From Grits to Chopsticks

Over the recent May holiday, we traveled up into the part of Sichuan Province where a devastating earthquake occurred on 12-May-2008.  We stopped by to visit a memorial of the disaster which took the lives of over 85,000 people:

The village in the background of the picture has been rebuilt, and a new bridge was constructed further up the valley to replace this one that collapsed:

Following the earthquake, some friends of ours were involved in the construction of a relief center to assist injured and disabled people.  We were able to stay overnight there – here is one of the friendly residents:

We thought that it was interesting to see the blankets on the residents’ beds that were donated by the American Veterans Disabled for Life:

 Here are some of the residents and workers shelling peas for our lunch:

These were combined with other food from the center’s organic farm to make a nice meal:

We learned quite a bit from the leader of the organic farming initiative.  It really surprised us to see how their approach to raising pigs resulted in an odor-free environment:

In such a fastidious place, the resident pigs were interested in evaluating how bad the visitors smelled.  Click here to see -> PigSniff

Speaking of food, we stopped by a roadside market to pick up a few things.  This vegetable seller had a nice, welcoming smile:

We also talked with this proud owner of a smoked meat stand:

There were some interesting things hanging on his rack, and he was kind enough to leave the fur on a few of the heads to make it easier to differentiate the rats from the other creatures:

Although you might not like eating rats, at least he was honest about it, unlike some people (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1228960/rat-meat-sold-lamb-shanghai-police-say)