rural vs urban

I spent 2 nights in a relatively rural part of China visiting my Grandpa's hotel, situated in Enping. There really is nothing there, no shopping or metropolis plazas, not even in Hoi Ping, which is another County an hour away, that is more thriving in comparison to Enping. However, this was a very good experience and I really enjoyed myself, I was able to take many beautiful and scenic pictures.

The pictures I treasured the most were taken of villagers; I took a shot of an old man herding his one cow, my cousin and I got out of the car and snapped some pictures with him, while another picture was taken at a village in Enping with a baby boy and his grandma, the backdrop was a bunch of really old and decrepit houses. I examined these 2 pictures so many times for the past day, I looked over them again and again and what I see are villagers with happy smiles on their faces.

The old man must be well over 80 with very tanned skin from spending a large portion of time out in the sun working, but in the picture, his face shows happiness and the carefree spirit. Looking at the baby boy and his grandma, in their simple clothes and simple style of living, they too, show happiness and liveliness in their simple way of life.

Flipping through pictures in my album or pictures in magazines of city life, I don't see expressions on faces that are as real and genuine as those I have when I was in Enping. Living in the city, we all wear masks, we don't talk to strangers and we have classes. Even when we look pretty or happy in pictures, most of time it's because we're told to smile or "say cheese", thus the smiles and expressions in our pictures seem superimposed. We live our lives on guard, afraid others will do us harm, and we live in a world where we need to continue striving, because we feel we haven't reach our goals yet, thus, we need to climb and climb, continue to motivate and inspire ourselves to go a little further, just that extra mile. But when I look at the villagers, I realize that, yes, they are poor, they don't have a lot of things we do, living in the city. However, because they never have them, they don't feel like they're missing any of the "luxury" we possess. On the contrary, their simple life brought for them many things money could not buy; in the backdrop of farmlands and old houses, I witness carefree living style, genuine happiness and pleasure in the company of their neighbors and friends. When everyone gathers for dinner, it is not a feast of chicken and delicious dishes, majority of the time, everyone eats rice with vegetables, but they bask in the pleasure of the people they dine with, the stories told and the love shared among one another.