Travels with Ren Hong Chang

The electronic translator was passed to me. "We go to find the house of miserableness and orphan."

Ren had told me, through a translator in Beijing, of his plans to help people in poor areas of rural China. We were to help in schools. I could teach English and Ren was going to donate books and pens. It was an opportunity to visit parts of China I would otherwise have no access to. And, though we shared in no language, I felt that it was something I could not turn down.

Now, on our third day together, in the province of Hebei, the project was about to begin. The road to the house wound between old stone walls - mud brown tracks under an empty blue sky. Men sat on tiny chairs. On concrete steps. And in the village square children played table tennis. Pigs lay fat in deep muddy sties and chickens pecked the earth for grain. Sunflowers shone yellow, and already sweetcorn was being harvested - the leaves let to brown in the hot summer sun. Every space was given a use and their uses kept the village alive.

But the house that we found appeared as though fallen to impotent waste. We walked through the overgrown yard to a crumbling hut. And through a hole in the wall because there was no door.

It was dark inside. The smell of damp rose from the earthen floor as strongly as urine permeated the air. Rusty pots and rusty pans cluttered the floor and boxes sat in piles against the walls. In the next room an old woman sat. Moaning a constant sound on a dirty bed. Her blind eyes stared uselessly towards an empty wall as her lips quivered forever with the cadence of her moans. There was no sadness in her face. Or in the sound that filled her home. And this, looking around, was the most shocking thing of all.

"Take a photo," said Ren. It was one of about five English phrases at his disposal and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

I walked outside because I didn't know why I was there or what I was doing to help. But the darkness inside flashed light with the clicks of Ren's camera and I waited until I could ask him what we were doing there.

On the translator's screen the English sentence made no sense at all and I was unable to decipher his answer. As we left the village I felt still the discomfort and futility of the meeting. We were to make no further visits to houses of miserableness. Or, for that matter, to schools.