Dallying in Dali

After our day spent at the Old Dali market, Julie, the girls, and I spent the next two days wandering Old Dali. We just couldn’t seem to get enough. Old Dali is all quaint shops and sidewalk cafes. Several times we dined outdoors at Tibetan restaurants where we ate yak meat and drank yak yoghurt. We sampled Tibetan butter tea despite the fact that the restaurants in Old Dali insisted on shorting their window signs and menus down to “Tibetan Butt Tea” which made for regular rounds of giggles from the VanNoord crew.

On our third morning, Julie and I let the girls sleep in while she and I went for an early morning bike ride on a pair of rented bikes. We pedaled down to Lake Erhai and bought warm, dry-roasted almonds from a street vendor by the wharf and watched early morning tourists pile onto a boat for a pleasure cruise.

After lingering by the lake, we swung north in order to cycle through the verdant rice fields we had passed on our way down. We biked down a dusty road and then turned onto an elevated dirt path that served as an embankment separating two rice fields. Eight people were working in one field and notably, they were all older folks; not a young or middle-aged person in the lot. They were all working with all hand-tools; not a single power tool in sight.

The men and women were prepping the field to receive some transplanted rice seedlings. In the large, below-grade field, the workers had already subdivided the area into raised, dirt ramparts. I couldn’t believe how perfectly straight their lines were. You could have held a mason’s line to their work. Two women were creating holes in which to plant the rice seedlings by walking on either side of one of the dirt ramparts. Each held the end of one six-foot piece of wood. Inserted in the long edge of the stick were two dozen, short wooden dowels which had been filed to a rounded point. Together the women gently pushed the stick down and pushed the dowels into ground. When they lifted it up, they had two dozen perfectly formed holes ready to go. The moved down a foot and repeated the process. Then they did it again. And again. They were bent over the whole time.

I threw out a friendly “ni hao” and waved my daughter’s little point-and-shoot camera to let them know I wanted to take a few pictures. Nobody said anything to let me know this was a problem, so I took that to mean “go ahead.” So I did. I snap off a few pictures while they continued to work and chatter among themselves.

On our bike ride back into Dali, Julie and I talked about how easy it is to romanticize the life of the farmer. It happened to be perfect weather while we were in Dali. The farmers seemed to enjoy working together. They got to be outdoors. It would be rewarding to see a tangible outcome from your efforts. A person could also derive a lot of satisfaction form a job well done.

But we decided that –really- it just seemed like a lot of back-breaking work especially considering it was all done by hand. No wonder all the young people had abandoned the field to pursue other opportunities –any opportunity.