The rural life

The minute area of China that we have traveled through is rich with agriculture. Once you get out of the main city area and into the areas known as villages every square meter of soil is growing something. The villages are a small clusters of brick and adobe buildings. It seems as though at least half of the buildings are falling or being knocked down to reuse the brick(China uses almost no wood in construction). Surrounding the clusters of buildings is farm land. It is hard to tell how they determine who gets what plot of ground to grow but the plots are irregular shapes and often have different crops growing next to each other. As an example there will be 3 rectangles, each about 1/4 acre, of wheat, then a rectangle of cabbage, then more wheat. If there is a waterway or gorge near this too will be planted with corn or tomatoes or greens.Sometimes you can see several large plots,( 5-10 acres each) of wheat or millet, each defined by a walkway between them. We have traveled many hundreds of kilometers by train and passed thousands of acres of crops and have never seen a tractor. Also it seems like everything is dry farmed as there is not canal or sprinkler systems visible.
China has embarked on a massive tree planting campaign. From the airport in Beijing to city parks and highway meridians a billion trees have been planted. The fruit tree orchards are different than California in that they are planted much closer together, probably three trees for every one that we would plant. We had a meal at a farmhouse, the tables were set between the apricot trees which were loaded with green fruit and only about 10 feet from one another.
Today we traveled by train back West and North, through country that looked like Paradise or Butte Creek Canyon. This was interesting because for untold generations the people of this area have terraced the rocky hills and cliffs, then built massive walls from the rock that has been sifted out, giving them rich flat soil to grow their crops. A couple of times we saw someone with a backpack sprayer in the feilds but have not yet seen chemical fertilizer or a crop duster in fact I don't think I've seen an airplane.

more is later

boomboom~chacha