R IN A.I/China Northwest Power Play 2 FEBRUARY/ MARCH 1981 Volume VI I No.5 $1.50 No Advertising
Page 2 RAIN February/March 1981 & £ETTERS Dear RAIN: I've always valued Karl Hess as a utopian with one foot on the solid ground of reality. But my high esteem has been tarnished by his curious statement in the November RAIN that "You have to go to your local hippie to get anything done well. Who would· trust a short-haired auto mechanic?" Well, I do. My young, short-haired auto mechanic is a local product and he is an absolute jewel: personable, extremely bright, and completely trustworthy. Relatively cheap, too, compared to auto repairmen in nearby Syracuse. As for my hippie friends who used to work on my cars, one is now servicing Xerox machines, while another moved out to Idaho to enter the rent-a-tool business. I wonder about the experiences of other RAIN subscribers: are the hippie newcomers really more competent than the local old-timers? Sincerely, Michael Marien LaFayette, New York Dear RAINfolk, Thanks for the Dec. '80 RAIN, received this week. I was particularly interested in the piece about the University of Maine's woodstoves, which we had already read about in ASE. I've two comments on your piece: first, no prices were given; such a highly developed piece of engineering doesn't come cheap, I assume; second, it would help if you would adopt Soft Energy Notes' practice of using, or at least giving, the SI equivalents of "Imperial" (i.e. North American) physical units. Outside N. America and the British Empire, no one has even heard of a BTU; and in this country, after 15 years of metrication, the same goes for the youngest 25 percent; the next 25 percent, up to say my age, have forgotten what a BTU is, and the oldest 25 percent are past caring. No doubt every school student should know that a BTU is about the same as a Kilojoule, and that 100,000 BTU/hour is 29.4 kW, but they don't. Don't be fooled by the obscurantist twaddle you read in Co Evolution Quarterly; the world is nearly all metric, and so should you be. With best wishes for a solvent '81. Fraternally, Chris Hutton Squire Undercurrents London, England RAIN Writing this month's RAINDROPS is a bit like trying to clean the house after copy deadline ... I'm not sure where to begin. I read an old RAINDROPS that Lane deMoll had written when Steve Johnson was leaving the magazine in 1976. "He's taking a sabbatical," she'd said. Well, it's a few years later and I guess telling you that Steve's back is as good a way as any to start bringing you up to date. Steve and Nancy Cosper (formerly with Cascade magazine and the Cascadian Regional Library-CAREL) and Steve Rudman (formerly with the Grantsmanship Center in Washington, D.C., and the Portland Community Resource Center [PCRC]) have opened the RAIN Community Resource Center, blending PCRC's library on communities, neighborhood self-help and Portland organizations with our RAIN library. We told you a bit about that development back in November. These folks bring •the RAIN collective up to a full-time staff of seven and, I'm delighted to announce, we are all back on salaries! ! That amazing development is due in part to the support you've all given us, and we thank you very, very much (the day that two one hundred dollar bills came in the rnail was a real highlight), and in part from our -,'surrogate parent" the Northwest Area Found;ition (NWAF). When RAIN was first spinning off from Portland State University six years ago, the NWAF was there with the seed money and encouragement necessary. When we returned to them last spring with our "big vision" as we keep calling it, the Foundation and its Director, John Taylor, met our request for funding with a "challenge grant" of $25,000. The catch is that we have to match it. So far we've raised $12,500 of the match and have received half of the NWAF money to begin our new project. Journal of Appropriate Technology RAIN is a national information access journal making connections for people seeking more simple and satisfying lifestyles, working to make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, building a society that is durable, just and ecologically sound. RAIN STAFF: Laura Stuchinsky, Mark Roseland, Carlotta Collette, John Ferrell, Kevin Bell. Linnea Gilson, Graphics and Layout. RAIN, Journal of Appropriate Technology, is published 10 times yearly by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a non-profit corporation located at 2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, Oregon 97210, telephone 503/227-5110. Copyright© 1981 Rain Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. Typesetting: Irish Setter Printing: Times Litho Cover Photograph: Ancil Nance
That matching money came from the Dayton-Hudson/Mervyn Foundation and the Tucker Foundation in Portland. pescribing the project is a feat in itself. Simply stated, we hope to cull from the resources at RAIN (the people here, people we know with specific skills, our library, periodicals, resource files, constant flow of information, etc.) the kinds of data needed to make communities self-reliant. Then we plan to make that information as available as we possibly can, through a local newsletter, "Rainpapers " on various topics, skills banks, community task forces on key issues (one, the Economic Development Task Force, is already meeting and has over 30 groups involved), training workshops, etc. Needless to say, we'll have our hands full. On top of that we've received a large sub-contract with Oregon Appropriate Technology (OAT)· from the Oregon Department of Energy to administer this state's Appropriate Technology Small Grants Program. In the meantime .it occurs to me we've How to Solarize Your House: A Practical Guide to Design and Construction, by Thomas Scott Dean and Jay W. Hedden, 1980, 175 pp., $20.00 from: Charles Scribner's Sons 597 5th Ave. New York, NY10017 If you're seriously thinking of buildi-ng your own liquid-based active solar heating system, this book should be on your reading list. It includes extensive details on collector construction and system components, with an emphasis·on the points where quality control is important for an efficient system. The design section includes an excellent discus- • never introduced the whole magazine staff to ·you.Well, fyiark and I, you may remember, arrived from the East (everything's east of • Oregon) a year ago last October. I came from Minnesota where I'd been insulating attics, building solar greenhouses, and working with neighborhood groups on energy and food policies. Mark had been teaching social ecology at Wesleyan University and hanging out with various A. T. and community groups in New England. One day we were muttering to ourselves over