A large part of Qinghai is inhabited by Tibetans. As an autonomous region it gets more attention from the central government than some other places in China. Still it is not enough ...
A large part of Qinghai is inhabited by Tibetans. As an autonomous region it gets more attention from the central government than some other places in China. Still it is not enough ...
The yellow river has its source here. Usually, the water is blue but after a heavy rain it turns to its familiar color.
In Qinghai, there is some tourism. This temple in Guinan has survived the Cultural Revolution because it was used as a storehouse. Still, tourists have failed to show up in great numbers yet.
Especially in high altitude, people make a living from raising cattle. Life is harsh here. One Tibetan said that he wants to quit eating the wind and drinking the rain.
Goats are even more popular among herdsmen. Not everybody can afford a cow or a yak.
You can also meet other animals. A Tibetan next to me and the camel said: “Big nose”. I wasn't sure if he meant me or the camel.
Tibetans in Qinghai prefer a motorcycle to a horse nowadays. They don't eat, don't get tired and don't get sick, we were told. Is that so?
We needed a four wheel drive to get to the remote villages on the high plateau.
Many people in Qinghai still suffer from hunger and cold weather, according to the vice president of Amity's local partner. Since people have not enough clothes for a winter of minus 25 degrees, Amity sometimes sends warm clothes, which are eagerly received.
Drinking water is also a problem. When it rains, people have no choice but wash their clothes and even drink this kind of water.
That's why Amity supports running water projects. This is Amity volunteer Chen Shu Yi in E Jia Village, Guide County, showing us his running water tap. Before, his wife had to fetch water three times a day, each time walking one hour.
Another big problem is overgrazing. Before 1949, Tibetans had only as many animals as they needed to survive. But afterwards they were encouraged by political policies to raise as much cattle as possible. As a result, grass disappears and makes way to sand and gravel.
Goats and sheep are also a threat to the grasslands.
Meadow is still visible in the background, but for how long?
If people fail to save the grassland, they will not survive.
One policy of the 1950s sent people from the east of China to Qinghai in order to turn meadows into agricultural land. During the Great Leap Forward, people had to be fed. Policy makers at that time ignored the fact that this soil and climate cannot sustain agricultural use of the land for long.
Around 2003 a new policy was given out, making it obligatory for people to turn their farmland back into grassland in order to save what is left of the soil. Amity is financing special grass seeds from Australia in order to help farmers fulfill their duty.
On this slope, the old fields are still visible but nothing is grown here any more. The fields have been turned into grassland.
In order to give the grass a chance to recover, fences are indispensable. To make sure that animals stay away for several months, Amity supports villages to build fences for 3000 to 4000 mu. Here is the party secretary of He Dong Xiang and his wife giving the fence a final touch.
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The grass can now recover but it takes two to three years for it to become strong again. With villagers earning 40% of the living from herding it is hard to resist letting sheep and cattle in.
The party secretary mobilzed the whole village to build fences that day for us to take good pictures.
It takes about a month of constant work to build a fence for about 4000 mu.
Amity was only able to finance fences for about 1/3 of the village's grassland. For the rest, villagers bought their own fences.
But these other fences where cheaper, started rusting soon and came down. Here two villagers are building “Amity quality fences”
In the same village Amity supports a running water project.
Before people had to spend 1-2 hours on fetching water. In winter, they had to carry blocks of ice from a river down in the valley.
Today, the water comes from an underground source, which means that it is never frozen, not even in the cold Qinghai winter.
In former times, villagers from He Dong Xiang had to cook solely with straw and firewood. To boil the water of one cettle used up a whole bundle of firewood.
The solar stove project made it much easer and cleaner to boil water. The families with solar stove save about 1/3 of their usual amount of fuel.
The kitchen of a Tibetan family.
Common fuel is firewood which has become scarce in many areas of Qinhai.
Animal dung is used as well. People make them into “flat cakes” ...
... and stack them in a dry place.
It is much better for people and the environment to use the faeces of pigs to produce biogas. Two pigs per family are enough to provide the annual amount of gas for cooking meals.
Amity gives money to build the biogas system whereas peasants buy pigs and spend their own money on upgrading their pigpens.
our journey now heads for the high plateau where trees are unknown and snow common in summer.
Amity supports the Tibetan village of Jia Dang Cun near Guinan with several projects. In this case they build a small factory for making cavity bricks.
Only the poorest families are allowed to work on this munfacturing site.
One brick will earn them 3 mao. A quick worker can make 1000 bricks a day. This is a good income for those villagers who have little money or not enough animals.
During our interviews. A woman even sang a song for us.
One of the most important income sources is collecting Chongcao, which litteraly means worm grass. You can find it everywhere here in Hong Kong at the Chinese medicine shops. People said it is a worm and a grass at the same time. This didn't convince me but it looks just that. It seems to be some kind of symbiosis. Anybody who knows something about this, please tell me. It is a good income for Tibetans, who get four to ten yuan per Chongcao.
With Amity's solare energy panels, people have enough electricity to run a TV or a radio. For them it is the only window to the world. People said that before they had a TV they thought that everybody in the world lived like them. But now, they know more.
Rats are endangering the grassland. They eat the roots and thus destroy the plants. Herdsmen call meadows infected with rats “black land”, because it becomes useless if rats are not killed.
The party secretary (right) and a poor herdsman from Jia Dang Cun greeted us.
He also uses dung to fuel his stove.
Before Amity provided photo voltaic panels, the only light in the evening came from the stove.
Today, he just switches on the light bulb.
We continue to one of the big reservoirs of the Yellow River, the Long Yang Xia River Dam.
It produces more than 6 billion kilowatt per year for the whole of China.
