In the Mountains June 26
October 8, 2007
June 26
In the mountains
Hello friends and other people who read my blog, I am right now in Houqing township in Yunxian county, Yunnan province. This is a township that is more than 2000 meters above the sea level, and are located in endless big mountains and big forest. Sorry that I took me so long to write this blog as apparently in such big mountains internet places are very difficult to find. Plus most of the time I have been spending in the villages, where no such thing ever exist. Today I met a guy who works for the Chinese government here so I can use his computer in the office.
The area is very poor. I actually haven’t seen such poor places in my life and I grew up in China. The only road connecting it with the county seat takes 4 hours and is winding right off cliffs. I didn’t even dare to look outside of the window and sometimes I even thought I might really died when the car fell off the cliff. The only good thing I can say is that you can see so MANY STARs, and the sky was so close to you just like you are looking at the ceiling. I have been interviewing villagers about rural development projects carried out here by the Chinese government and other international agencies on biodiversity and micro-credit community management issues. Very fascinating stuff.
Today I talked to a guy, who has been ill for 8 years, and he still needs to support his two kids at high school. In the middle of the conversation, he suddenly started to cry and lamenting about how hard his life has been. Immediately I don’t know what to say and tears started to come out of my eyes as well. I don’t know what to say and just listened to his story in tears. Frankly I have never been so touched by such things that my homeland is still so far far away behind and there are so many such honest and lovely people who needs more economic development to raise them up from poverty. I gave him some money in the end, but he refused. I didn’t know what to do and what to say…….