boxes of books and magazines that only an archivist could make sense of RAIN's quantities of resources. Enter John Ferrell, formerly with , the National Archives! John worked with our steady stream of interns-Kiko Denzer, Karen Struening, Kiko again, Laura Stuchinsky-to make order out of the chaos and ' in his spare time (!) started writing and edit-· ing. · The whole concept of an intern program is disconcerting to me. Three months is just about enough time to really integrate someACCESS: ENERGY sion of piping design and pump sizing. However, it is also weak on several important points, particularly system sizing and controls. This book is best when read in conjunction with a book that has a strong emphasis on system design. -Gail Katz Architects and Engineers Guide to Energy Consero,ation in Existing Buildings, by the Federal Programs Office of Conservation and Solar Energy, 1980, 471 pp., $14.50 from: National Technical Information Service 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield, VA 22161 FIG. 1-5. Earth-protected house by Malcolm B. Wells. February/March 1981 RAIN Page 3 one into the magazine, and more importantly, into our lives, and then it's "back to ' school." We just need to keep one now and then, so we did. Laura ,finished her program at Beacon College in Boston and became a Rainiac like the rest of us. She's half outreach worker for the Resource Center, one third circulation, and one third writer. We know that makes more than one whole, but that's the way it goes. Kevin Bell is our current intern, on his second quarter here. we"'re trying to figure out how to keep him, too. The graphics and layout job ha~ been most bumpy. Jill went back east after more than a· year here, and left us il'l; the hands of Zonnie Bauer who was wonderful. So wonderful that she lasted one month before being whisked off to Marin County. Linnea Gilson came on in a miraculous last minute shuffle and has been pulling it together in the layout closet ever since. All of the pieces of the puzzle seem to have come tog~ther, at last!-Carlotta This book was written primarily for energy professionals considering conservation retrofits for institutional and commercial buildings, but some of the techniques are applicable to homes as well. It begins with methods for analyzing both how much energy a building uses and how different energy management techniques can affect that figure. The book also examines over 50 different energy conservation measures, ranging from changes in maintenance procedures to complete renovation of the heating system and building, with a clear sample analysis and nomograph for each option. This is a good reference text for an area of energy conservation that deserves a lot of attention. -Gail Katz From How to Solarize Your House
Page 4 RAIN February/March 1981 n ' f ·-- ~-__/ ·- - . ~ --· ~ ~ ., . - ,/: · - , ·~- ~ ·+;,- . "-·'... ;t,: • • '-',,.._s.,. , ) • :~- ----~ Fatmers in a Functioning Democracy The Populist Moment, by Lawrence Goodwyn, 1978, 349 pp., $5.50, from: Oxford University Press 200 Madison Ave. New York, NY10016 The Populist Movement occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century. Its roots were in farmers' efforts to break their economic subservience to banking interests. It bega:n in Texas with the Farmer's Alliance, spread through the South, West and Midwest, held 'national conferences eventually involving over 2 million people in 43 states in an independent political'party, and was broken up and defeated in 1896 by a combination of co-optation and chicanery from the corporate, political and financial sectors .• There are generally two sorts of book reviews: the ones which suggest you should or should not read a given book because it either does or does not measure up, and the reviews that essentially gut a book for you so that, read it or not, you get the good parts in your lap. Well, The Populist Moment is such a good, solid, important book that I feel compelled to both excerpt it extensively and still urge you to read it. But first, I want to comment on Mr. Goodwyn, because I like his style: I think he'd have made a good populist lecturer. His book is loaded with history. It's even academic. Yet he's written it with his arms waving and his voice raised (or lowered to a whisper of respect). He is clearly in awe of the populists, and riled with righteous anger that nowadays, no one seems to be quite so· courageous, quite so passionate, as to attempt to live "an authentic political life ... in a functioning democracy." So prepare yourself for a little come-uppance. Goodwyn uses history to crit1.que the present. He defines the context into which populism fit in the period from the 1870s to its denouement in 1896 and demonstrates that, from an agrarian perspective, the scenario has worsened. Given that grim indictment, he is determined to clearly describe both the processes of mass organizing as recognized and carried out by the populists, and the shortcomings which led to the movement's collapse. The sequential process of democratic movement building will be seen to involv'e four stages: (1) the creation of an autonomous institution, where new interpretations can materialize tht:it run ... -·· - -~-,~ counter to those of prevailing authority-"the movement forming;" (2) the creation of a tactical means to attract masses of people-"the movement recruiting"; (3) the achiev·ement of a heretofore culturally unsanctioned level of social analysis~ "the movement educating";'and (4) the creation of an institutional means whereby the new ideas, shared now by the rank and file of the mass movement, can be expressed in an autonomous political way-"the movement politicized." Towering over all other tasks is the rieed to find a way to overcome deeply ingrained patterns of deference permeating the entire social order. For this to happen, individual self-respect obviously must take life on a mass scale. "Individual self-respect" and "collective self-confidence" become for Goodwyn the hallmarks of the Populist Movement. It was first and most centrally a movement that imparted a sense of self-worth to individuals and provided them with the instruments of self-education about the world they lived in. The movement taught them to believe that they could perform specific political acts of self-determination. The Alliance demands seemed bold to many other Americans who had been intimidated as to their proper status in the society, and the same demands sounded downright presumptious to the cultural elite engaged in the process of intimidation. But to the men and women of the Agrarian movement ... it was all possible because America was a democratic society and people in a democracy had a right to do whatever they . had the ethical courage and self-respect to do. Such undisguised idealism, even romanticism, is rampant in this book, and not without Goodwyn's full endorsement. Older aspirations---adreams of achieving a civic culture grounded in generous social relations and in a c~lebration of the vitality of human cooperation and the diversity of human aspiration itselfhave come to seem so out of place in the twentieth-century societies of progress that the mere reritation of such longings, however authentic they have always been, now constituted a social embarrassment. The problem that will doubtless interest future historians is not • so much the presence in the twentieth-century, of mass political alienation, but the passivity with which the citizenry accepted that condition. It may well become known as the century of sophisticated deference. More than any other group in our history the populists were sue-
