Agriculture and Food Procurement in Moon-toad River West Village

It is harvest season for rice in Willow city. There have been many people drying their rice out on the road for the past month, I guess the rice ripened a little bit slower in our village.The first picture is of an old farmer who was drying his rice on the road outside my house before hulling it. Most people farming in this area are quite old like him. he lays his rice out on the pavement and then sweeps it with a broom until it is evenly spread at which point it is raked to ensure proper drying. I wonder if the sand raking in Japanese gardens wasn't inspired by raking the rice while drying it. I wonder if any readers might have any evidence to prove or disprove this thesis either way?

This is a man in a boat in a fashionable pink hat. The boats here are of a sort I have never seen before. The hull is entirely cast out of concrete. All the boats here are like this except for the dragon boats which are still made out of wood. Dragon boats would probably be concrete too if the weight didn't slow them down so much. I bet a concrete boat is hard work to paddle or pole around.

My uncle in law is the proud owner of a fish zapper. This is a regular net mounted on a bamboo pole with a few hundred feet of electric wire that is plugged into a regular household outlet. Then the net is lowered into the river and the fish float up to the surface where they can be fished out with the electric net. I told my mother in law I thought this practice was stupid and dangerous. She said there was someone who lived in her parents village who was zapping fish while standing in the water and died. I'm not sure if he was actually the one doing the zapping or if he was just an unlucky swimmer who happened to float up with the fish. Maybe he jumped in to grab the fish as they floated up to the surface.

I was wondering if putting a live wire into a body of water wouldn't waste a lot of current and run up your electric bill, or would it be just like running a normal electrical appliance. If anyone has any electrical knowledge pertinent to this topic, please leave a comment.

11/15/07 Since 11/08/07, the man pictured above raking out his rice had a blood vessel burst and is now laying in a hospital. He borrowed 30,000 chinese yuan for his operation and it didn't go well. He can now no longer walk or talk. He had no wife or sons and so his brothers took him to the hospital. He had cultivated 4 mu of rice all by himself this year. 6 mu is one acre. He also raised chickens to sell the eggs. We can all hope that he will get better, but its not looking good. He wouldn't take anyones advice to go to a hospital in Wenzhou for his operation. He was determined to have it done at home in Liushi.