National Geopark
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

I shot this sign mainly because it indicates this is Kongtong Shan

National Geopark: an interesting way to make sure such an interesting

piece of history is preserved and valued, without resorting to making

a national park of a Daoist sacred mountain as such. :-0

Flood Relief in Pingnan County
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Massive floods hit the eastern section of Guangxi in late June. Even

in a country and a region that has known periodic flooding since

prehistory, these floods seem to have stood out in the severity of the

damage to houses and loss of property. Through our work in Nanning,

we’ve developed a pretty strong working relationship with the Public

Health Bureau of Guangxi, and they asked if there was anything we

could do to help the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the

floods. After an initial exploratory trip on which some basic supplies

were delivered, we decided to focus our efforts on one county that

contained small villages in which thousands of families had completely

lost their homes and just about everything they couldn’t carry quickly

as the evacuated in the face of the rising waters.

I had the good fortune to spend a few days helping with the relief

effort, and the next several shots will show some of our work:

distributions in villages on two different days, as well as me and

other colleagues unloading wheelbarrows and then working to assemble

them.

This first shot was taken just as we and our truck of supplies had

arrived at the roadside up above the small village where we did the

first distribution I was part of. You can see how beautiful the

countryside is!

Small Village Relief
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

One distribution I helped with was to a small village 30 minutes to an

hours’ walk (depending where in the village you lived) away from the

road, up and down via a small dirt path over hills and past rice

paddies and vegetable fields. The area is absolutely lovely — but my

American self spent some time wondering what it must be like living

here, and how, for instance, even the bricks and mortar to build the

houses get delivered — walking along the path as shown just below,

one man wheeling the barrow full of relief supplies we’ve just given

him.

Here you see the barrows packed and waiting for the folks to pick them

up; in the next shots you’ll see people coming up the path to the road

to get them, and the one man and his son taking them home.

Kids at Home
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

This house was in the cluster closer to the road (perhaps only 15

minutes along the path). We wanted to see some of the destruction in

this village, and we needed to let folks know we were there with the

wheelbarrows and supplies, so we walked on down. Everywhere we went,

the kids were very curious and not too shy, so these kids posed. In

fact, once I started taking pictures every kid seemed to want in on

the action. These guys are posing in front of their home, and after

this you’ll see a few more of kids just hanging around watching us

work.

Why We Were There
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

I like the contrast of dark and light in this shot – you’re looking

from an alleyway past some still-standing houses, into a zone where a

few houses were all destroyed by the floods. This is close to the

school that served as our staging and storage area for the project.

Later on, you’ll see a few more shots of houses destroyed in Tonghe

Township, which is the administrative center for the towns and

villages we worked with.

River Sunset
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

The rivers bring floods but of course they also bring water for all

the necessities of life, and can add a good deal of beauty to the

landscape. Though the team worked long and hard days on this

distribution, there was usually time (even if only in the truck coming

home) to appreciate the beauty.

Following are another shot of a river sunset, then one of the guys who

worked assembling the wheelbarrows, and unloading with me. This was

supposed to show up later in a cluster on the wheelbarrows, but it got

rejected so I’m re-posting it…and this process is too time-consuming

for me to delete and repost everything in between. 🙂

After that you’ll see one of a Miao house (the Miao are one of

the ethnic minorities that live in Guangxi, with different language

and customs from the Han Chinese — they’re not strongly represented

in this area, but apparently this house serves as a restaurant), and

one of kids playing early-morning badminton at the compound where we

were housed for the duration of the project. The project lasted

slightly more than two weeks, serving something like 12 villages and

towns.