Journal: Out and About

Yesterday I had my first taste of work outside the office. It was a great day for it too, since there was not a cloud in sight when Jin Baoyuan and I set out on a motorbike from Guanting (I'm back from Xining for a short time). The mountain scenery was really beautiful today. I think it was a combination of the sunlight, and the fact that I was on a motorbike instead of in a car. The feeling on a bike, with the wind on my face, an unobscured view all around, and Jin Baoyuan going slower than usual because he was worried about my safety, was quite different to driving in a car.

Despite the rugged terrain, the landscape is very much a human environment. There are settlements dotted everywhere, and most of the land that is not too steep has been farmed. There are tiered fields cut into many hillsides. A lot of what I see is novel for me: small flat-roofed homes, narrow irrigation ditches running between fields, people threshing crops with tools I've never seen before, fat pigs tethered to stakes. Livestock are not kept in paddocks, instead they are grazed on common land, so frequently you will see a person with their flock of sheep, often halfway up a mountainside which is virtually a cliff face. The shepards might be boys or girls only ten years of age, or they might be older men with faces weathered by the elements and the patient stance that seems universal among farmers the world around. The size of the flock might range from one (not uncommon), to several dozen.

For me it's strange and new, but for the people who live here it is the world as they know it, and the basis by which they will judge any other place that they visit. Those chinese who have lived all their life in cities would probably find these sights almost as unfamiliar as I do. It made me think about how the lives and experiences of the 6 billion people on this earth are so different, divided by culture, language, wealth, lifestyle, environment, social status, and so on. And knowledge, since I'm sure that the people here know far more about crops and livestock than I ever will.

Sheep and Goats This character is yang, and it's my birth sign in chinese astrology. I've seen it translated into english as "sheep", "goat", and most memorably "black ram". In fact, what english calls sheep and goat are both yang in chinese. If necessary, they can be distinguished as "wool yang" (sheep) or "mountain yang" (goat), but a chinese speaker seldom finds it necessary to make such a distinction. A similar case is "mouse" and "rat", which are both called laoshu. An example in the other direction is li and mei. These are kinds of fruit which themselves come in various varieties, but which in english are both called "plum".

Half the motorbike ride was on dirt roads, and there were some rather muddy bits due to rain the night before. We finally reached our destination, a village primary school that SDA built with funding from the Japanese embassy. Our main task was to distribute notebooks, pencils, and erasers to the students. But the reason I was there was that I wanted to ask some questions about a project that my boss has asked me to help design, free training in agricultural techniques. Trying to follow a "participatory approach", I wanted to ask people from the villages what they thought of this idea, and what they wanted to learn.

I ended up asking my questions to two of the teachers, since their families farm in the area. But that was not until after lunch. In the school office which doubles as a kitchen, one of the teachers cooked mianpian, which is what noodles would be if they were small, square, and flat. It's a common food in this area. To my surprise, somebody also arrived with two plates of pork slices. Yes, they treated us very well that day, including the students, since when we stepped into each classroom they stood up, saluted, and yelled a greeting in unison.

Cute photo, those kids look scared though...

Dezza 14.09.2004 , 00:42

What kind of ag project are you designing? What kinds of things do the people want to learn? I have done some of that before and learned that an incremental improvement is the way to go. BTW, about the picture - do the kids come from families too poor to afford school supplies? They look great.

Wally 14.09.2004 , 15:34

Wally: we're just going to focus on training in greenhouse management for the 400 odd families in the area who own a greenhouse. Greenhouses are a fairly new idea around here, and yields are far from optimal. I'd like to hear about your experience with agricultural training if you have time: my email address is todd "at" waze.net. As for the school supplies, they were included in the funding for the school construction project. Perhaps the families are not "too poor" to afford notebooks and pencils, but by the same token these things are not cheap by their standards. At least now the students have good quality supplies, and won't have to make do with inferior ones to save money.

Todd@waze 15.09.2004 , 15:41

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