It has been a while since we have written in our journal. We are back into the daily pattern of living here. We are both teaching between 17 and 18 hours of classes a week. It makes for a busy schedule. Our biggest challenge is getting to the market in the mornings for fresh vegetables. There are only two days a week that I don't have 8:00 am classes, and Tim is in the same situation. Sometimes we actually have to take the bus into Xiangtan in the afternoon to buy veggies at the market there.
Today is a beautiful spring day. The sun is warm, and the grass is getting greener every day. The trees are beginning to blossom, some with small whitish pink flowers, some with huge white waxy blooms. There are many magnolias on campus, but they aren't blooming yet. Everywhere there are people playing.
The favorite pastimes at school right now are marbles, and jumping an elastic. When playing marbles they step on the marbles to make holes in the ground, and then try to shoot their marbles into the holes in order. The game they play with an elastic involves two children stretching a large elastic loop between each other, anywhere between 8 to 12 feet apart. The loop goes around their legs, so there are two strings to jump on. The children then take turns jumping on or over the strings in certain orders, turning as they jump, landing on one string on the other, etc. Each time they successfully complete the pattern, they begin again at a higher level. I can remember playing something similar when I was a child in Canada.
Every evening all members of the family come out and play together. You often see parents playing badminton or helping their toddlers fly their kites. There is usually only wind if you are running. All the students are busy playing volleyball, basketball, badminton, and football (soccer), or doing exercises and running on the track. Even the elderly are out playing croquet. Now it is not unusual to see the women with their large red fans doing tai chi, accompanied by music; or the men in their blue Mao jackets, practicing with their swords. Each day at school between the second and third period, all the children gather on the basketball court and do exercises to music. I have seen these same exercises done on the TV, all over China.
Everywhere there is a flurry of activity. Most of the new and renovated apartments are close to being finished. The final touches are being made, each to the buyer's individual taste. Some of the older owners are making their new homes very beautiful because they will probably live in them the remainder of their lives. It is not unusual for people of 70 years to still be climbing 5 flights of stairs many times daily. About 1/3 of the teachers will be moving into new homes in the next month, so there are always extra trips into town, boxes to be packed, etc. The children are very excited because most of the apartment are much bigger that before, usually 3 bedrooms, so they will have their own room for the first time. Some of the more luxurious ground floor apartments are actually two stories, with 7 or 8 rooms, and a small garden/patio area outside. It has only been recently that the Chinese have been able to actually own their own homes. The current policy is to build or renovate apartments and sell them to the faculty members. There is a huge difference in attractiveness and comfort from the old to the new.
Our campus is expanding and modernizing. A new teaching building was completed just before we arrived here. They have also added on another wing to the science building. The elementary school has a new volleyball court and the surrounding area is going to be planted in grass this spring. Five workers dug up the whole area over several days with the digging tools we have described before. Where the new apartments are, the roads are now being lowered and paved. For big projects like this, a small cement mixer, 4 feet in diameter by 18 inches deep, is used to mix the cement. It is then shoveled into buckets and dumped into the forms. Usually the cement is 6 inches deep. It will take 4-6 workers two days to pave the entrance to a new road, or a volleyball court. The fruit market has new stalls and some of the restaurants have retiled their floors and whitewashed their walls. Everywhere there is work being done. Again, almost all of the work is done by hand. Workers carry bricks and cement up the construction ramps on shoulder poles. Even the heavy, reinforced floor slabs are moved by hand, with two in front and two in back, using slings.
In the fields the farmers have their water buffalo out plowing, just as 2,500 years ago. They use a very heavy wooden plow with a large blade and turn over the earth one row at a time. It is very time consuming, but then time is not something that seems to be lacking here. The buffalo seem very content to drag the plow through a foot of mucky water and earth. Usually they munch on the cover crop they are turning under as they walk. Farmer and buffalo are in complete harmony with each other, each turning automatically at the end of a row. There are a few farmers who have modernized and have motorized plows now. These look like a single plow blade suspended between two large wheels, with a motor behind, turning the wheels. The farmer sits perched above the motor. It looks like a combination roto-tiller and plow. It is usually used in fields that are extremely sloppy with water. The whole machine is about 3 feet long and can turn in the space of two feet. It is a perfect adaptation for the type of farming done in China. Maybe in the future the water buffalo will be pushed out just as the oxen were in America.
As elsewhere in China, the fields are terraced. In this area, the lowlands are planted, with terraces about 3 feet high, sometimes higher. The soil is red clay and does not slump, so they just dig and pack it into the desired shape. Stone walls are not required for agricultural terraces here.
Some of the fields are underwater; some are not. They have an elaborate irrigation system that allows them to route the water to the fields they want and spare the ones that they don't want flooded. The fields getting ready for rice planting are flooded about 4 inches deep, while the ones that are planted in vegetables are kept nearly dry. There are new varieties of vegetables found in the market each day. Some of them are in full yellow flower, some have small purple flowers. There is no lack of greens to eat. There are also other creatures in the market for those who are non-vegetarian. Eels seem to be the spring delicacy, brought to market by the bucketful, still squirming and wriggling. Some are 4 or 5 inches long, some as long as 10 inches. When we were fasting we were invited to a Chinese friend's home. We had told them ahead of time that we were fasting, so they knew we would not be eating. There they served dishes of eels, chicken (with head and feet included), a whole fish (yes, with head and tail), and several other meat dishes. There was also lotus root (which is wonderful cut in slices and fried), beans (originally about 2 feet long, cut into 1-inch pieces), greens (the ones with the yellow flowers), and dofu (what the Chinese call tofu). It smelled delicious but I was glad I didn't have to try the eels!
The sun is starting to set so it is time to start chopping vegetables. With the large number of rainy, gray days we have here in spring, the beautiful sunny day today is especially appreciated. Everywhere wash is hung from balconies to dry, including our own. Good smells are drifting in the windows, along with the sounds of laughing, chattering children. Life is good. Spring is here!
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