Warning... this entry is LONG! My visit to China has been like trying to get a drink of water by standing under Niagara Falls. I am overloaded with information, and feel like my village visit today raced by at a hundred miles an hour.

Tuesday, April 12... In Liping

This morning I went to the Liping Language Center to speak with/to the adult English Language students. The first group of students I spoke with all teach English to middle school students (age 12-15). The second class I spoke with teach primary students (grades 1-5) in the villages around the region.

I shared about where I am from, what our weather is like, how we live with snow, what I do for a living, and why we study and teach about birds at Hawk Ridge. The students showed very respectful interest, but it took some bilingual effort (thanks to Jake for the help with that!!) to get some of the conservation concepts to cross cultural and language barriers. My favorite thing to do here is to tell people that when I left Minnesota, we had snow that was a meter deep covering much of the ground. They gasp and shudder and can’t imagine HOW we possibly manage that. They get even more surprised when I tell them that we start getting snow in November, and that it usually lasts through March. It is as unimaginable to them as outdoor fresh fruit markets are to me. ;-)

We made a couple loaves of bread in the afternoon (have I shared ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY with you yet??? www.artisanbreadinfive.com). It’s a simple, easy, no-fuss way of making delicious bread with minimal effort. I’m a huge fan. I’m pretty sure that the yeast was getting a little old, because the loaves we made were the oddest loaves that either Jake or I have made so far.

Tuesday night we had a late birthday party for Chloe and an early birthday party for Creed.

Wednesday, April 13.... DiMen Village

Jake hired us a car to take us up to the village this morning. There are taxis EVERYWHERE, and there is a central area in Liping where drivers-for-hire hang out and wait to be hired. Jake took a taxi to the driver’s ‘market’ and found a driver that he’s hired for other trips in the past. The driver showed up to get us in a 2010 Toyota (the model is almost the same as an Avalon, but with a different name) that was decked out! I was most pleased with the fact that it had working seat belts!

We headed out at 9:45am, and arrived at DiMen Village (40 km later) at about 11:15. The road winds up, down, around and through the mountains, connecting several other villages to each other along the way. I am astonished at the terraced farming system here. It amazes me that 1. they are able to utilize the mountains as fields; 2. they can irrigate the terraced fields consistently; 3. they can get their animals up into the terraces ; 4. they have been doing this for hundreds of years!!!!! I was humbled by the self-sustinance I witnessed today.

We went to the home of one of Jake’s friends (a former student) and he was our escort in the village for the day. The driver parked in a central square and settled in to watch DVD’s on his car’s player. So bizarre to be in this village that feels timeless and ancient and have a shiny new car sitting there playing DVD’s!

We walked up the road and onto a little stone-paved pathway to Jay’s house. Just as we were turning onto the pathway, a small horse pulling a cart came up the pathway toward us and out onto the road. These horses are very small and compact but are beasts of burden, plowing, hauling, transporting, fertilizing... they live a very difficult life! They stand 40-48 inches at their withers (shoulder) and have the same proportions as a full-sized horse. I wish I’d have the time to observe or interact with one of these animals a bit, so I could get a read on their temperment and demeanor.

As we arrived at Jay’s house, the woman who lived across the stone path from him was carrying out large baskets filled with un-milled rice to dry in the sun. She spread out a tarp on a cement slab in front of her home, and dumped out 4 baskets of rice onto it. She raked the rice into one large, thin layer. Jay said that the rice had been harvested last fall, and that on most sunny days, people will lay out their rice to dry out.

This woman had a one-year-old baby strapped to her back as she worked. The baby had a beautiful hat on his head, decorated with hand made ornaments, bells, embroidery and silver decorations. I got photos of him and his hat (his mother made it for him), and video of the woman drying her rice. After she spread it out and went inside, the neighbor chicken came and spent several minutes helping herself to a meal of rice (or was she eating the bugs and moldy spots and actually keeping the rice clean??). The rice was unmilled, so it was still in its hulls (a yellow, papery skin wrapped around each grain). The rice won’t spoil if it’s unmilled, so they only take what they need to the mill to be cleaned.

Interestingly enough, when they mill the rice, they remove the hull and usually the germ (the part that would sprout) and the outer layer of the rice, where most of the nutrients are. Just like we do with flour, the best nutrients are processed away. Jay said that it costs about 2 quai to mill 100 lbs of rice. That’s about 30 cents per hundred lbs. It can be done by hand, but is inexpensive enough that most people use the mill.

Along side the stone pathway (which is about 4 feet wide) there is a slate and cement trough, about a 15” wide and 15” deep, that carries water diverted from the river through Jay’s neighborhood. It runs the length of town, then deposits back into the river. It graces the whole neighborhood with the sound of running water--especially in front of Jay’s house, where they have put some large stones into the canal to raise the level in the trench. We saw women doing their laundry and washing their hair in the running water. It’s a pretty good system.

