Mr. Song, a rice farmer, pauses from his work pulling densely planted rice stalks from a rice paddy where they have been growing for 45 days. The stalks will then be taken by motorcycle to the family's paddies elsewhere to be transplanted individually by hand and then harvested after another four months.
By Evan
Mr. Li returning from a day's work in the paddies, by Andy
For months now, a powerful urge has been rising in me. At first I could control it, but then its intensity grew too much for me. Finally, in a moment of sheer desperation and weakness, I broke down and indulged my double fantasy. Now here I am, admitting before God and man, that I plowed a field with a water buffalo and planted rice.
One of the primary goals of the trip has been to get ourselves into the LBX experience, and honestly there’s nothing more Chinese than getting involved with the farm work. Hell, between subjectively lamenting that their country is “backward (落後)” and “poor (窮)” and “undeveloped (不發達),” they often utter one undeniable fact: that China has historically been and still largely is an agricultural nation (農業大國). Biking thousands of kilometers through the farmscapes, I don’t know exactly how many thousands of buffalo or tens of thousands of acres of rice paddies we’ve passed, but it’s been enough to make me need to know what the deal is behind it all. (more…)
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