Dealing With Person Mouth

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            I have been asked periodically why we, the sixteen students and three program leaders traveling around the world together as a gap year program, study what we do in the specific countries we find ourselves.  In this blog, I attempt to make it clear why we are studying sustainable agriculture in China, of all places, and give a bit of insight into some of the discussions we are having. 

            The Yellow River is the second longest river in Asia and the sixth longest in the world.  It is considered the birthplace of Chinese civilization.  The fertile water’s periodic flooding of the river valleys created all the right conditions for agriculture.  It is said that agriculture is what gave ancient peoples the leisure time to focus on other aspects of life like developing creation stories, art, dance, etc.; the stuff we might call culture.  Like most ancient civilizations, the Chinese culture was formed around agriculture, and thus food has played a central role in the lives of these people since its inception, arguably more than younger civilizations. 

            However the above point may be argued historically, one thing is for certain: the proof is in the pudding.  The evidence of the role that food has on Chinese culture abounds in many aspects of Chinese society.  A prime example of this is in greeting people.  When walking down the street, the typical greeting is not “Hi,” or “How are you,” but “Chī fàn?” (Have you eaten?).  This is not an empty offer either: walk into any stranger’s home and they immediately push food on you, whether it be some fruit or a bowl of rice and veggies. 

 

口

 

            Another example is found in the written Chinese language.  The above Chinese character is pronounced: kǒu, which means mouth, a classifier for things with mouths (people, domestic animals, cannons, wells, etc), and a classifier for bites or mouthfuls.  This character is omnipresent in China.  You see it over entrances (入口 ), and exits (出口 ), and in combination with many other characters to form words that stand for incisions, openings, windows, import, export, and the list goes on and on. 

            One theory about Chinese written language is that many of the modern characters used today come from characters that were originally pictographs:  the shapes of these characters resemble stylized drawings of the objects they represent.  So it’s easy to see how the character for ‘kǒu,’ one of the more simple characters I’ve come across, literally looks like an opening.  When placed in the context of Chinese culture, a food culture, one begins to realize why so many words incorporate the character for mouth. 

            Recently, the guiding question of one of the seminars that I was facilitating for the students was: “Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?”  In the framework of a dating game that matched up eligible consumers with three prowling producers, we discussed various methods of agriculture (industrial, small-holder, organic) and their ability to feed a growing world population.  Without getting into the nitty-gritty too much, the discussion necessarily drifted towards trying to define sustainability, as we’ve tried to do so many times before.  The inevitable question was eventually posed: Is any system of agriculture really sustainable if it can’t feed the world’s population? 

人口

            As with most of our seminars, we left pondering new questions.  As I continue to reflect on this question of sustainability feeding an exponentially booming population, I can’t help but think of the Chinese characters for population: 人口, rén kǒu, or literally: person mouth.  It makes sense that a civilization, whose very formation of the word population ties people to their fundamental need to eat, and within whose borders contains the world’s largest percentage of mouths to feed, would place a great cultural emphasis on food, and thus agriculture. 

            And yet in the past twenty years, the percentage of the population working in agriculture has shrunk from 50% to less than 25%.  The trend of urbanization and industrialization of agriculture that continues will only serve to decrease this number drastically.  Here in the small village of Xibian, you can barely find anyone (no exaggeration) of average, strong working age (15-40?), and this is the same for most rural farming villages: there is a drain of young, able bodies.  As China pushes for continued industrialization and modernization to keep up its rapid economic growth, most young are found in cities, in schools, learning how to become anything other than farmers.  Fast food is becoming more popular.  Obesity, in a largely very fit nation, is starting to become an issue.  Waterways are filled with the run-off from industrial farms.  The air in most cities is so polluted, face and nose masks have not only become a necessity, they have turned into a new fashion niche. 

