Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 24 - The Farm

We were getting bored when a servant brought in trays of food. We sat down and helped ourselves to meat filled buns and wu tao go and lor bak go, small sticky cakes made from wu tao  (taro root) and lor bak (giant white radish). Miguel and I tried to use our fingers on the cakes while Licia tut-tutted her disapproval and gave us another chopstick lesson. We had almost finished eating when Dr Zhang and Kongming joined us with the news that we were going to meet the Tiger Generals at Xinye the next day. 

 The conversation shifted to military strategy and eventually, Kongming noticing that we were bored, suggested that we might like to see the farm. We ran outside, through an octagonal gateway in a high wall, and onto a threshing floor where a farm worker was using a flail, consisted of two pieces of wood fastened end-to-end with a leather strap, to separate grain seeds from a pile of stalks. Several chickens hopped around pecking at the grain expertly avoiding the flail as it slammed into the stalks while a small boy tried to chase the chickens away. 

 We foolishly offered to help but quit after I narrowly missed decapitating myself and Licia nearly brained Miguel. So we decided to help the boy. Every time he herded few chickens into a corner, others escaped back to the grain, clucking indignantly. It looked like a game the chickens were enjoying but the boy was almost in tears. He was delighted when we all chased the chickens into their enclosure.

Nearby, two girls smirked at us as they used a hand-cranked fan to separated the grain from the chaff. The girls picked up the bowl of grain and tipped it into a wooden trough and called out, 'Yu Ging! Yu Ging!' 

 The boy jumped up onto a giant mallet pivoted like a teeter-totter and pounded the grains into flour by shifting his weight, alternately raised the head of the mallet and allowed it to fall onto the grain.

An old man had been watching us. His face was smooth and youthful but he was bald except for a long white beard and bushy black eyebrows that draggled down his cheeks like a misplaced moustache. He was cleaning a seed drill and gave us a demonstration of how the seeds fell from a box down through two tubes into parallel furrows scratched by two small plow blades. The seeds were thus buried in neat rows making weeding easier and reducing waste.

Yu Ging dragged us away to an enclosure where a female pig (sow) rooted around in a pile of Chinese giant white radish tops. He opened the gate and, dodging five lively piglets, teased her with a giant radish. She rolled on her back happily crunching the long white root as Yu Ging held up one of the piglets so we could all scratch its belly. After that, we followed Yu Ging to a long wooden trough that ran down into a creek. The trough was filled with a series of square wooden plates connected by wooden links that ran, like a giant bicycle chain, round a weird axle at the top of the trough. Yu Ging jumped up onto a set of wooden pedals on the axle and called for help. 

 'Come on,' Licia translated. 'This is our new chain pump. One of you, climb onto the other pedals.'