德钦 Deqin

Yanzong and I went out in the morning and stopped by Feilaisi, the site of a stupa and a viewing point for Mt. Khawa Karpo.  We had our cab driver drop us off at a succession of villages that climb up the mountain near Deqin, stretching from corn in the river valley up a couple thousand feet to high fields of yellow wheat.  The first village we came to, we met a family that was about to plant buckwheat into wheat stubble, so Yanzong and I invited ourselves along.  They had a walk-behind tractor with a plow, a 5kg bag of seed, and a small field just down the hill.  We watched them planting for a minute, a young man operating the tractor and the mother scattering the seed by hand, two small kids moving rocks out of the way of the plow.

We spent all day hiking down from Rezhinka (10,000') to Juxu (9,000') by the river and up again to a guest house at 10,500', talking to people on the way.  In Rezhinka almost every field is planted to buckwheat after the wheat crop comes out in July.  We saw lots of fields with a newly emergent buckwheat crop.  We met an old couple who invited us in, and gave us this disgusting cold sour bubbly milk drink to quench our thirst.   The man talked about running horse caravans down to Weixi to sell Tibetan salt forty years ago.   At that time he picked up a new drought-tolerant wheat variety that the government was promoting.  Now they have another new variety that tastes bad but matures faster, allows them to double crop.  On our way back up the hill we saw them again; he was making cheese.  

Buckwheat seems like an important part of the system here.  Even at low elevation where you can often plant corn after wheat, some people substitute buckwheat if the wheat harvest comes too late.  It was amazing to walk a few hours and see the farming systems go from tall corn seedlings planted after wheat, to newly harvested barley, wheat, and emergent buckwheat, and then even further up where the wheat is green in a single season field.       

We also talked to a few people who raise bees, sometimes selling upwards of 1000 RMB worth of honey per year.  The beehives are hollowed-out logs that people will stick in the woodpile or lean against the side of the house.