Buffalo Futures

Late summer in the middle of Sichuan and the sky was deep blue, the sun bright and temperatures in the low 40s Celsius. It was boiling out there. Luckily, the rice harvest was mostly in and the farmers were all taking it easy, playing mahjong or cards for small money in the shade, or watching the dreaded television.
 
It was the end of the cycle. Many of the denuded rice paddies were already sprouting new shoots on top of the lopped-off old plants, unaware that they were wasting their time. The rice plant bases will be left to rot, then churned up into the mush come spring by water buffalo.
 
Water buffalo have a very good life in most of rural China, particularly during the long summer months. On this walk, I saw why they’re called water buffalo. In every water hole, pond and stream I passed, I saw one or two of the animals suspended in the cool water, occasionally dunking their heads in, eyes closed as the water drained off their faces. They looked just like obese retirees in Florida soaking in swimming pools.
 
A woman who ran a small noodle shop in the town of Xinglong said there were many water buffalo in the area.
 
"Do you have water buffalo in England?" she asked.
 
"No," I said. "Actually, yes. In the zoo."
 
"Then maybe we can sell some water buffalo to England," she said.
 
"Excellent idea," I said. "We will build an export trading corporation on water buffalo for England."
 
A little further along, I saw a protesting pig that was being led, or not led, along the road on the end of a rope. The pig must have weighed at least twice that of the woman pulling the rope. He was crying and shouting, complaining and stubbornly trying to stay put. The woman’s husband encouraged the pig with kicks on its haunches and sharp raps with a cane, and the pig eventually allowed itself to be led along.
 
Of course, any pig on the road is almost certainly heading off to be slaughtered. Normal pigs, as opposed to those locked in the animal industrial complex, spend their entire lives in the family sties in relative comfort – even in splendor, with plenty to eat and no social responsibilities whatsoever. But then comes the day when they are led off to become food and, who knows, maybe the pig had an inkling of its fate.
 
A few more words about animals in China. I sometimes ponder as I walk along through the countryside the differences in attitudes toward animals by Chinese and Westerners. I don’t think this is too absolute an issue, but there is probably a greater hypocrisy on the part of Westerners with regard to animals in that, on one side they tend to treat animals more like people – certainly with regard to dogs and even cats. Then you have movies such as Babe, which personalize and humanize pigs and a menagerie of other beasts. There are any number of children’s cartoons in this vein. But then you have the presence of vast quantities of meat in Western supermarkets and on dinner tables.
 
Thinking back to my own past as a meat eater, I think there is a conscious process for Westerners in separating meat from the animal from which it was derived. People don’t think about pigs when they’re eating pork, nor about chickens when they eat McNuggets. There is a psychological separation between the source and the product, which is not so true in the Chinese world. Chinese people have a more realistic view, I guess, of the position of animals in terms of the natural human-dominated order of things.
 
Back to Sichuan. I asked several people about the year’s harvest and the responses were mixed. One lady said that it had been very good, but more often people said it was not so good.
 
"It is all the natural disasters," said one man. "Floods, landslides, droughts, it just goes on and on, all over the country."
 
I asked the harvest question of two farmers who were digging a ditch for a water pipe. One of them had a question in return for me.
 
"You foreigners," he said. "Do you… penetrate holes?"
 
I looked at him for a second, wondering if I had heard him right. He made a hand motion to illustrate the activity.
 
"Ah," I said with a smile. "People all over the world are all the same."
 
As I walked along the road between the fields, I saw the rice stalks had mostly been tied up into little pyramid structures, awaiting threshing. The bundles were lined up along the edges of the rice terraces, looking like an audience to a spectacle. But all was quiet apart from the ducks enjoying the mud in the paddy ponds, and the deafening screams of the cicadas.
 
The country in this part of central Sichuan was really most pleasant to walk through, with vistas on one side or another of the road most of the way. The little towns all seemed prosperous and quiet in the fierce heat.
 
I passed a man going downhill riding a tricycle cart stacked with wastepaper and cardboard, and one of his packages fell off the back. The man stopped and was having trouble on the incline fixing the cart in place so he could go and retrieve the cardboard bundle. I walked toward him and shouted "Can I help?" He reacted aggressively and moved to hit me, who knows why.
 
"Okay," I said. "I’m happy to help or not." He shouted at me as if I were trying to steal his load.
 
"Whatever," I said, and walked off.
 
"He’s never seen a foreigner before, doesn’t know what you are doing," said a woman passing by.
 
The man jumped on his tricycle, leaving the package behind, and pedaled away.
 
It was an unsuccessful cross-cultural encounter. But a few kilometers further along in the town of Changle, I was able to balance things off with a lovely conversation with another tricycle cart driver.
 
"Can you drive one of these?" the driver asked.
 
I shook my head.
 
"It’s very hard work," he added.
 
"And you’re very healthy," I said. "What is your surname?"
 
"My surname is Long," he said.
 
"Dragon long?" I asked.
 
"Yes."
 
"Hah!" I exclaimed. "I belong to the Dragon sign, so I belong to you." He and his comrades all laughed, and we took a photo to commemorate the meeting.
 
At one point in the afternoon the heat got to me, and I stopped in the shade of an old abandoned house with wooden shutters for windows. My heart was beating fast and I was sweating profusely, but after a few minutes, I looked around me and noticed some chalk writing on one of the wooden shutters. I walked over to read it.
 
"Success is the root of failure," it said. I laughed at this Oscar Wilde-like pronouncement, which gave me hope that the education system of China is not being totally successful in its aims. 
 
The China Reading Project donates books to schools in rural China. Donations are tax-deductible. Payments can be remitted to The China Reading Project, Xinhua Finance Library Foundation Limited, HSBC Hong Kong account 809-215064-838, SWIFT code: HSBCHKHHHKH, HSBC Causeway Bay Branch. Visit  www.chinareadingproject.com for details. For more Travels articles, visit http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/travels. Graham’s book, The Great Walk of China, was recently published and can be purchased from Blacksmith Books and at all good bookshops.