            One article we read about the technology of sustainable agriculture came from a textbook on agroecology.  It mentioned that one way of measuring sustainability, which necessitates looking at production over time, is to compare current systems to those systems that have been in place for a long time, and continue to produce high rates of yield.  By this definition, it should be obvious to see that industrial agriculture, which pollutes the local and regional environment, reduces the fertility of the soil, and thus relies on inputs derived from fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource, is not sustainable. 

            So where does that leave China, one of the first human ‘civilizations;’ a nation of people with a 7000 year-old tradition of farming?  What happens to a nation whose roots are so firmly planted in the soil, whose culture so fully embraces food and the communal act of eating, when there is no longer anyone to farm?  And why would a country with such a rich and sustaining tradition of agriculture, a tradition that has been shown to work, be compelled to change its ways?  The answer must be, in part, that it is trying to adapt its agricultural system to a growing population. 

            And so I find myself in a never-ending cycle of questions, trying to balance the demands of population, culture, and the limitations of our natural environment.  I am reminded of the words of John E. Ikerd, a professor from the University of Missouri, who writes on “Sustaining the Profitability of Agriculture”. 

            “Sustainable systems must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible.  All three are necessary and no one or two of the three is sufficient.  A system that lacks ecological soundness cannot sustain its productivity over time, no matter how profitable or socially supportive it may seem in the short run.   A system that is not economically viable will not be employed, no matter how ecologically sound or socially responsible it may seem.  And a system that is not deemed to be socially responsible will be discarded or destroyed by the society it must support, no matter how profitable or environmentally friendly it might otherwise seem to be. 

            “These are the standards of success.  The sustainability game is like old-fashioned pinball.  The only thing we win is the privilege of playing another round.  We can judge how well we are playing the game, but success is a process rather than an outcome – a direction rather than a destination”.

           

            And so we walk into the future, bouncing between issues of population growth, profit, and ecology.  I am inspired by the perseverance of my students, who look for answers but find only more questions.  One can only hope that these questions bounce us continually further in the direction of success, and lead us in some direction capable of handling the necessities of our human civilization. 

Cultural Identifiers

            From a young age we are told not to judge a book by its cover - and yet we do.  We size people up based on their appearance – what they’re wearing, how they’re groomed, how they compose themselves.  This makes life easier for us.

            We call them stereotypes and generalizations, and as much as we’re told we’re wrong to use them, we do anyway.  Maybe we know we shouldn’t use them; we do anyway. 

            As we walk down the street, we use these generalizations to categorize people.  Instead of taking the time to have a conversation with someone to really get to know what they’re like, we use these generalizations to save us time.  

           In some instances, we do it for our own safety, or so we think.  We cross the street in order to avoid this person who’s dressed in the ‘dangerous’ category.  In other instances, we do it to save time or energy, or so we think.  We choose to ignore what some people are saying because they belong to the category of people whose wisdom we think is worthless.  In still other instances, we are attracted to certain people who fit our description of what we consider to be decent, attractive, respectable and wise. 

            As I sat today in the middle of Yunnan University in Kunming, China, I looked at all the different people walking around me.  It was a busy campus, full of students, and busier still with all the tourists who come to admire the fall leaves of the Gingko trees and architecture of the old buildings.  I realized that being in this foreign land, I was stripped of the cultural cheat sheet that has allowed me to save time and energy in my own country.  I was no longer able to gauge who were the ‘creeps’, the ‘youthful rebels’, the ‘hippies’, the ‘business types’, and ‘the normal.’  Without this cultural crutch, I was at a loss of who to avoid, and who to engage.

            I was suddenly aware that despite my buying into that age-old adage, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ I did, constantly, every day in every moment back home.  It is a totally natural instinct, developed in our reptilian brain to help us quickly distinguish between danger and safety.  And yet being here, in the middle of a Chinese university campus, I felt freed of this evolutionary baggage, and for one of the first times, maybe since childhood, really able to walk this world, free of stereotypes, and open to all. 

