Where very little changed in a millennium.
Trip Start
Sep 21, 2006
1
74
101
Trip End
Ongoing
Xijiang,
China
Friday, September 28, 2007
I was most amazed by how the harvesting of rice is still performed the same way it was a millennium ago. No machine whatsoever is involved. They don't use any tool beside a handmade knife to cut off the rice plants. After the rice plants are cut, the farmers beat the heck out of them inside a wooden box, also handmade, where the rice grains fall. And they take that box to village at night. The next sunny day, those grains are laid out in the street to dry in the sun. On a rainy day, no one can work so they gather under the village Drum Tower and play cards or Chinese chess and socialize the day away.
It's easy to imagine that life here has changed for centuries. We're so far away from the stress of the enormous coastal cities. They may be in the same country but they're really a world apart.
Andre.
