This is how people celebrate the Lunar New Year in Daly Village. This year's celebration is particularly special. The adults around this table all work in factories in the cities. This is the only time when many of them can see their children, China's zero COVID policy over the last three years has made it all even harder. The people here are warm and inviting people here. They're so friendly. I was just walking by and they're like, Come join us for lunch. We came to this place in China, Southern Guedes O Province to help. A part of rural China is celebrating the Lunar New Year without pandemic restrictions. This village is nestled deep within the mountains. Its remote hard to access because of that. For hundreds of years since the villagers have settled here, the majority of the food they eat, they either grow or they raise themselves. We visited villagers home. Sanjaya greets us with a treat and alcohol, both made from rice from the paddy fields nearby gourmet drinking is a big part of celebrating here. Not go and Sanjay is popular in this village. The door is barely closed. Relatives stream in to use this machine. The poor and the freshly baked sticky rice. It turns into paste. Her machine is a novelty here. Before they had to pound the rice by hand with sticks for hours, About 1000 people live in this village. And for hundreds of years, they've lived in these traditional wooden houses. And you can hear the chickens crowing and there are these ducks as well that they raise for food. In many ways, this place is like a time capsule. Its physical isolation has preserved their way of life for centuries. Through China's dong ethnic minority. They have their own language, tradition and culture, but they can't escape the economic realities of modernity. Normally, this village is full of the elderly and young kids with most of the working age adults gone, working in faraway factories, sending money home. It's only for these few days during the Lunar New Year holiday when they can really all be together. We came across this migrant worker who's just returned from Jiangxi province, more than 600 miles away. This is a job, he told me. He's brought some oranges and candies for his son and traveled for more than a day to get home by bus. This couple works in a factory 500 miles away in Guangdong Province, making circuit boards Wow. hate when the parents are away, their grandparents take care of the kids. This is common in rural China. for the first time in three years, millions of Chinese migrant families are finally able to reunite without the fear of COVID lockdowns. I try to find out if this village's remoteness has shielded it in any way from the country's sweeping wave of COVID cases and deaths. It's all Asia. Almost everyone I speak to on camera says no, one around them has gotten COVID like this elderly woman who makes traditional crafts. But we run into another group of young people who say otherwise. The man in the brown jacket with his back turned is a doctor at a hospital in a nearby city. So we've got the three government minders following us. A group of six government minders greeted us the moment we arrived in the village. It's common for local officials to keep a close eye on foreign journalists in their jurisdictions, especially persistent in this village, following our every move. So we just wrapped up the interview and one of the government minders is sitting out over there and immediately. At least four of them booked rooms in our same hotel or nearby. So we drive out of the village to visit a public hospital in a neighboring county about 2 hours away, hoping these government minders won't follow us so people will feel more comfortable speaking freely. We walk inside the fever clinic. It's almost entirely empty. In the main hospital area, there are more people, but it's not packed. It's a stark contrast to the images of overflowing hospitals in major cities across China for weeks before I ask a nurse on another floor of the hospital if it was packed with patients a few weeks ago. She says it's always packed and busy here. We try to ask why it looks empty here. But another doctor interrupts, ending our interview. We find one woman, a patient's family member, who is willing to speak to us Soon after we realized we're being followed, apparently by a whole different crew, there's at least two or three government minders. They are still following us all the way here. It's very obvious they follow us to hospital after hospital, preventing anyone from speaking to us. I try confronting them, Are you thinking, Karl, now he's walking away. And what happens next? During my interview, with this girl shocks us. Okay, so I interviewing the girl, and then the minders literally took her away from us. The man pushes the girl and her family away, then later leaves them alone. But her interviews in the marketplace are over. China's CDC says the COVID peak across the country has passed. But in rural areas like this, experts say there's likely far more silent suffering people who died at home because they couldn't afford to go to the hospital or were unable to get there on time. Back in the village were greeted by the sound of squealing pigs getting ready to be slaughtered. It's a Lunar New Year tradition. Some of the families raised the pigs themselves. Others buy them from sellers like this woman, who tells me that now that people can gather and barbecue together. Her business is booming. Decades ago for most countryside families. This was the only time of the year when they could afford to eat meat. Now talk about bringing the family together to feast. So this is a whole family of relatives are all getting together for the Lunar New Year, enjoying that freshly killed pigmeat. Sanjaya teaches me how they dress and do their hair for special occasions, showing me all the clothes and fabric in her home that she's made herself sewing. Just a thin strip of this cloth takes her more than a day. But the mothers here tell me they don't expect their kids to carry on all of the traditions. One of Sandy's relatives, a young woman who works at a cosmetics factory 600 miles away in Guangdong, invites us to her home Her parents and grandparents are proud she sends most of her earnings back to them, whether it's in the village or in faraway factories. They're hardworking people. They'll do whatever it takes to give their kids a better life, even if it means long about separation from them. Making reunions like these all the more meaningful. Selina Wang, Daily Village. Guedes in China