/ I cessful in rallying people to an .ilternative political movement, yet they ultimately failed. And why? On the one hand, they underestimated the opposition. Populists tried through democratic politics to bring the corporate state under popular control without fully anticipating the countertactics available to the nation's financial and industrial spokesmen. On the other hand, they failed to mobilize all of the potential support that existed among the rest of the poor downtrodden types in post-Civil War America. The farmer activists of the 19th century had no notion of how to organize the urban industrial poor. Labor didn't get its act together until the sit-down strikes of the 1930s. By that time over half of the small farms in America had been lost to corporate landowners. The agrarian masses were broken up. Another problem was that neither the agrarian reformers nor the labor organizers (nor for the most part modern activists) ever came to grips with their own white supremacisf attitudes. Some tried, but the involvement of blacks and other minorities was for the most pait token, and involved great ·risks to those who did become leaders. These were hard-learned lessons to a movement whose central issues were: 1. land ownership in America 2. the hierarchical nature of the nation's basic financial structure 3. the consuming threat that corporate centralization poses to_ the democratic heritage itself. Charles W. Macune, chief economist of the populists and editor of the Alliance national newspaper, .the National Economist, summed ul:' the goal and the obstacle in one sentence: "The people February/March 1981 RAIN Page 5 -, \ ·~ •. \ we seek to relie;e from the oppression of unjust conditions are the largest and most conservative class of citizens in this country." And so, they failed, and Goodwyn concludes: Today, the values and sheer power of corporate America pinch in the horizons of millions of obsequious corporate employees, tower over every American legislature, state and national, determine the modes and style of mass communications and mass education, fashion American foreign policy around the globe, and shape the rules of the American political process itself. Self-evidently, corporate values define modern American culture. • Goodwyn goads us, challenges us to rally using the model (successes and failures) of the Populist Movement. He redefines terms like "free" and "democratic" and makes terribly valid arguments for reassessing all of our activism. His singleminded focus on the virtues and frustrations of the Populist Movement and his attitude that no subsequent movement has replicated populist zeal, causes him to give short attention to the citizen struggles of our own time. This avoidance may anger some readers, but nonetheless his insights, analyses, and criticisms are very timely (to say the least). It took an amazing feat of dreaming and organizing to gather together a citizenry disconnected by distance and for all practical purposes disenfranchised, and instill in them the self-confidence to act outside the confines of the parties of "the fathers." To create a new party with enough allegiance to elect its members to office called for a major reorientation of the populace. The Populist Moment is really a prime_r. The lessons learned then should be built upon, not ig- • nored.-CC AGRARIAN ACCESS Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies, publication: Ways and Means, bimonthly, subs $10 individuals, $20 institutions, from: 1 abreast of progressive politics nationally, subscribe to this one. -CC Appetite whetted? You may want to follow up on this reading. Goodwyn, in "A Critical Essay on Authorities" at the back of the book, gives more than an annotated bibliography; really it's an opinionated bibliography. It includes the writing~ of the populists themselves, explorations of other economists and historians, and what he calls "points of entry" for ferreting out less accessible information such as some insights into tli.e role of women in populism. -CC 2000 Florida Ave. N.W. Washington, DC 20009 Goodwyn stresses repeatedly the importance of communication and a free press to the populist movement. For several years now the Conference has been functioning as a clearinghouse on progressive reform at the state and local levels in this country. We've accessed them often in RAIN. Their publications are always provocative, well researched and equally well organized. I've found their .inalysis of political and economic policies invaluable. Ways and Means is their bimonthly update and access journal. To keep Assisting Beginning Fanners: New Programs and Responses, 1980, 53 pp., $4.95 from: The Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies Lest all these other booklets just end up depressii:ig you, do read this one. Taking off from Ritchie's Three Part Program (see box) you'll get a feel for how we're doing in reversing the tide. Corporations are not omnipotent. Working together, farmers, laborers, all of us (the folks Reagan sees " over the counter all across America") can be formidable, too. -CC cont.--
