Behind the door: a trip back into a distant past
Print Edition
Ugabula Ahmat鈥檚 rural house looks nothing special from outside, but walking into the 300-square-meter yard in Ruoqiang County, northwest China鈥檚 Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, feels like a travel through time.
On the right side of the lush grape trellis at the center of the yard are rooms where Ugabula, a retired cultural worker, lives a comfortable modern life, with daily home appliances and neat furniture. And on the other side, there are rooms housing life in sharp contrast with the present.
Wooden basins for kneading dough, oil lamps, a TV about the size of a tissue box and dog-eared pocket comic books are among the antiques displaying daily life utensils, farming tools and recreation devices collected by Ugabula during his 37-year cultural work career.
鈥淟ife has been changing at a fast clip over the past few decades. Collecting these antiques will help keep the bitter memory of the old days alive and showcase the progress to the hard-won modern life,鈥 he said.
Ugabula, 59, still feels poignant when recalling the past. His family lived in an earthen shelter and slept on an earth bed. 鈥淚t was a luxury to have naan (a local bread-like staple food) made of flour, and we had to hang them high to make sure they were beyond mice鈥檚 reach.鈥
Opened to the public in May 2017, Ugabula鈥檚 private museum has received over 3,000 trips made by students, civil servants, construction workers, among others.
鈥淢y family also had some of the antiques when I was a child. It鈥檚 a transcending experience to see them again,鈥 said Eskal Ahmat, a 23-year-old college student who visits the museum during summer vacation.鈥
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