the location of the Peicheng School that I wanted to visit.
Baishi Village is located in the southeast of Duhu Town, east of the Huangmao Sea at the entrance of the cliff, across the sea from Zhuhai, in Taishan can be regarded as quite remote, under the jurisdiction of six natural villages.
It is precisely because of the proximity to the sea that there were many people who set sail to work hard in the old days, so as soon as you enter Baishi Village, you will see many western-style buildings. These century-old western-style buildings are mixed with the newly built buildings of the villagers, and most of them are not abandoned. Some of the western-style buildings are equipped with new glass windows and iron doors, which seem to be a bit inconsistent, but the houses are freshly painted and still inhabited, and the top mountain flowers are old but not dilapidated.
The old western-style building in the village ▲
There are also two juxtaposed houses, the one on the left has been renovated and inhabited, but the name of the house on the plaque is blurred. The building on the right, which has been transformed into the office building of the Baishi Village Committee, has a new blue brick wall with a marble gable, and the plaque has three big characters "Baishi Village".
The western-style building of the village committee▲
Just a few dozen meters away on the corner of the village, Peicheng School, which was built in 1920 is much more dilapidated than the glamour of the village. In front of the teaching building is the village stadium, and there are several stands next to it, and the stone steps of the grandstand are engraved with the words "donated by the elders of the Baishi Township Senior Citizens Association". At that time, overseas Chinese raised more than 30,000 yuan to build a two-story school building, the white walls are mottled, many places are already black, white and gray, the colonnade on the first floor is a short and fat arch, and the balcony on the second floor is above the four big characters of "Peicheng Primary School", and there are the words of the inscription in 1982 next to it. At that time, because the school building was outdated, the local overseas Chinese donated money to rebuild it, but today, 40 years later, there is no trace of its reconstruction. However, when I walked to the gate, I found that it did not seem to be completely abandoned, the door on the first floor was closed, but it was not dirty, and there was a sign hanging at the door of the balcony on the second floor, which was written with the words "Sports Association of Baishi Management Area of Duhu Town", which was still a place for the villagers' daily exercise activities.
Cultivation School▲
The main entrance of Peicheng School▲
Walking to the side, it can be seen that the depth of Peicheng School is considerable, and the data shows that it covers an area of 533 square meters, which is quite large. There is a banyan tree on the wall, with coiled branches that go deep into the wall and reach to the roof. The banyan trees that grow from these buildings are common in abandoned old houses in southern Guangdong, and they can be "very large-scale" in ten or eight years. The villagers apparently didn't have much to do but cut off the branches that protruded from the roof. Inexplicably, I think of the phrase "ten years of planting trees, a hundred years of people", and it seems quite appropriate to "misinterpret" it in Peicheng School, which is a banyan tree that can spread on the hundred-year-old school wall in ten years.
View of Peicheng School from the side▲
The big banyan tree on the wall▲