Connection and Mystery in the Andes

3 Nov. 2013

            It is hard to sit down, gather my thoughts, and put them on paper here in Room 11 at the Hosteria de Anita in Cuzco.  My mind races between thoughts of the past two months in general, time spent in Ecuador, our amazing hike along the Camino Inka to Machu Picchu, and the realization that we leave for China tomorrow.  In these moments, I have to remind myself of the importance of intentional reflection, lest I be swept away by the whirlwind that is the journey TBB West is on. 

            Where do I begin?  Do I begin more than 500 years ago, telling the story of a relatively small group of people who through persuasion, cunning, bravado, gifts and diplomacy created an empire that stretched from what is now the middle of Chile to northern Ecuador?  Or do I begin with the much smaller group of 19 students and teachers that happened to be walking along the same path that these Inka carved into the high Andean mountain ridges and river valleys?  I suppose I can only begin where it makes sense – through my eyes and the lenses of my own passions, interests, and curiosities. 

            Beginning at Kilometer 82, at 8,528 feet up, on the floor of the Urubamba River valley, we hiked nearly 45 kilometers, climbing as high as 13,776 ft, and including two other passes at 12,000 ft and 12,916 ft, over the course of four days, finally ending our hike at the famed Inkan ruins of Machu Picchu at 7,872 ft. early on the fourth day.  Trekking through that range of altitude, we experienced a variety of microclimates and associated environments, from Andean grassland (tall, perennial bunch grass), to low chaparral with desert-like flora and cloud forest thick with moss, lichen and epiphyte-covered trees, ferns, and Peruvian bamboo.  Each day was filled with its share of heat and chill, not only from the warming and cooling of the body as we hiked and rested, but as well from the change in altitude and the constant play of the winds, clouds, air moisture and sunlight.  Each ridge crest and mountain pass provided heavenly glimpses of the jigsaw of mountain ranges, their tops rarely visible below the cap of clouds that most always formed around their peaks, and their bottoms joined by the glue of some raging river below.  The saying up there in the Andes goes that if it is sunny, wait two minutes and it will become cloudy.  The opposite holds true as well: as I took in the view from the mountaintops, the condensed moisture that had evaporated from the lush vegetation of the Amazonian rainforest to the north and east of us would snake its way through those river canyons, at times completely blocking any grand view that might have existed only seconds before.  The words of a friend echoed in my mind.  A Catholic priest himself, and as such one who embraces the world of monotheism, he told me one night several years ago about his enlightenment upon seeing this same moving mass of moisture:  “For maybe the first time,” he recalled, “I truly realized why these people would have instilled god-like qualities upon such natural forces.”  For sure, taking moments to view the movement of a thick cloud of white through those mountains, combined with the sheer magnitude and drama of the vistas, I could not escape the humbling feeling of some divine energy at work. 

            Maybe it was just these feelings that inspired a group of people some 600 years ago to build these structures on the tops of these cliffs.  When I gazed upon Machu Picchu itself, precariously perched nearly 8000 feet up on the crest of a mountain ridge, sheer drops to a river canyon to the east and west and steep peaks rising to the north and south, I could not help but imagine the vision that brought this city into reality.  If the view of the ‘Inka,’ or king, of these Quechua people was true, then surely it was a divine vision, as they believed him to be a god in his own right, thus making his descendents gods as well and eventual heirs to the throne.  Looking horizontally along one of the agricultural terraces that make up a decent section of the ‘lost city of the Inkas’ to the eventual disappearance of that terrace into the chaos of jungle, I was awed by the vision that could turn something so wild into something so tame. 

