BEIJING TO XI’AN
A Bullet Train traveling 200 miles an hour takes us southwest to Xi’an today. We pass agricultural fields with many mixed plantings. Very different from fields in the US where you would see only one species growing. Every surface seems cultivated by either homes or agriculture. I keep thinking of Professor Ronald Knapp’s book, House, Home, Family: Living and being Chinese which describes so much of what the Bullet is zooming past; the rural life of China devoted to single family farming. Clusters of houses with groves of trees around them, surrounded by fields of beautifully growing vegetables shining in the hot sunlight. I recognize corn, and perhaps spinach. At dinners we are served cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, corn, peppers. It is a vegetable rich diet that comes delivered by these farms of the east and south.
The north is arid grasslands and desert. In fact, Harold sends me a link to the Times today that describes the forced evacuation of the nomadic tribes of the North. Trading their culture of sheparding animals and living in tents for the apartments, electricity and jobs that are creating these enormous urban centers.
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