A man in love with his hometown captures its past
Print Edition
After spending 30 years working out of town, Sun Shunde, 70, returned to the family’s 95-year-old house on Maqiao Old Street.
The return evoked great nostalgia in Sun, who decided to try to sketch the way he remembered the street when he was a child.
The result is a four-meter long picture detailing the houses, stores and temples on Maqiao Old Street before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
“There is only a very small part of the original street remains,” he said. “I don’t want the heritage of the old street lost to our descendants.”
Sun’s childhood memories are still clear in his mind. He recalls all the places now resurrected in his drawing: a tofu store, a butchery, a teahouse, a barbershop on the eastern side of the street, several traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies on the west, a town god temple in the middle, where people gathered for religious rituals on holidays.
The families who inhabited the old street are also engraved in Sun’s memory. He can still recall the species of trees planted in the backyard of a neighbor, and where the well was located.
“The residences in Maqiao looked more or less the same from the outside, but if you went inside, each had a unique décor,” he said.
He said he and other children in neighborhood played together and he had the chance to see all the interiors of residences. There were four families that stick out in his memory.
The Yan family had the biggest living room, he said. The Kang family had a stone monument with a carved inscription of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The Jiao family residence was like a palace, with a huge garden where the town often staged operas. The Niu family produced Niu Yongjian, one of the most well-known educators in China.
“Some of the residences are still there,” said Sun. “For example, the Niu residence is right across the street from mine, and you can still see the words written by Niu Yongjian on the wall.”
Sun’s sketch is now displayed in his family home, a two-story wood and brick house with a tiled roof. Black bricks peek out from behind mottled walls when the wooden window lattices are open.
“In 1920, my grandparents and three neighbors built the house,” said Sun. “Locals called it ‘the seven-room building of four surnames.’ In the second year after they moved into the house, my grandparents opened the very first teahouse on Maqiao Old Street.”
One day when he was in the teahouse, he asked the patrons about the origin of the name Maqiao, which literally means “bridge of the horse.”
“One of the patrons told me that the site was a staging area for caravans from the north, so a solid bridge was needed,” he said. “People from the caravans donated money and materials to build a stone bridge, so it was called Maqiao. Since then, love for hometown was buried in my heart like a seed.”
Sun has opened his home to visitors who want to see his sketch. Many neighbors, especially older residents, have looked at his artwork with tears of nostalgia in their eyes.
“The picture evoked many old stories that they wanted to sit around and tell,” Sun said. “Their recollections prove that my memory didn’t fail me.”
The sketch has become so beloved that the Maqiao government invited Sun to participate in a current project compiling the town’s history. Many neighborhoods in the area have invited him to give talks on the history of the old street.
Sun, however, is not content with just the sketch. His goal is to save the cultural relics of bygone eras. In recent years, he has scavenged through construction sites and riverbanks, digging out shards of ceramics. He collected three barrels of them and now wants to try to piece together as many as he can.
“Many of the ceramic pieces have a history dating back 300 years or more,” he said. “They are being thrown away like rubbish from construction sites. I have to save them. They are all the treasures of our town.”
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