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August 17, 2006
The Rice Harvest
LOCATION: Dali, Yunnan Province, China
SEE WHERE WE ARE!
Longitude: N: 25.40°
Latitude: E: 100.10°
Miles from Singapore: 2937
It's harvest time in Yunnan Province and the rice is ready for reaping!
For the past few days I've been biking up a beautiful river valley that looked on the map like it might save some miles to Dali (rather than going via Kunming) and go with the terrain rather than over it. So far the map has proved accurate in this regard, and there's been little traffic to boot. A temporary lift to the daily deluge of rain is allowing farmers a weather window to begin the rice harvest, which dominates valley life and seems to have everyone in high spirits. As you'll see in the video it's a completely non-mechanised affair: the women first use short 12 inch sickles to cut the rice plants 5-6 inches above the ground which the men then thresh over a wooden collecting box. The rice seeds are finally transferred to sacks and ingeniously secured using a rice stem for rope. And although all done by hand, the party moves through each rice field with surprising speed.
Once a field has been harvested, the real work begins to prepare it for the next crop: the spent rice stems are gathered into stooks and propped upright to dry. Some of these are stored in nearby barns (for roofing houses perhaps?). The excess is burnt in the fields and ploughed back in along with the old plants. Most of the ploughing is also done without using machinery - just one man, a water-buffalo and a single metal plough blade attached to a yoke cut from a specially shaped tree branch. All pretty impressive stuff. It makes me wonder if the arable harvest in pre-industrial revolution England 100 odd years ago wasn't that dissimilar in method and tools. The family that I filmed certainly seemed to be having more fun than I can ever remember driving a tractor up and down for hours and hours putting up hay the modern, efficient way.
jason
Posted on August 17, 2006 3:18 PM