A country road and water buffalo

 We conclude these pictures from around the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology with scenes from two walks we took, one down a little road in the village and the other hunting for the elusive water buffalo.

Our first walk had no specific purpose other than to see what the village was like. We began by walking a couple blocks down its main street (above) and then turning right at the first road shown here (just beyond the white sign).

This view looks backward toward the main road from the right-hand road. On the right, you see a good-sized fish pond. The main reason I took this photo, though, was to show once more how all available land is made to workbetween the road and the pond, there are no less than three beds of vegetables. Although it is hard to see here, the bank of the pond was planted, too.

What should we encounter along the little road but a wagonload of ducks on their way to a rendezvous with...well, maybe I shouldn't say. Destiny, maybe? Kelly the near-vegetarian immediately began sympathizing with the ducks, for she knew what awaited them. Apparently when they weigh eight pounds, they are considered ready for the plate.

Gao immediately showed which side of the philosophical divide he came down on by grabbing one of the ducks by the neck and lifting it high into the air for Kelly to see. (Their feet were bound.) Kelly responded with the appropriate words and noises.

The duck-chauffeur got a bang out of all this and continued down the road smiling.

Then a bit later, we stumbled across something strange making its way across the road. Gao immediately reached down and grabbed it, holding it up near Kelly's face so that she could have a good look. Her response gave me my first Fuji moment of the trip. So how did Gao respond? He flung the crawfish through the air into a nearby pond. No word on how the crawfish felt about its detour.

    In our travels around the Nanjing area, we would occasionally see a water buffalo working in the paddies, but we never got close enough to photograph any. Kelly really wanted a shot of one, though. She walked around the village a couple afternoons looking for one, but without success. It came down to Saturday morning, the day we were to leave. Gao volunteered to help. So we three set out in search of the elusive water buffalo. And they were indeed elusive. We trekked around all sorts of paddies, through people's back yards, and generally all over the place trying to find one. Every time we met a villager in one of these out-of-the-way places, Gao would ask where the water buffalo were. Eventually, we learned that the village collectively had only one, and that it might well be working that morning. Finally in about the last place we could possibly look, we found one in a paddy that was just about finished being prepared (above). The man's friend on the bank proudly announced to us that the man in the paddy was 80 years old and still able to work a buffalo. Suitably impressed, we enquired as to whether we could photograph the man. He not only agreed, but put the animal through its paces for us, running him down to the end of the paddy and back. This gave us an ideal chance to photograph a water buffalo in action. In the photo above, the man is just getting the beast going.

Now they are underway toward the far end of the paddy.

Now man and beast have taken the big turn at the other end are passing by in a sort of review, not unlike soldiers in a parade except there was a lot more mud here. As you can see, the man had the water buffalo moving in high gear for us.

    Here is a closer view of man and buffalo. Basically, the animal is dragging a big, heavy board that smoothes out the mud. Don't feel too sorry for the water buffalo, though, because they like to hang around in the mud. Furthermore, they work only during planting season. This one was just about to go on summer vacation because this was just about the last field to be planted. When the buffalo is done working, the farmer brings him back to his yard and lets him rest until the next planting season. The animal was so big that it didn't have to work very hard to pull the leveling board.

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