'Calabash Grandpa' Refuses to Sell His Seven Gourds as the Crowds Recede
After tourists' laser pens, shouted greetings and livestream crews drove a 75-year-old Shaoxing man to cut down the seven gourds that made him famous, the story has turned again: he has refused offers to buy them — 'priceless,' he says — visitors are thinning out, and the city's tourism bureau has sided publicly with his quiet.
Nine days ago, the site introduced the seven gourds that turned a 75-year-old Shaoxing man's balcony into a national landmark: Chen Jin'ao and his wife, parents who lost their only child, had raised the gourds like children, waving to travelers who called up from the canal path. On the evening of September 5, he cut all seven down, months ahead of the frost-date he had promised his followers, because the crowds that made him famous had begun to make his home unlivable.
The days since have brought the saga's strangest turn. Buyers appeared with cash for the cut gourds, and Chen refused them all. 'The gourds are still here! I've put them away,' he told Hunan TV's China Blue News on September 6. 'Someone did offer to buy them, but these gourds are priceless — I love them like my own children.' He added that he will most likely not plant gourds again next year: 'With so many people coming, it will cause trouble.'
The crowds are already receding. Reporters from Modern Express found the canal-side lanes noticeably quieter on the morning of September 6, though a few visitors still lingered. Staff at the Shusheng Heritage Site — the open, aging canal quarter where the couple live — told the paper that sealing the lanes is impossible and said the community and subdistrict would carry out follow-up measures to protect the couple's peace. Shaoxing's culture and tourism bureau put it more bluntly: 'Give the old man back his peace and quiet.'
Commentary has moved from sentiment to indictment. A Dazhong News column ran under the pointed question that became the day's hot search: the seven gourds cut ahead of schedule — whom, exactly, do they satirize? The column's answer catalogued the toll — callers shouting every few minutes at the peak, weekend crushes that set off the wife's vertigo, laser pens aimed at the balcony, livestreamers camped on the quay — and concluded that the gourd-cutting was the couple's declaration that their quiet is not a public asset, and a warning to local governments to manage such frenzies before they escalate, not after.
For international readers, the saga has become an unlikely parable about the life cycle of viral fame in China, where a wholesome image can travel from a residential balcony to the national hot search in days — and where the attention economy shows up physically, at a balcony rail, on a canal path. What fame leaves behind, in this case, is a set of refused buyout offers, a community weighing protection measures, and a city bureau defending an old man's right to be left alone.
