Yucun Village

This afternoon, Principal Zhang took me to her mother-in-law’s place in a larger village near Tunxi. Once we arrived, we walked a little bit to the river that runs through the village. The scenery was beautiful. There were old Huizhou style houses on each side, water buffalos on the river bank, older people washing clothes and vegetables by the river, children laughing and walking back home after school, and green mountains in the background. But one ugly thing was there that made the scenery awful – the actual river itself. It was a dirty brown color and flowed ever so slowly. The water was shallow but I could not see the bottom because of all the filth on top. One glance and I already knew why the river has become like this. There is trash everywhere! Plastic bags, paper, old clothes, and other trash are carelessly thrown towards the river, and as a result, piles of trash line the river and pollute not only the river, but the whole environment and otherwise beautiful natural scene. Principal Zhang said it wasn’t like this at all 30 years ago. Maybe it’s because there is more plastic and non-biodegradable material now a days, but there is still no excuse for the absent carelessness of littering and dumping trash. Principal Zhang said it has to do with the mentality of Chinese people. They care more about themselves then their surrounding, so since it’s more convenient for them, they just throw it anywhere but in their own house. At the same time, didn’t America go through this too when factories and industries started booming? Only in the last decades have we instilled this value of not littering and caring for the environment, maybe China is just going through the same thing? This is still weird though, because you would think these people that actually interact with nature in their everyday lives (washing in the river, utilizing bamboo, farming crops), would care about nature and their environment, but they don’t. Until the government puts more of an emphasis on protecting nature and teaching its citizens, I don’t see any changes happening in the near future, especially when these kids study the bad littering habits of their parents and siblings. But that’s the beauty of Pingmin Elementary School. We won’t wait for the government, instead we teach these kids when they are young to love nature and value our environment. And they do, just look at how clean our school is! They learn to not litter and how to sweep and clean. Of course, the greater goal is for these kids to grown up and teach these same values to their peers in their own village and to be a living example in daily life. A lot of small actions by a lot of people can make a big difference. We hope by changing one kid, we can change the whole country.

We also had dinner at her mother-in-law’s place. Her house was old but still beautiful in it's traditional Huizhou architecture and practicality. The garden area is in the center when you first walk in and tucked inside the outer walls and her house. Inside, the air is brisk and cool. There are no glass windows, openings in the roof to collect rain, no refrigerator, a few light bulbs hanging, and she has to pump her own water. Raw meat and baskets of leftover food hang from the ceiling but since the air is so fresh and well circulated, it wont go bad. And for the first time I discovered how tofu should really taste, but I don’t know how to describe it, only to say that it tasted more tofu-ie. The tofu was sun-dried for 10 days, and developed a beautiful golden yellow color on the outside. Principal Zhang used a cleaver to cut it into slices and it was eaten like perfectly matured cheese. I also had pure, natural soy milk and it was the best soy milk I have ever tasted. It didn’t taste diluted or over sweetened, but had a distinctive nutty flavor and a clean soy finish. So good!