Countryside around Lingshui Cun



Countryside around Lingshui Cun



Countryside around Lingshui Cun



Overlooking Lingshui Cun


Many of the doors in Lingshui Cun were decorated with colorful signs.  Every door was different and personal.


An old fellow with a basketful of sticks



Typical view in the village



Old well in Lingshui Cun village.  The stonework in the walls was done in this herringbone pattern throughout the village. 


Dr. Huang demonstrates the use of a grain mill. 


We each tried our hand with the mill.  It was remarkably easy to turn and spun in such a way as to "smear" grains between the stones rather than just "squashing" them.  Simple technologies can be surprisingly efficient!


The fields tended by the farmers who live in the village


The benefits of electrification as represented on a tiled mural on one of the town walls. 


A beautiful mural with a message beyond my ability to read in Chinese. 


We had lunch with one of the farmers and his wife.  The food was delicious! 


Close-up of part of lunch


A nice, typical home in Lingshui Cun historic village


The farmer's family had a small garden that they tended behind their house. 


The farmer's outhouse toilet was a nice little setup with a pump-driven flush system.  It was great during the summer, but I imagine things could get pretty cold in winter!


The Chinese are good about using the resources available for simple things.  This house, for example, has a solar water heater.  No coal or oil gets burned and the mechanism is simple (easy to maintain). 


The heater in the house and the stove burned coal brickettes.  These were made by grinding low-grade coal into a power, separating the coal from the culm (non-burning rock with which the coal occurs), and then pressing the coal powder into brickettes of a standard shape and size.  The holes in the brickette allow more oxygen to get to the fire. 


Some houses in the next village down the line use raw coal blocks that are delivered by truck.  The streets were very rough, though, so some of the coal fell off the truck.  Anthony - always a thoughtful guy - gladly helped re-load some. 



We arrived in China on the day of the big Sìchuān earthquake of May 12, 2008. (click here for pdf version).  The Chinese people really came together well for this.  People from ALL walks of life - rich, poor, young, old, etc. - all contributed to helping the victims of the quake. 


This was posted on the wall by the entrance to the village.  It summarizes each person's donations to the earthquake relief effort. 

I was really impressed by how so many people pitched in.  Lu Beibei - the graduate student at CUG-B who taught us tai chi - text-messaged her donation using her cell phone while we were on a bus.  Lu Beibei is by NO means a wealthy person - graduate students live hand-to-mouth everywhere in the world - but she still wanted to help out.  Lu Beibei was an extraordinary young woman in many respects, living a meaningful and thoughtful life.  I have a lot of respect for her.


Rock strata in the mountains were upturned to a vertical dip - evidence of a violent uplift in the region's geologic past.