Still people who live just a few kilometers uphill, like this Tibetan family, have no electricity at all.
Ren Qingkua, who is only 22 years old but is already the father of a two year old son, shows us his TV and Radio. Since Amity has given his family a solar panel her enjoys electricity.
More important than the TV is his mobile phone. Befor, he and other villagers from Wa Li Guan Village had to walk 8 km to find a place in town where they could recharge their mobile phone. Today, they can do it at home. A small solar panel on his roof is enough to provide him with enough electricity.
His fellow villager Ci Zheng Jia Xi told us how his life changed after getting a mobile phone and electricity to recharge it. Before, he had to go into town to inquire about the prices for sheep and cattle. Then he had to go back to get his animals. All in all it took him three days to sell his animals at a good price. Today, he just makes a phone call to know the exact price for a sheep. He also said, that he can call his children now, who live in a boarding school. Before it took days to get any news from them and only if fellow villagers, who went to town and were able to deliver a message from them. Electricity has changed his life radically to the better.
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Whereas the Tibetans live up the hills, Han Chinese live closer to the reservoir where they can grow grain and vegetables.
This family was relocated in the early 1980s when the reservoir was flooded. At the old location they were able to grow tomatoes. Here they need a greenhouse.
Zhao Fucheng is a Christian since 2005. He first heard of the gospel on Christmas 2004 when the local CCC church in Long Yang Xia invited people to the church. He went out of pure curiosity but, as he put it, he found that there was a lot of truth in what the evangelist said. He and his family became Christians, which posed a problem to some of the Buddhist fellow villagers. They had to get used to the sign of the cross in his house, Zhou Fucheng says, but now they are used to it. When he is not out on the lake fishing or working in his fields, Zhao Fucheng is building Amity's biogas systems in the area.
There is always plenty of sun on the high plateau. An ideal place for solar stoves.
The further one goes west, the more it look like Arizona.
The village we are visiting next is still on the shores of Long Yang Xia reservoir. The landscape is breathtaking.
The mayor of Hou Jun Hua Village is known as an especially successful Amity partner. His house shows that he is open to new ideas.
In his flower garden even the solar stove looks beautiful.
The mayor Yang Wencui is a Han Chinese and responsible for a village of 1266 people, among them Tibetans, Mongols, Han Chinese, and Tujia.
Since winters are harsh, animals live in greenhouses.
Sheep (Mian Yang) ...
... cows ...
... and pigs ...
... are fed a special new kind of turnips (Tian Cai) ...
in order to produce “quality dung” for the biogas system. This dung does not only produce gas but also biological fertilizer.
It is not always easy to convince villagers of a new technology. We were told that one man in a village installed the biogas system against severe opposition from his wife and mother-in-law. The mother-in-law even moved out in protest of her son-in-law reconstructing the pigpen. Not until he could show material results did she move back in and accepted the change. Changing people's minds is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome in implementing Amity projects.
Now, the old oven of the mayor's kitchen is out of work.
Another kind of projects we visited where elementary schools in villages. Since all of the schooling fees are now scraped in this area, the students attendants rate is around 100%. This is a wonderful propaganda poster I found in a school.
Still, school buildings are dangerously dilapidated in some villages. This is the elementary school of Cao Duo Xiang Village in Gonghe.
School authorities are desperate to make Amity help them.
The back of a classroom which is still in use.
A classroom which is not in use anymore. The air reeked of mold.
The walls of the campus fall apart.
One of the local leaders feared for the safety of the students.
what is left of the wall.
Students were very shy at the beginning.
There where so many people visiting, among them a foreign woman.
The ceiling comes off.
Students seemed very disciplined while Li Xue was distributing little presents she had brought from Nanjing.
Outside, students tried to line up to receive their gifts.
That looks well enough ...
... to get their gift.
everybody seemed happy.
... especially after our partner Cai Rang told a joke to make them laugh for the camera.
some classes now take place in the teacher's dormitory because classrooms cannot be used.
Local leaders still hope that Amity will support this school which was built in the beginning of the 1980s.
We visited a school in another part of Qinghai. This is the building of the County government.
And this is one of their elementary schools.
It is also falling apart but a Chinese donor, a law firm, has promised to donate 80,000 Yuan to rebuild it.
The villagers, mostly Tibetans are very poor. They have an annual income of about 700 Yuan.
Tibetan style is to build walls out of clay.
Inside the house are little flower gardens the stables.
Farmers use a donkey to plough their fields.
These children are too small to go to the next boarding school.
They depend on having an elementary school nearby, a so called Xue Dian.
So we visited their school, which cannot be used for much longer.
A classroom still in use.
From the 120 students who need a school, 60 have already left to go to a boarding school in the county seat. But in the classes one to three, children are to small to go to a boarding school or walk several hours a day.
The ceiling.
The teacher's room.
I really admired the teacher (left) who will stay here for many years to come.
This is the building site of the new school.
We make inquiries in the village about the avarage financial situation and the need for a new school.
By chance, we visit the house of a man who was a bearfoot doctor under Mao.
Bama is 58 and has started as a barefoot doctor in this village in 1965.
His “practitioner's corner”
He cures all the little ailments like the flu but he is not qualified to help with child birth. For that villagers now go to the county hospital where they can have their baby delivered free of charge. Tibetans and other minorities get incentives nowaday to have few children. If they only have one or two children, the state will provide them with retirement payments as soon as they turn sixty.
That's why Tibetans usually have not more than two children today. Now, this has become a problem because the villages start to feel the lack of field laborers. On top of that, these children go to school and might leave the village for good in the future. At least their parents wish them to do so and Amity supports them with their schooling.