Page 6 RAIN February/March 1981 Agrarian Access cont. Parity: An Americ~n Farm Program That Works, by Merle Hansen and Fred Stover, 1979, 21 pp., $1.00; U.S. Farm News, publication of the U.S. Farmer's Association, $5/yr. (monthly), U.S. Farmers Association, membership $10/ yr.; from: U.S. Farmers Association Box496 Hampton, IA 50441 Parity, even after.reading this monograph, still remains a confusing question. It is one thing to know that the dictionary calls it"An equivalence between farmers' current purchasing power and their purchasing power at a.selected base period, maintained by government support of agricultural commodity prices·at a level fixed by law . . . the price calculated to give the farmer a fair return in relation to things he must buy." It is another thing altogether to understand how parity as a federal loan program operates, and why 98% to 100% parity ends up costing taxpayers less than 60% parity, while effectively supporting small farms. Those numbers and others like them appear to make good arguments for the farmers' demand of 100% parity, and I must admit to supporting their demand ev~n though I still don't fully understand the program. I do understand the o.ther implications of our ''cheap food policy'' however. The most critical is its profitability to the giant food corporations at great cost to farmer and consumer alike. Merle Hansen offers some fine debate on this note for Reagan's "get big government off our backs" rhetoric. "It would be one thing to djsmantle and decentralize the Federal Government for the common good, but it is a totally different thing to give up in apathy, walk off, and leave it to , the tender mercy of corporate America.... We should be skeptical of those who carry on about the evils of 'big business.' Those who are afraid of government control but not corporate control. Those who can see government waste, but not corporate and Pentagon waste, and those who are afraid of government power but not corporate power." Merle and Fred write regularly for the U.S. Farm News.-CC The Los$ of Our Family Farms, by Mark Ritchie, 1979, 32 pp., $2.00 (bulk prices available) from: Loss of Farms 824 Shotwell San Francisco, CA 94110 Mark Ritchie has uncovered an ugly hornet's. nest. In 1962 a non-profit corporation, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), supported by "voluntary contributions from business and industry" and composed of "Pres.idents or Board Chairmen of corporations and Pr~sidents of universities," released a report titled "An Adaptive Program for Agriculture." (All quotes in this review except where noted are from this report.) This "business-academic partnership" has decided that the American Food Industry . was "using too many resources" and that "the movement of people from agriculture has not been fast enough." "If the farm labor force were to be . . . no more than two thirds as large as its present size ... the program would involve moving off the farm about two million·of the present farm labor force. . . ." Their suggestion for facilitating this transition?-"price supports for wheat, cotton, rice, feedgraii;is and related crop's ... be reduced immediately." I don't have to understand the whole program to know that that's below parity pricing they're talkin? Part One: Reversal of the corporation.'s primary strategy, the brea1dng of farmers' power through the enforc_ement of below-parity prices, through both national legislation and local efforts such as collective. bargaining, direct marketing, etc. Part Two: Establishment of policies and programs to reverse the trends created by almost 30 years of this corporate strategy, and to repair the damage that has been done, This would include • Anti-trust legislation and enforce- . ment • Soil conservation and re-building programs • Encouragement of less non-renewable energy dependent ecologically sound agriculturai practices • Programs to encourage new farmers to get back on the land • New taxation policies designed to about. Well, by 1974 the "farm labor force" had indeed been reduced by one third. It seems there was some crossover between CED people and the government when the policies were being developed. All of this makes a connection back to my review of Goodwyn's The Populist Moment. At the end of the CED report Ritchie notes, "They make a strong point that the possibility of 'a recurrence of agricultural instability' must be kept in mind so as to maintain 'an atmospheFe relatively free of th~ political pressures from farmers experienced in the past'. '' How to confront such power? Ritchie outlines a three-part political program (see box). -CC stop and reverse the preference given to Capital; and to encourage agricultural development consistent with the longterm needs of farmers, workers, and consumers. • Strong production control measures • Participation in international grai~ agreements. Part Three: Political programs which would anticipate the reaction of corporations to these new policies in ways that wo~ld attempt to discredit c;>r destroy them. For example: • Strict controls on food and land price increases to prevent corporations from forcing these up, and blaming it on parity policies • Anti-trust legislation in all sections of the food economy to prevent control of agriculture, through inputs and marketing. • From The Loss of Our Family Farms
Who's Squeezing the Consumer?, by Cathy Lerza and April Moore, 17 pp., $.75; Cheap Food for Whom?, by Cathy Lerza, 1979, 10 pp., $.50 (bulk rates on1 each available) from: National Family Farm Educational Project 918 F. Street N.W. 'Washington, DC 20Q04 Speaking of a "cheap food policy," these two small booklets ~larify just who's profiting when farmers earn less and consumers pay more at the store. Moreover they help'you . make co'nnections with people who are trying to turn things around. "Too often, consumers blame 'greedy' farmers for high food prices. Farmers, in turn, think consumers oppose their interests and are not willing to work with organized consumer groups. . . . Consumers and farmers together should determine whether or not the present food system is what we want." Both of these booklets are "rhust reads" for anyone trying to get a From Square Foot Gardening sense of how all of the pieces fit together; farmer/producers, agribusiness, foreign policy (i.e. the grain embargo and its effect on farmers), federal programs and you and me. -CC Agrarian Reform Guide, 1979, 24 pp., $.50 (bulk prices available), from: • Clergy and Laity Concerned • 198 ·Bro~dway New York, NY 10038 Newcomers to the study of international food policies and economics will find the articles in thi.s guide very eye-opening. Issues ranging from the Nestle's baby formula scandal in the Third World to institutional threats to the future of small family farms in America are introduced here. This pamphlet would make a very good study guide for church or community groups concerned about the po}itical choices that are linked with their grocery purchases. -CC , .. ~ I, • v, ti ... :, ~ :,~~pl ,, It l· I ~~, I, '~I" \I , , I , ,, ., (\\ • I -- .. -,...._, , I ,, ,/, ------ -~ \ ' ,1 !:::::. ' ·--=--=- I _y~ -- ·- · ·- February/March 1981 RAIN Page 7 "We shall not be moved"; The Historical Roots of Agrarian Reform, Symposium, Spring 1980, list of tapes and transcripts available from: Symposium Tapes 824 Shotwell San Francisco, CA 94110 Lawrence Goodwyn, Helen and Scott Nearing, and several others