Land of Contrasts
We sometimes feel as if we’re going back and forth between the 21st century and the 12th century several times in one day. Our campus stands as an oasis of modern technology, surrounded by scenes out of the Middle Ages. Inside our university gates, students decked out in cargo pants, Reeboks, and Nike windbreakers head off to PowerPoint equipped classrooms; after this they might stop by one of the numerous Internet cafés on campus to check their e-mail or do some online research before heading off to study geo-physics in modern labs. Yet, just a few feet away outside the gates, the peasants employ Song-dynasty farming methods in the lush rice paddies and vegetable gardens. It works. It’s cheap. There’s a surplus of manual labor. Why change? Farmers ride atop a wooden plow hauled by a water buffalo (our son calls it skateboarding Chinese-style). Vegetables are transported to market in two baskets, hanging from each end of a pole slung over the shoulders. We buy our veggies from the farmers in the open-air market that sets up just outside our gate every morning. If we want meat, we pick our cut from the large slabs of pork, beef or mutton that are hanging from the hooks. We can choose fish or eel from what’s swimming around in the buckets. If we want to select a chicken or duck, we point to the one we want, and then it’s killed and its feathers plucked while we finish the rest of our shopping. This is China, a land of contrasts and contradictions.
Randy and Karen, ELIC teachers in China
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