Rural Pollution & Kids

Despite the sudden cold front that's blowing in from the NW, two neighbours and I still hopped on our bikes and rode about 23 km in zero degree temperatures. We ventured through as many small villages as possible, to protect ourselves from the fierce wind. As much as I appreciate the natural beauty of many rural landscapes, it's disturbing how some locals pollute the land and rivers right in their own backyard. Perhaps decades of non-ownership has taken away all sense of environmental responsibility, and/or because many people here are migrants from other provinces and they see their surroundings as a temporary abode anyway.



On a more positive note, the rural kids are very friendly, and unlike their parents, seem less fazed about seeing a "Foreign Devil" pass by. We stopped on the way and watched a few kids play a marble & card combo game. "Good morning," said one of them, probably using his English with a foreigner for the first time.

By the Sweat of their Backs

I am still "stuck" in Beijing, so here a few pics from previous bike trips.

People move to Pudong from all over China, with the majority coming from neighbouring Anhui province. They are the reason why a large city such as Shanghai is thriving. I recently spoke to a teenage girl, and she said that her hometown (Xuzhou) has very few people of her age left, the majority leave for a better life in the city around the age of 15. These teenagers and other labourers from the countryside work hard to send money home every month, or even make ends meet.



I asked this friendly farmer why he put his harvested rice on the road; after all, cars could drive over it? That's exactly what I am hoping for, he replied, explaining that a bit of free threshing wouldn't hurt. What you see on the road is a few months work and will bring him about RMB 3,600 on the market, about $450 or 360 euro. Annualy he could earn well over RMB 10,000, he shared, which is certainly much better than in his home province.

Old couple picking trash from a demolition site. Almost everything gets recycled this way; such as door frames, bricks, etc.