spoke at this symposium last spring. Rumor has it that the gathering was generally inspiring. Write for a complete list of the speakers and the tapes that are available. -CC GARDENING Getting the Most from Your Garden; by the editors of Organic Gardening, 1981, 482 pp., $14.95; Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew, 1981, 347 pp., $9.95; both from: Rodale Press Organic Park Emmaqs, PA 18049 Gardening seems to be getting more and more complicated, what with Biodynamic French Intensive, and now this new geometric system. It makes me wonder how we ever fed ourselves before we got educated. But I love gardening books almost as much as I love gardening, and these two are both welcome at the Rainhouse. I'd be hard pressed to say which I pref~r, but Michael Stusser (horticulturist at the Farallones Rural Center) called Getting the Most from Your Garden "the single most informative book on gardening I've seen yet." It definitely fills the need for a really thorough coverage of intensive gardening methods that still leaves you free to play around. I've found most ."intensive'' books so dogmatic that you'd swear nothing will grow if a radish breaks formation. Hopefully Rodale will publish a book that meets the real need for a solid reference 1 on farm scale intensive food production soon. Square Foot Gardening reminds me of the gardens I had as a kid, when mom would stake out a sunny corner of the family garden "just for me." Conceptually manageable gardens are a novel idea. Nearly everyone starts out with twice the garden they need or can care for. This book helps you figure out how much you can grow in one square foot, then helps you expand appropriately. I especially love the little gardens in the back of the book, gardens for win,ter, for indoors, for wheelchair access, etc. -CC •
Page 8 RAIN February/March 1981 What an opportunity! Last December, people from New Alchemy, the Farallones Institute, RAIN, and other A. T.-oriented organizations had the adventure ofa lifetime exploring rural south China. The tour, which was jointly sponsored by Farallones and by the Chinamerican Corporation (San Francisco), was unusual in that it allowed us to bypass the usual quick circuit of major' Chinese cities in favor of spending the majority of our time in a single county (Taishan). This proved to be a tremendous advantage, as it allowed • us to settle in, get to know local people, and develop a·real feel for how social, political, economic and technological elements work together in China at a commune and small town level. Our own complementary diversity proved to.be another great advantage: among the twenty-one people in ourgroup were specialists in plant propagation, legal systems, mudstove construction, communal social structures, architecture, solar technology, and horse farming. Persistent pursuit of information in all these areas (and more) made for mutual stimulation and a more rounded perspective for everyone. It also assured a case of fatigue for our China Travel Service guide! The artide which follows, conststing of my impressions of Taishan County, is meant as a general introduction to our China/. A .T. experience. Christopher Szecsey' s article elsewhere in this issue and articles from other tour participants in future issues.will elaborate on various facets of our adventure-an adventure most of us are determined to continue whenever we can work om a way to return! TAISHAN J.OURNAL by John Ferrell First Day Our China Travel Service mini-bus is running a harrowing, hornpounding course through a stretch of rural Guangdong Province. We have crossed the border into China from Macao and our exp 0 ected destination tonight is Taishan City, seat of Taishan County, · where we will be spending much of the next two weeks. At least that is our expected destination when we are not passing large trucks on blind curves; hopes dim perceptibly at such moments. I note how the road we are traveling narrows sharply at many of the bridges we are crossing. I also note the tendency of drivers approaching the bridges from opposite directions to ~peed up. "What traffic rule governs who crosses first?" I nervously ask our China Travel Service guide. "First come, first serve," he replies blandly. In our calmer moments, we stare out the windows of the minibus at a-succ~ssion of fascinatingly unfamiliar images, pointing wildly and snapping cameras randomly. It's all information overload at this point, and hard for us to even frame'a coherent question about what we are seeing. "The boat over there-yeah, on the left, in the pond by the little brick building-a privy? Is it for aquaculture? (The pond I mean)." What we are sure we are seeing is a landscape with virtually no natural features, meticulously plowed, planted, and weeded, like someone's prize backyard flower garden-but extending for miles in every direction. We see virtually no mechanical equipment in - operation. The term "labor intensive" is already taking.on a whole new meaning for us. • Morning in Taishan City It is 6: 00 and the sounds invading our hotel room window are pro.:. nounced enough to make alarm clocks superfluous: people's voices, the jingle of bicycle bells, the pounding rhythm of hundreds of jogging feet. I pull aside the mosquito net over my bed and rea:ch for my clothes, When I exit the hotel a few minutes later, it is still dark, but the outlines of the joggers trudging around the Working People's Lake are already dimly visible. As the sun rises, the silhouettes of people performing tai chi or doing calisthenics can be made out. One man is lifting weights (a concrete park bench serving as a weight) and two young women are preparing to play badminton without benefit of net. Exercisers everywhere: women and mt:;n, young and old. The whole town seems to be organized into a YMCA dawn patrol. • One by one, the exercisers mount their bicycles and head off for work or school. The·sights and sounds of fitness give way to the • sights, sounds and smells of Market Day. Every fifth day people stream into Taishan City from the countryside bringing their pigs, chickens, dogs, monkeys, produce, furniture, craft items, and a sometimes am~zing etcetera, and set up shop on the streets of the business district. It seems very odd indeed to be witnessing all of this bustling free enterprise in the Peoples Republic, but we are only beginning to understand the remarkable changes which have come to China since the death of Mao and the fall of the Gang of Four. Not only are we finding people in the countryside cultivating ·private (in addition to communal) plots and sel_ling their produce for a profit, but we are learning that a number of the small shops in town are now privately owned and operated.
