Forest Visit

About two weeks ago I was able to go on another reforestation forest visit. After several hours of meeting with professors at my new university and some interesting conversations, one of the professors invited me to lunch with his assistant, but not him. After a delicious and gut filling lunch of roast duck, several other meats, and sour yunnan red rose wine, the assistant informed me that we would be leaving for a field visit in 30min and I could return to the office with him if i wanted a short nap. This was all news to me and the nap was quite appealing as I already felt the food coma and red wine setting in.

I actually tried to talk him out of the field visit. I was not a good enough reason to have an impromptu field visit. After a little bit of attempted convincing I got the idea that the field visit might be a good excuse for the professor and assistant to take the afternoon off for a countryside drive. I didnt go for a nap, instead went back with one of the professors masters students to his dorm and chatted with him and his three roommates for a bit before leaving for the neighboring county.

Once we arrived in the county seat, we stopped at the forestry bureau office and picked up two guys to be our local tour guides. After another 30min of driving we stopped at the township forestry office for a short chat. I wasnt exactly prepared for this impromptu feild visit, but I did my best to ask lots of questions and take copious notes about the sloping land conversion program status in the area. I was unable to understand the chinese of the township forestry official or that of one of the county officials, but the professor was able to provide a translation to more standard chinese when needed. I say more standard because his chinese is very reflective of his home province of guizhou, but much more standard than the others.

After our short question and answer session we got back in the car and continued up the valley to see some actual reforestation/sloping land conversion sites and to ask more questions. The entire area was using bamboo for its reforestation purposes. The natural forest is not a bamboo forest, but instead a mixed decidious forest. The bamboo, however, is much more beneficial for the farmers. They get to be subsidized for 8 years while also get to start bamboo harvesting in year 3-5. Income from the sale of bamboo is rougly 3x what the farmers could make growing potatos or grain on the same land. When the program first began in 2000 farmers were very resistant to participation, but after a few years and apparent concrete earnings of the more bold farmers, everyone jumped on. Now even on flat land some farmers have planted bamboo without subsidy incentive. That being said there still are some sloping lands highly prone to erosion that remain unconverted either do to farmer resistance of relatively high subsidy adminstration costs for very small plots.

Sloping Land Conversion-SongMing, Yunnan