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October 6, 2000
A Visit to a Small Village
I and many friends are sponsors of student in China. We donate money to the Hope Project through a group called the Overseas Chinese. This money is donated directly to a child so that they can afford the fee to attend school. School is not free in China, and many families are unable to afford an education.
During one of the holidays during National Week I was able to visit the family home of one of the students sponsored by my group of friends. The experience showed me the way in which very impoverished Chinese peasants live. We drove out of Changsha and into the countryside. Every mile took us further into the valleys of the mountains surrounding Changsha. The terrain is similar to the Ozarks in the way in which the valleys split off and continue into smaller valleys until they finally end up against the mountains. The land is different in that it is very red and full of clay without the rockiness of the Ozarks. Also, every valley is filled with rice paddies, vegetable gardens, and small collections of homes. To my surprise and delight, electrical lines carried power into all the villages and homes we saw.
We reached a small town and the 16 year old student and her teacher were waiting. They got into the van and the girl directed the driver as we drove further into the hills. The road became narrower and muddier and finally we arrived at a small collection of buildings. The students home is concrete with a packed dirt floor. The main room, where we were offered chairs and tea, contains two machines for processing the grain. They are both made of wood and run by hand cranks.
After we arrived we sat and drank tea and slowly the villagers came. They crowded into the doorway, staring at these strange foreigners and smiling. Children came and went. Adults left and returned carrying more chairs. The chairs are hand made of wood and very small. Most sit only a foot or so off the ground. We went outside the home and were introduced to the villagers. The adults were all called uncle, auntie, or grandmother and grandfather. The students family consists of her father and a younger sister and brother. The mother left the family six years ago.
The village women talked to the Chinese people with us about the family's plight, the mothers' desertion of the family, and how hard the father worked to support and care for his family.. The sixteen-year-old daughter cried during this time. The family is very poor. The middle daughter does not go to school because the family cannot afford it.
After tea and an initial visit the daughter took us on a exploratory walk of the mountain valley. We walked past more homes, past a granite quarry, and into an unsettled part of the mountain. On the way we found a grandfather and two grandsons digging a cave into the dirt of the mountain. The purpose of the cave is to store wood over the winter so it will remain dry. The mountainside is covered with small brushy growth. Far at the top of the mountain two large trees towered over the rest of the growth.
We returned to the home to find three village women cooking lunch. The kitchen is a room dominated by a large clay fireplace with a large wok in the top. One woman was feeding wood into the fire while two other women stirred food in the wok. The room was very dark; lit only by light coming through one small window and from the glow of the fire.
Lunch consisted of rice, several vegetable dishes, and a fish dish with two fish in it. Delicious food with excellent seasoning, it represented a feast to this poor family.
After lunch we were asked by one of the cooks if we would like to visit her home. We walked around the family's home and discovered another track that went down a different valley. Some of the homes were newer. One had windows, screens, ample lighting, and new furniture. Some of the women do the two-sided embroidery Hunan Province has made famous. They have it attached to quilt style stands placed in front of a window. They embroidery the same pattern a number of times and roll it onto a stick. Then they sell it to the embroidery factory that frames it, marks it up, and sells it for an enormous profit.
The rice paddies again marched right into the mountain valley. They were beautifully terraced so that every rice field was flat even though the land moved up hill. At the end of this valley sat a collection of homes with a vegetable garden in front. The woman led us to her home and took out a key and unlocked her home and showed us in. The family was more prosperous than the one we were visiting, but not as prosperous and the family with the new furniture. Clearly, many economic levels exist side by side in the valley.
We left the home in the afternoon and drove on an expedition to find a Buddhist Temple. We drove, asked for directions, and finally started up a slippery clay road. We got out and finished with a walk through beautiful forests. We found the temple which is run by Buddhist nuns. We visited with the master and participated in a service. I'd never attended a Buddhist rite before and found it interesting. It is filled with bowing, chanting, incense, and candles.
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