Cottage Industry We are visiting a commune farm near Taishan City which has some of the best examples of small-scale industry we have seen so far. (Yesterday, at another commune, we encountered a rather bizarre one-room toilet-paper factory which utilizes waste paper and local plant materials to produce a product with more resemblance to thin cardboard than to the fluffy stuff we are used to). Our visit to the farm is clearly a.major event for the'peasants, and, as is usual in travels around Taishan, we are treated very graciously. We learn that in addition to raising fish and a variety of livestock, the 270 people at the farm also operate a sugar refinery, · milk dairy and bean curd factory. The dairy consists of a small milk vat, a boiler, and racks of bottles. It is necessary for us to scale down our memories of dairies as huge factories to realize that this is indeed all there is: two workers boilin&, bottling, and capping in one bedroom-sized space. The bean curd factory and sugar refinery are somewhat larger with perhaps ten workers each. Here again, equipment is basic, consisting of little more than heating vats supplied with steam from the farm's central coal boiler. As is the case at many other facilities around Taishan, the farm is processing local products for.local people. Since the 1950s, rnnstruction of a vast array of dams, dykes and irrigation canals has tur_ned a formerly drought- and famine-ridden county into a selfsufficient bread basket. Small- to medium-scale industry has expanded in volume of production by more than 42 times, and much of what is produced is consumed within a radius of fifty miles. It's an impressive transformation by any standard, and the well-fed people we are meeting (some of whom remember the famine of 1943 in which 150,000 county residents died) are clearly proud of their agriculture and industry. Still, you quickly detect a sense among these people of living in a rather backward section of a backward country, and ·an inability to comprehend how much we·, who have come from the country they refer to as "the Golden Mountain," are admiring what we see. "So tell ine," blurts out one of our China Travel Service guides one evening, "why have you decided to travel all this ~stance to spend three weeks in south China?" Chinese Television and the Gang of Four It's 8 pm and time for the Gang of Four Show. We drop our other evening activities (such as washing our clothes by hand) and gather around the hotel television.set. The half-hour trial summary which appears each evening always tops the regular programming (a familiar mix of news, sports, situation comedy, documentaries and game shows) for drama, pathos, and even humor. John Ferrell February/ March 1981 RAIN Page 9 We've tried to persuade our China Travel Service guides to sit in one evening and translate for u~ but they always excuse themselves on other business. There seems to be a real nervousness about it. People here will readily tell you they don't like the Gang of Four, and they speak of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 as a time of chaos, but beyond that, there is little political comment. Perhaps we are too much outsiders to merit their trust, and perhaps, too, there is a prudent recognition that after a series of political "about faces" in China during recent years things said in the present could be remembered as heresy in the future. On the screen we see Jiang Qing, Mao's widow, tambasting the testimony of fellow defendants while a panel of judges cautiqns her to control herself. For a person on trial for her life, she looks magnificently defiant. The camera pans frequently over the impassive faces of the several hundred trial observers. The physical resemblance to the Senate Watergate hearings is striking, with a jolly-looking white-Ii.aired judge playing the Sam Ervin role, and defendants who, by their looks and mannerisms, could as easily be John Mitchell or H.R. Haldeman. Suddenly, the trial segment is over and we move into the commercials. Commercials??? Yes, Chinese television now has ''messages of interest" for such products as wristwatches, truck batteries and electric teapots. Furthermore, the truck battery commercial is done to the strains of "Oh, Susannah." Needless to say, it's all very jarring, but not as jarring as what we will witness two weeks later, standing outdoors in a commune village with several dozen peasants before a small black and white TV: an American police rescue drama, complete with helicopters, fast cars, scuba gear and tall, blond heroes with voices dubbed in Chinese! At the Hospital We arrive at the Taishan tity Hospital and are given a tour of several wards. The facilities seem pre.tty dingy by the standards to which we are accustomed, but "sterile" is a word with more than one meaning, and what the place lacks in antiseptic qualities is at least partially compensated for by a relaxed homey atmosphere in sharp contrast to the starkness we associate with hospitals at home. Particularly interesting is the mixture of western and traditional remedies in the hospital treatment regimen. In addition to an acupuncture clinic, there is an herbal medicine department and nearby, there is a garden where a variety of plants are being grown for medicinal extracts. While walking through the garden, we ask about one particularly attractive flower and our tour guide launches into a cont.--