            If the Inkas’ vision and manipulation of the world in which they inhabited was impressive, their knowledge of the celestial bodies and their place in their universe only served to compound their connection to the divine.  As the story goes, Machu Picchu was a sacred site, a holy place at the end of a pilgrimage that began in their empire’s capital, the current colonial city of Cuzco.  Along the way, there are sites consisting of a small number of homes and greater number of agricultural terraces.  These refuges served as places of rest along the route as well as laboratories where they tested the acclimatization of certain species of plants such as coca, maize and potato; plants from the mountains that they wanted to bring down to the jungle and vice versa.  There were also other types of encampments in which spring water and glacier melt were funneled into a series of baths that descended down the slopes, these sites supposedly for cleansing oneself before arriving at the final destination.  At the Temple of the Sun, in the center of Machu Picchu, there sits a rock shaped into the form of a diamond, whose points align perfectly with the cardinal directions.  When the sun hits this rock on the winter solstice, its shadow creates the perfect form of one revered star constellation.

            These stories and explanations of what actually occurred at these sites have of course developed and evolved over time from only bits of information that the Spanish, those conquistadors who colonized these lands, were actually able to collect about this empire and these people.  These settlements were abandoned by the time the Spanish came, adding to the mystery of the Inka and contributing to the desire that archeologists had in trying to find the ‘lost city.’  Because the Inka had no written language apart from khibus, collections of knotted strings that served to tell some quantitative and qualitative message about certain aspects of their reality, much mystery still surrounds this civilization that came to its height in the early 1500’s, just as the Spanish were first landing on the shores of the ‘New’ World. 

            As I walked the path largely laid in large granite stones and meditated atop the terrace edges overlooking the magnificence of the mountains, I thought about the attraction of this place.  What specifically is it that draws 500 people a day to walk the Inka Trail and another 2500 people a day to tour Machu Picchu?  Personally, I largely felt two emotions: one of mystery and one of connection.  In this age of modern science, in which many of us are attracted to scientific explanation for natural phenomena and have given up a more spiritual search for meaning and direction in life, is there still a part of us that finds a certain peace in the unknown? Is there a subconscious piece of us, deep down in that buried soul of ours, that craves to be enveloped in something we can’t explain?  It very well could be the case that these sites were the settings for life as normal, where people gathered to eat, drink and live out their lives within a culture of limited and well-structured norms and interactions.  Yet we have created fantastical stories to describe the lives of these people that in reality we know very little about.  Pondering these things, I received a certain paradoxical satisfaction knowing that I would never truly know.

            The other emotion I was feeling, that of connection, had to do with my feet walking along a path carved some 600 years ago into the Andean mountains, and walked by a quantity of people the extent of which I’ll never know.  As well, touching the rocks, one placed on top of another in perfect cuts and with sound engineering, and wandering through the different structures in the sites, imagining one laying there to rest, another sitting there looking at the view or up at the heavens, I was immediately transported through time back possibly twenty generations of humanity.  In an age in which youth is so highly desired and age is so quickly dismissed as invalid, where much of the primary forests have been cut and ancient wisdom is disregarded, there was for me a certain satisfaction connecting with a people that lived so long ago.  As each new generation tries to reinvent the world, creating new solutions to new problems that arise rather than look to our past for guidelines that might enable us to live happier, more sustainable lives, these ancient temples reminded me that there is still wisdom to be learned from those that have come before us.  In a time in which change seems so rapid and permanence so fleeting, I felt myself more grounded than ever, my human existence deepening in the temporal direction and stretching its roots back in time.

            .....On the first night, after our late arrival at Camp One (Wayllabamba camp) due to some logistical difficulties of a lack of student ID’s at the checkpoint to enter the park (they are very serious about the logistics of this national park and world heritage site), I sat in the dinner tent, Meg and Tracey sitting across from me.  Tired from a long day of traveling and hiking, each of us stared into the journals in front of us, writing about our day, lost in our minds.  I put my pen down and looked into the faces of the girls sitting across from me.  They both had different looks on their faces.  My eyes panned down to their pens – although I could not make out what they were writing, I imagined them both writing very different words based on very different experiences, even from my own, despite the three of us taking the same steps that day.  Out loud, I wondered what it would sound like for all three of us to share the unique experiences we had each had on this very similar journey, and I was reminded once again that although we are all sharing a very similar outward journey, this trip is really all about the journey within....