海尼 Haini village

Yanzong and I left Shangrila for Weixi county on Friday afternoon, arriving in Tacheng town in the evening. The drive took about four hours with several stops, taking us from an elevation of 11,200' to 6,500' in the span of about 60 miles. It was pretty awesome to see the landscape, particularly the farmland, change so dramatically.  We went from pasture, barley, and rape in Shangrila to fields and fields of corn from 9300' on down.   Also potatoes, sunflowers, and soybeans, and finally down in the Jinsha river valley (which becomes the Yangtze) rice paddies ringed with taro and beans. 

Saturday we went down the road a few miles and interviewed farmers in a few villages, all part of Haini administrative village.  We were invited into homes with fireplaces in the center of the room on a platform that you sit on.  Unfortunately no chimneys or other ventilation so I teared up pretty fast.  The folks were very friendly and answered our questions and offered us tea and very fresh sunflower seeds.  Yanzong was elated.  She's been fun to work with - an ethnic Tibetan from Deqin area, always laughing and singing.  Her English is great, and my only complaint is that she prefers to speak Tibetan even when the people we are talking to can speak Mandarin, and aren't Tibetan either but they understand the language.  Well a small price to pay.  She's been very game to hike around and is willing to ask the same questions over and over for me.  She has training in economics and has worked on projects in this area, so she asks some of her own questions as well, which has been a nice complement I think. 

Photos: Scenes from the road.   A blurry photo of yours truly with an ethnic Malimasa couple from Haini. Bitter buckwheat = marginal crop. An old man picking squash out of his corn field, who talked unintelligibly about the Cultural Revolution. One of the villages we visited had a small working stone mill with a water wheel grinding corn.    Yanzong and I walked along a concrete pipeline for a hydropower station that is still under construction.  Every other village seems to have a cinderblock producer, and you see workers pressing them out onto the ground, and little rows of blocks drying by the side of the road.    Two women weeding rice, a little patch of buckwheat(!) in the foreground.