Page 10 RAIN February/March 1981 Taishan cont. description pf its supposed medical properties. "No, no," he is corrected by one of the gardeners, "That one's just there for us to look at." rich, fast-moving, highly mechanized place, full of tractors, airplanes, highways and supermarkets. I begin to sense the same ambivalent inferiority complex,we keep encountering in our discussions with factory and commune people: a quiet pride in Chinese social and technological advances since the Revolution coupled with the strong image of America as the real wizarc:l of progress. ' At the Normal School We come from the country where there are supermarkets, and the super:qiarkets are very tall: This is one of the images of America we are encountering as we tu.tor an evening English class at the Taishan Normal School. I find ~ys~lf being placed in the "Taishan dilemma':-the one , which will confront members of our tour group over and over again: how can we, as appropriate technologists, transcend burstereotypes as Americans and.communicate our vision of a different The dozen or so students in my re'ading group are 18-20 years old but seem much younger. They are immensely hospitable and their eagerness•to practice their skills on a live American is overwhelming. The reading passages in their text are roughly equivalent to a sixth o! seventh grade level in the U.S., and are on such subjects as the American moon space program, small-scale American agriculture, and the life of Abraham Lincoln. Although the materjal is, for the most part, scrupulously factual, my students ask me more than once if what they ~re reading is _true. ' sort of ideal future-one which does not include skys~rapers and supermarkets among its symbols? I have brought along a supply of RAIN brochures which include a reduced-size version of one of Diane Schatz's marvelous "ecotopia" posters. I hand out the brochures to my students and they are instantly enchanted (as people always a:ce) with the details of the poster. I begin to answer their barrage of questions and to explain, in the simplest English I can muster, how the drawings of bicycle trucks, community gardens, solar food driers, cottage industries, and recycling projects represe:r:it someone's vision of an ideal American community of the future·. The more I try to explain, the more.tongue-tied I become, and it finally dawns on me that what I am saying makes no sense to my listeners at all. Much of what they are seeing in the poster they I am curious what else these young people know about the U.S., so I begin to ask themquestions. None of them has heard of President Carter. Two or three hav~heard the name "Reagan." Only New York and California are familiar state names. Although their fascination with the idea of America is obvious, they have only vagu~, somewhat distorted, but essentially accurate visions of a have seen every day of their lives. I am ·showing them a picture of Taishan. DD ------ ----- CHINA. - - ------- ------- ----- - - Beijing Review, weekly, $13.50/yr. from: .Guoji Shudian P.O. Box399 Beijing, People's Republic of China This English language journal of news and comment looks and reads like a Chinese government version of Time or Newsweek. It provides the Western reader with an excellent means of viewing world events through Chinese eyes and of keeping current on the rapid changes taking place in China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Issues in recent months have carried reports on Chinese policy toward small-scale private enter- . prise; on the Chinese perception of U.S. and Soviet influences in Latin America; on plans being formulated for a Chinese edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica; and on ambitious programs to develol China's vast hydropower potential. 0 special note: the 10/27/ 80issue carries a sort of "China 2000 Report" which predicts that in twenty years "TV sets, washingmachines, refrigerators and other durable goods will be quite com,- mon in Chinese homes, while the diet,will • contain substantially larger amounts of meat, eggs, ,sugar and milk." If you're fascinated.by China,.and can't find the time to master Mandarin, the.Beij~ ing Review is for you. -JF uwatch ·out for the Foreign Guests!": China Encounters the West, by Orville Schell, 1981, 178 pp., $8.95 from: Pantheon Books • 201 East 50th St. New York, NY10022 citing life in the West. He tells of his con~ersations with Ling Mulan, a college student in her late twenties, bitter over having been sent to Mongolia during the <;::ultural Revolution to "help the peasants" and now skeptical of the superiority of socialism to capitalism when "the West is so advanced while we are still so backward." He also describes his visit to Kunming-Street in Dairen, "a veritable·free-fire zone for private enterprise" where peasants "hawk produce, seafood, and During'our travels through China, much of dry goods, pocketing the proceeds as if what we saw was puzzling, unexpected, or Chairman Mao, the Great Leap Forward,•the downright jarring. The television commer- _ Cultural Revolution, and the Gang of Four cials and billboards, the vigorous_free enter- had never existed." prise, and the uncritii:al fa~cination with all Why such radical and sudden changes folthings Western particularly struck us. Fortu- lowing upon years of socialist zeal? Schell · , nately, a pre-publication copy of "Watch believes that a great deal of Chinese energy Out for the Foreign Guests!" accompanied was sapped in maintaining the pose of revous on the trip and helped immeasurably in lutic:mary purity, and that fol many people it . our efforts to understand what yve were see- is a relief "to finally surrender, and ~t least ing. for now, let the devil take the hindmost." He Orville Schell, a noted sinologist,.fluent sees value in China's new attitudes and its .in Chinese, is perhaps best known for his openness to the outside world, but he also , earlier book In the People's Republic, which sees considerable danger. The headlong is based on impressions gathered during a plunge into modernization, Western style, . 1975 China trip. In "Wafch Out f,or the For- reminds him of Mao's warnings that techeign Guests!" he chronicles his mote recent nology mu'st develop on home soil in order to China experiences and ~xplores the meaning take·proper root. It also leads him to reflect of the social ancl political ferment which has on the 1867 prophecy of Wo Ren, Chinese takert place since the fall of th~ Gang of Four. ' Imperial Grand Secretary: "after several He paints an unf9rgettable picture of the •years, Western learning will end in nothing Peace Cafe in Peking,,where bored Chinese less'than·driving themultitude of Chinese young people in bell-bottomed pants eat hot people into allegiance with the barbarians." dogs and ice cr~am and dream of a more ex- - JF
