Monday, July 28th (Ping
Che/Long Valley/Tseung Kwan O/Wing Lung)
Written by Miho Fujii
6:50am: Wake up. We're all still very
tired but we get up and start packing because we have to be at Long Valley by
9am.
7:30am: We leave Ping Che and walk to the
nearby store (which is the only one for a couple miles). We sit down and were
planning to have a full breakfast, but due to time we had to have sandwiches
instead (which I was completely fine with!). I had a sausage and egg sandwich
which ended up being a hot dog with egg (haha!). Others had egg and “spam,” the
spam was more like luncheon meat. We quickly ate and soon the taxi vans were
here to take us to Long Valley.
8:15am: We all loaded into the vans and
took a 20-minute ride to Long Valley. It was a nice morning drive and I felt a little
sleepy on the way there because I was still feeling the effects of my headache
from the previous night.
9am: Arrived in Long Valley! We took a
few minutes walk to the house where the volunteers sleep. It was so hot! It was
even hotter in the house and we all felt grateful that we have been lucky to
have AC every night in Wing Lung and Ping Che. We locked up our bags in the
house, put on some boots, and we were off and on our way to the rice field!
We
arrived at the rice field and the professional farmers and other volunteers
were already working hard, coarsely separating the grains of rice from the
stalks and sifting the rice even further from the stalks. They had already cut
the stalks of the rice plant and they were all lying in neat piles. Ty, Kelli,
Shirley and Bird got to work to helping the farmers in the field help transport
piles of the rice stalks while Sylvia, Felicia, Steph, Anson, and I helped
sift the buckets of rice and stalks. There was an electrically powered machine
with a rotating cylindrical wheel with wire [pictured below] that separated the
grains of rice from the stalks. The rice falls to the bottom of the machine
where it drops into a bucket. Once the bucket is full, it is taken to the
people sifting the rice grains from its stem.
The sifting task was completed by using a box with a wire
fence type of material attached to a box of 2x4s [pictured below]. One or two
people would shake it so the grains of rice would fall through the wire to a
round pan below while the stalks stayed on top of the wire. It was very hard to
completely separate the grains of rice from the stalks [pictured below] and I
felt as though a lot of rice was going to waste, but at the same time it is a
tedious task to individually clean each stem and it would take longer time to
clear the field.
Once the pan is full with sifted rice, the rice is
transferred using a bucket type of scooper to scoop the rice (and leftovers)
into a bag. We didn't fill the bags all the way (only about 2/3 full) because
the rice still had to dry completely in the hot Hong Kong sun. Once the rice
was completely dried, it would then get mechanically sifted a last time to
separate any non-rice particles. We didn’t get to observe this step in the process,
as it would take days for the rice to dry.
11am: The day was
getting hotter and hotter. We continued to sift the rice on and off until we
didn’t have buckets and were waiting for the farmers to separate more rice.
They had a small mechanical problem that halted the steady pace they had going.
We stopped for our lunch break! We walked over to a small café/restaurant where
a couple of farmers (by the looks of them) were relaxing and having their
lunch. Our group of about 12 people went into a back room that had AC (yay!).
Mahjong tables were being used for dining tables and immediately when we sat
down, Steph chimed in, “Let’s play mahjong!” Sadly the drawers were empty. No
menus were brought to us, instead Bird asked us what we wanted such as rice
veggies and pork or a different substitute for meat. For $31HKD there was a
huge plate of rice, bok choy, and pork [pictured below].
We ate our lunch (even had some ice cream too!) and relaxed
in the cool room until 2pm. We were off and trekked back to the hut where the
rice field was. We grabbed our gloves, rice bags, pans and sifters and set off
to another field where we would be able to participate in the whole harvesting
process. A field was ¾ of the way harvested, but was not finished due to heavy
rain.
We arrived at the field, but the machine was not working
because of a bad electrical connection. We waited around and took group rice
field pictures while the professional farmers worked to fix the machine. Once
the machine was up and running, work got quickly underway to cut the rice stem
bunches and a chain-gang was formed to pass the bunches down to the
professional farmer at the machine to remove the rice from the stem. The mud
was thick and deep so boots made it hard to walk through the mud. Anson and I
did not hesitate to remove our boots and socks to get dirty and quickly jump in
line to not slow the pace of the rice stem cutters. In no time, the rice field
was down to a small patch. The camp leaders wanted to give the Wing Lung group
a chance at cutting the rice stalks so we all grabbed a sickle and learned how
to the rice stalks. You grab a bunch of rice stalks, twist the bunch a little,
and use the sickle to cut as low to the mud as possible. Camp leader, Theresa,
explained that tall leftover stalks can injure farmers. Right before we cut the
last bunch of rice, Bird took pictures [pictured below] of us gathered around
the last one, and I got to cut it!!!
We piled the rice stalks on the side of the field where we
would each take a turn to use the machine to separate the rice from the stalk.
It was quite easy to do, by just hold the bunch of rice stalks and then turning
it a few times to get all sides of the bunch. Of course we were all slower than
the professional farmers. Some of us sifted the rice into pans and then bagged
the last of the rice. We were done! We packed up everything and headed back to
the hut by the first field we helped harvest. At this point, we all looked
exhausted from being in the sun all day. At this point I realized that I had
got sunburn on my face. >_< I should’ve listened to Bird and put sunscreen
on! Oops!
4:00pm: We headed
back to the volunteer house, used the restroom, packed up our bags, and were on
our way once again! As we were walking back, Bird got a call from KK (from Ping
Che). He was asking where we were and soon we saw him on the other side of the
stream that we were walking along. We crossed the bridge and KK, his wife, and
daughter were waiting for us with surprises! They brought us cans of Pocari
Sweat and egg tarts! It was a delicious snack and it came at a perfect time! We
all mentioned how nice KK is for bringing it to us. Bird rushed to our group
(apparent he left…) and said that the shop that is selling tofu pudding is
closing soon! He mentioned earlier that there is a tofu pudding that we should
try. We rushed over to the little shop that was the same direction to the
restaurant we went for lunch. Bird ordered 10 tofu puddings and we all couldn’t
eat one so Anson and Bird finished the 3 that remained after we all had our
share. The tofu pudding was interesting! It’s usually mixed with liquid sugar
to make it a sweet dessert. I thought it was a weird twist on tofu, but I
thought it was another great snack after our long day.
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