Jay showed us his rice stores--half a room stacked high with large sacks of rice. He said that he harvested nearly 3000 lbs of rice from his (approximately) 1.5 acre parcel of land. That is a LOT of food from a fairly small bit of land! He doesn’t need that much for his own family, so he will sell about 40% of it.

He also showed me around his home, which consists of 4 small levels... the lowest level is built of brick and is completely enclosed. This level is built next to the canal that transports water through the neighborhood. The next level up is very pretty and built of polished wood. It had 4 rooms--a great room, a store room and 2 rooms that we didn’t see in (I’m guessing sleeping rooms). This level is completely enclosed, and has beautiful double doors and windows that close. The third level up is one large, open room, styled like a pavilion-- with half-walls and no close-able windows. It would be very cool in the summertime, with shade and a lot of ventilation. This level is used for storage in the winter, and is a large gathering place for sleeping and eating during the summer when the enclosed levels would be too hot. The top level is just planks over rafters, and is used for more storage.

Jay’s home was built in 2006, after his original home burned (that fire was mentioned in the National Geographic article). DiMen homeowners began rebuilding with brick and cement, but the regional government offered to subsidize the reconstruction if they would build traditional wood homes. DiMen has worked very hard to maintain it’s heritage, culture and traditions, preserving them as living relics of the past. Jay’s home doesn’t have screws and nails holding it together, it’s hewn and fitted together, with pegs and notches securing the logs and lumber together. I was amazed by the perfection of the construction!!

While we waited for lunch to be cooked, Jay took us out for a walk in the village. We wandered downstream to a wind/rain bridge. Wind/rain bridges are beautiful, wide bridges thata cross the river in several places. They are lined with benches, and act as gathering places for shade and a breeze during the hot summers, and shelter and conversation when it's raining. DiMen village is divided into 5 areas, each area named for the prominent family/clan in that area. Each area would ordinarily have its own drum tower, but DiMen only had 3 drum towers for the 5 regions of the village. Around 700 families live in DiMen today, and the village covers an area that is probably 3/4 of a mile square. The village is perched on the hills beside the river. In some places, it looks like the homes are stacked on top of each other as they were built higher and higher on the face of the steep hill.

Throughout the village, we saw small greenhouses with smoke coming out from under them. I thought they were smoking food, but Jake explained that they were hothouses for sprouting rice. They build these little huts and cover them with plastic and tarps. The huts are built over a piece of ground that has an underground trench with one opening on one end of the greenhouse and another opening on the other end. They build a small fire inside the trench, and the smoldering fire warms the ground under the greenhouse, but the smoke exits the trench at the other end so it doesn’t get inside and smother the sprouts. It’s ingenius!!

So, now we add the smell of smoldering bamboo to the gurgle of running water to bring the village experience into yet another dimension of sensory input.

DiMen also has a cultural ‘museum’, where many of their traditional practices are explained in large photographic displays. From weaving, dyeing and embroidering fabric to woodworking/construction to papermaking to farming to oil pressing, this village is preserving ancient knowledge that will probably ensure their survival if the grid ever shuts down! I am so glad to see a village that is embracing their ancient ways and traditions rather than letting them be diluted and lost to modernity and more ‘convenient’ ways of doing things. I would be surprised if DiMen village experienced any noticeable or lasting impact from the global economic crises of the past 2 years.

On our way back to Jay’s, we visited a play-house/theater building where local musicians perform on a regular basis. DiMen is known as the village of origin for Dong opera, and they are VERY proud of this heritage. They continue to host performances and singing exhibitions, and are very well-known for their beautiful singing and costumes. The people who live in this region are called the Dong people (they pronounce it GUM), and their operas have just been listed on the Unesco World Heritage site (google that for more info) as a cultural treasure that must be preserved.

Our driver had a DVD of a celebration prior to the Beijing Olympics playing, so our drive home was serenaded by bad british performers singing ridiculous songs. I'll never hear the Sinatra song "L-O-V-E" again without thinking of the magic of DiMen Village. The contrast was striking and created a kind of bizarre soundtrack to our drive home as we drove through picturesque villages and rugged mountains.

The life of these people is hard! I saw one person carrying a hundred lb bag of rice along the road, and as we passed him, I realized that it was a tiny old man, bent over so his torso was parallel to the ground under the weight of the bag. It's common to see people carrying huge loads on bamboo poles over one shoulder with bags hanging off each end of the stick. The stick is called a Tie Bang (means stick for carrying on shoulder). I have pictures of tiny old women carrying loads that wouldn't fit into the trunk of my corolla on these sticks... it must KILL their shoulders!

Thursday, April 14... leaving Liping

I'm on my way out the door as I write this. I am avoiding thinking about leaving the kids!! I'm glad they're not coming to the airport with me, so I can have my emotions in the taxi, rather than in the plane.

I will write a final reflection on this trip after I get home. I'm sure it will take days (weeks??) for me to process this trip, if I can EVER fully process it!

Thanks for reading,

Wish you could have come along...