A tall man shakes fistfuls of feed on the ground for clucking chickens as dawn rises above Ganzi Tibetan prefecture in Sichuan province.

"Come on, I don't have time to play with you chickens. I have to paint the hostel," he says in a thick Sichuan drawl.

It would seem like a typical scene in rural China, except that this man is American.

Kristopher Rubesh and his wife Stephanie have settled in this remote and impoverished area of western Sichuan to raise their daughter Adalia, 2, and run the area's first foreign-owned hostel.

The family stunned the community when they opened the Tibetan-style Hui Dao Hostel last November.

"We moved here because Kangding is a good place to live, with its melodious love songs, unpolluted air, beautiful lakes, towering trees and imposing mountains," he says.

Kristopher Rubesh, his wife Stephanie and their daughter Adalia at their Hui Dao Hostel in Kangding. [China Daily]

He first went to Ganzi in 1997 as a Friends of China Foundation volunteer, teaching English and helping nurses to provide medical care in Tibetan settlements.

"I found local people were so friendly and generous. They gave me food, Tibetan-style clothes and daily necessities," he recalls. "I was fascinated by their lives and culture."

Soon after, he enrolled in the Southwest University for Nationalities (SWUN) in Kangding to study the Kangba Tibetan dialect.

The following June, he booked a flight home and made sure he sat next to an American classmate he liked. As the plane soared over Qomolangma, he professed his affection for Stephanie. They were soon married.

The couple often traveled to Kangding to participate in local festivals, such as the Tagong Mountain's Horse Festival. Local people taught them how to ride and perform traditional dances.

It took them a while to catch on, but joining these jamborees was always fun.

"I couldn't race the horses at first. I had a hard time staying on because of the way their backs judder when they run," says Stephanie.

She broke her leg when she toppled off a horse during the festival in 2001 and Kristopher took care of her for three months.

Both now speak Chinese with a thick Sichuanese accent, so thick that people couldn't understand Kristopher when he visited Beijing.

But their accents are a boon in Ganzi. "Speaking the local dialect helps us engage our neighbors and cultivate deeper relationships with them," Stephanie says.

At night, Ganzi's residents often troop to the streets after work to dance and sing local love ballads, and the foreign family often joins them.

"Kangding's love songs are beautiful, and my daughter really loves them," Stephanie says. "But she can't sing yet, so she begs waitresses to teach her the easy parts."

The couple had never run a business before, so they consulted friends, including Singaporean Sim John, who runs a hostel in the provincial capital, Chengdu.

"Kangding possesses abundant tourism resources, and only two hostels earn good profits, so it was a good idea to build another one," he says.

Hui Dao Hostel is a two-story cement structure painted dark red and gray, and stocked with wooden furniture.

The first floor is full of guest rooms that cost 35 yuan ($5) per person per day. On May 1, the second floor will open as a dining hall offering Western fare, including steak, sandwiches and cinnamon rolls.

Yong Zhu, owner of Ganzi's Yongzhu Hostel, where Kristopher often stayed when he first arrived, says the canteen will set Hui Dao apart from other local hostels.

Kristopher says their landlord often lends a hand when he has to move heavy furniture since Stephanie recently became pregnant with their second child.

"We often help each other," Kristopher says.

"Sometimes he borrows tools, or, when he's not at home, I take care of his dog, because this is my new home, and we are like family."

(China Daily May 4, 2009)