Chinese word of the day: farm. I don't know how to say "farm" in Chinese, and I can't quite figure out which character is most appropriate, so I will leave it to you to research.
Yesterday I took a Sunday afternoon jaunt just outside Qufu. I biked out the north gate of campus, and within 3 minutes I was cruising along amid corn, beans, and cotton. There's nothing like a good corn field to make an Iowa girl's heart happy. :)
Two middle-aged women were harvesting these bundles by hand and stacking them on the carts. Anyone know what crop it is?
This woman saw the camera dangling off my wrist and really wanted me to take a picture of the kiddo. So I did! The language barrier is killer in situations like these; I would have loved to stay and chat in the village, but we couldn't communicate.
These schoolgirls turned around every 30 seconds or so to look at the foreigner biking behind them.
The blur on the right is an older gentleman picking cotton by the side of the road.
I've biked on this road twice now. It is smooth and wide, with two lanes and a median. And yet, there is very little traffic other than farmers on their bikes and a very occasional car.
Thanks for joining me on my jaunt outside Qufu. I hope there are many more to come.
Great photos! I agree about there's nothing like a corn field to make a good Iowa girl happy! Bean fields are lovely too. I'll have to send you a photo of the bean field at Jerry's farm that we all walked on Saturday to get to the Kay-Carole-Jerry-Christa Rock. His whole farm there was one huge bean field---no corn. He planted that on a different farm. He said he'll start harvesting in 3 weeks or so.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess I had my agriculture lesson too. :)
ooo! me too!
ReplyDelete