We met in the Gloria Hotel Lobby at 8:30 AM and took a bus for a one hour trip into the countryside. The guide with us indicated that there was a huge contrast between the wealth of the city dwellers and the country folk. We drove from the city of Nanchang to the Luo Tian village in the An Yi country (Jiangxi province). The village is in the heart of the rice growing region of China. She wasn't kidding about the disparity between city life and that in the country. However, that does appear to be changing, because the price of produce has been raised by the Chinese government, and a few wise farmers are doing better economically. In fact, some are actually getting rich, and they are building homes in the country much larger than the apartments city dwellers have.

But prosperity has not yet reached the small village of Luo Tian.

It is a very interesting place to visit, but it is also difficult to understand how the villagers can survive there. Their life circumstance makes us think about how fortunate we are to live in America. The people here are obviously hardworking and also surprisingly receptive to the sudden swarm of American tourists taking their picture.

As we walked around the village, many of the village grandmothers came out to take a look at the babies we were carrying with us, and they were very liberal with their corrections about covering the babies, but they are also very inquisitive and complimentary, too. Very genuinely nice people in the Luo Tian village!

The village is a rice growing community. All around the village are rice fields flooded with water and the fields have farmers working in them. The primary source of earth moving power here is the oxen and the farmers themselves. No evidence of heavy equipment here to do the dirty work.

Once through the village on the first leg, we stopped near a large tree to take additional pictures. The tree was likely 10 feet wide at the base, but we are not sure how old that would be. This seemed to be the logical place to take more pictures, so being tourists, that is exactly what we did. Shirley and I posed for one picture.

The entire group of us that got babies from the Social Welfare Institute of Yifeng County posed for this group shot. Boy do we look like outsiders in this village.

So, after about another twenty minutes of stomping around the town, we got back on our bus and took the one hour (very bumpy) ride back into the city. Overall, I think we will remember the friendliness of the Chinese people in this town as the thing to come away with.

Tomorrow, I think we will try to repack our suitcases for the trip Friday to Guangzhou. It might be a boring journal update folks - sorry!