Pedal Power in the People's Republic A sofa perched sideways on the back of a bike? We stared the first time we saw it, but we quickly learned that spectacular feats of cycle transport are everyday occurrences in China, where pedal power is frequently the only means available for moving furniture, firewood or farm animals. The bikes are clearly built to take it: one of our guides informed us that the standard two-wheeler (a sturdy one-speed in basic black) is designed to handle half-ton loads. People needing to carry more get special tires! The Chinese have other pedal-powered options to meet special transport needs. For the really big moving jobs, there is the tricycle truck with either front or rear-mounted bed, and for urban commuting there is the extensible two-wheeler which can be adjusted to fit a person of any size or collapsed into a neat Litle bundle for carrying into office or factory. What you don't see in China are lightweight ten-speed models with skinny tires. After all, just think of trying to carry your sofa on the back of one of those! -JF February/March 1981 RAIN Page 11 John in front of Rainhouse with his collapsible Chinese bike.
Page 12 RAIN February/March 1981 Integral Rural Village: by Christopher Szecsey Christopher is Director of International Programs at the Farallones Institute Rural Center in Occidental, California. His background as a Peace Corps volunteer and as a trainer of international development personnel preparing to go abroad accounts for his special interest in decentralized Chinese development strategies which can serve, wholly or partially, as models for projects in the Third World. The remarkable "Integral Rural Village" which he describes below is perhaps the best example of such a potential model that we witnessed in our China travels. -JF One of the most exciting things we saw during our travels through southern China was a village in Shinde County, Guangdong Province, where energy, food and fertilizer are being produced through interconnecting biological and renewable energy systems. The project, which is the joint effort of local residents and the Guangzhou (Canton) Institute of Energy Conversion, was begun in 1973 and utilizes communal and family-size biogas digesters as well as solar water heating equipment. Now serving 82 families, the project produces substantial quantities of electricity, a large portion of each family's cooking fuel, and a high-nutrient digester sludge to replace costly chemical fertilizer. Before the introduction of the biogas digesters, meeting local energy needs was difficult. Villagers travelled long distances to find wood to supplement the rice straw which provided their cooking fuel for only 4-6 months each year. The men cut the wood, and later in the day, their families hauled it home. It became apparent to the villagers that they had a serious problem, and some, who had heard about biogas, visited projects in other parts of the county. The villagers also told the county government of their situation, and government officials supported biogas as an appropriate response. The role of the villagers was to take responsibility for their own involvement in the process of development. In return, the county government allowed them to select one of themselves (it was stipulated that it be a person with a high school degree) to be trained by the county biogas office in the construction and majntenance of digesters. Mr. Mai, the person selected by the villagers, was given lectures and reading materials, then required to build at least one digester in order to be considered a qualified village technician.~Mai .proved to be particularly capable in biogas applications and through his contact with other technicians, county officials and the staff of the Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, he became receptive to ideas for further development of integrated food/waste/ energy systems. Eventually, because of his growing interest and because of his village's willingness to serve as a demonstration site, the Energy Institute proposed the construction of a communal digester f<:>r electrical generation and solar components for water heating. Interesting here is the development process which seems to be a realization of ideas and plans originating at both government and village levels. From the peasants comes the identification of a problem and an assessment of needs, and from the county and the EnIn a Chinese village we saw that the appropriateness of any technology is dependent on its having evolved from within the community ... ergy Institute comes the training, advice and support necessary to incorporate these ideas into a feasible development strategy. The components of the village project are the following: Digesters are supplied to families who apply for them and constructed under the guidance of the village technicians. Families load their digesters with pig manure, human excreta, and agricultural wastes. The gas produced supplies cooking fuel for a two-burner brick stove in the family living quarters. Sludge from the digester is carried to the fields, where it now replaces 20-30% of the chemical fertilizer formerly used. Solar water heaters are being installed to heat domestic water, and thereby substantially reduce the quantity of gas needed for cooking. A communal digester, consisting of five 30~38 cubic meter digestion chambers, is used to power a twelve-kilowatt generator. This generator provides for the evening lighting needs of Silkworm cocoons dried with waste heat from biogas electrical plant.
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