Part J - Teaching in China - from Jerilderie to Jiangsu

I don't live in Jerilderie, but it's a lovely sounding word, and along with Jindabine and Jan Juc, when I hear it, I know I'm home! 

Did you know Australia has its own Great Wall of China? It's a natural rock feature in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, and whilst not on the scale of the man-made Chinese one, it's pretty impressive. 

The photos here are of similar rock formations in a nearby area.

It's dry country, harsh and unforgiving. Plants and trees thrive in their own way, but they're not lush - they've adapted to the climate extremes - the interior of Australia isn't always hot, and nights can be below freezing. Spindly leaves cling to often bare branches. Grasses tend to be dry, unfriendly, spiky, and tussocks, well separated from each other so they don't compete for elusive moisture, struggle from sandy soil which is strewn with vicious prickles.

In stark contrast, the people in Jiangsu province live in a rich fertile area. The massive plane is generously graced with hundreds of flowing rivers, and there are also many natural and manmade lakes and reservoirs. The canals we passed had barges and boats chugging purposefully along and seemed to be transporting goods downstream. There were ducks, geese, and kilometer after kilometer of mixed crop production, huge areas undercover, many more open to the elements. We drove for around 5 hours and even when we left the freeway to turn off to Xuzhou the abundant patchwork crops were still growing prolifically.

The 102,600square km province supports a population of around 80 million people, roughly 4 times that of Australia. This is rich land, and while agriculture is of less importance now than in the past, it still produces a wide variety of crops including rice, wheat, cotton, oil seed, fruit, and lush vegetables. Efforts are being made to produce more organic foods and I often saw watermelon in stalls so fresh that the leaves on the stems hadn't wilted. 

There was a constant heat haze when we were there, which seemed to stretch for hundreds of kilometres, making distant mountains indistinct and gauzy. And everywhere, there's construction - I've never seen so many cranes!

How is it possible to explain to people whose whole life experience is of rich land, reliable rainfall and abundant crops, that the bulk of Australia's vast interior has nothing remotely resembling what they live with. It's their norm, what they've grown up with. Until you've driven day after day through the nothingness that is Australia's interior, it's hard to comprehend.

A dry riverbed would be un-understandable to many people. This feature is called a river on the signs and maps ... surely rivers have water in them ... don't they?

I'd asked my students what kinds of things they wanted to learn about Australia, and geography and history were high on the list. Thank goodness I had lots of photos and a good general knowledge to be able to discuss the things they were interested in, including the Great Artesian Basin, rainfall, floods, drought, population hubs and animals, as well as the British acquisition of the country and the decimation of aboriginal people with white settlement. They kept asking questions and were genuinely interested. 

Why on earth hadn’t I thought of taking a map of Australia, a world map, and a globe? A piece of chalk and uncertain drawing of the country and landmarks had to suffice! 

My previous posts about Teaching in China were our Arrival, Banquets, Culture and Comfort Foods, Driving, Exercise, Fabulous Food (revisited!), Games, History and Illness. The next one will be about Kenny!

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Climate Matters. D is for Desertification

Post for the letter D in the A-Z Blogging Challenge 2012. Link in the sidebar.
(Edited during the Australian bushfire disaster Jan 2020)

Desertification is when once fertile lands degrade and become extremely dry and unproductive. It is known to be caused by human activities like overgrazing as well as by climate change. It is a huge problem worldwide with many negative consequences.

Vegetation can stabilise sand dunes.

Deserts expand and contract independent of human activities, they can stabilise as vegetation takes root and expand as grasses, shrubs and trees are removed. Desertification has affected civilisations for eons and led to displacement of peoples as lands become uninhabitable, and unable to support human needs.

Dryland ecosystems are extremely fragile. As populations increase and more people need to be fed, communities in dryland areas place increasing demands on the land by overgrazing and over-cultivation – more people need to be fed from less arable land. The soil can become increasingly salty, leading to poorer crop yields – malnutrition is often the outcome. Stressed soil is less able to absorb water, which in turn leads to an increase in erosion, which makes the land even less useful for often already marginalised communities.

In many countries where meat consumption has traditionally been low, there has been a push to increase their meat consumption either by importing cattle or increasing the size of their own herds.
Cattle trample fragile grasslands and the lack of vegetation leads to erosion and further loss of topsoil when there is rain. Cattle also muddy and foul precious drinking water as fencing in many developing nations is often inadequate.

When grasses are inadequate to feed the cattle, grain intended for human consumption is fed to the cattle which represent the families wealth. Land which wasn’t particularly productive at the best of times is degraded even further, leading to subsistence lifestyles or displacement – people move to cities hoping to find work which is increasingly scarce.

Cattle and other ruminants also emit a huge amount of methane (ie they fart) which contributes substantially to the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. It’s estimated that cattle emit similar levels of greenhouse gasses as does industry.

Even in wealthy countries like Australia, there are problems with salinity and erosion due to overgrazing and inappropriate farming methods in the past.

We know what the problems are, we know how to address them. Will we?

Splitting paddocks into small sizes and using large mobs of cattle grazing on rotation, Mr Le Feuvre is grazing pasture more intensively while giving it longer to rest, increasing carrying capacity.

The problems in developing countries are even greater due to lack of political interest in marginalised groups and the scale of the problem.

Last year I wrote about Danger, Depression and Doctors for D in my theme of workplace bullying. Here.
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The A-Z blogging challenge is coming!

The A-Z Blogging Challenge: is a fun month of blogging and blog hopping and comes with a huge amount of camaraderie and lashings of support from the amazing organisers.

The idea is that during April, you link up with a thousand or more other bloggers to post each day of the month (except Sundays) starting with A on the 1st and working through the alphabet to Z on the 30th.

It was so good that I'm diving in again in 2012 even though I was blogged out by the time I got to Z in 2011!

You can see some of the things people blogged about this year towards the end of this post, and whilst you don't need a theme, it works for me and provides a good structure. Last time,  I really wanted to blog about climate change. But it was too hard, too complex, and to be honest, too darn depressing. But the idea has been playing on my mind all year, niggling and asking for my attention.

Even though I don't want to spend months researching climate related issues and immersing myself in the facts and figures, if I'm going to live according to my core values it's something I'll choose do.

Core Values:

• one of my vital core values is to connect with and spend time in the natural environment. I'd like future generations to have the opportunity to enjoy it as I do. 
• another is to be part of a community, to connect with, and be part of something bigger than my own little space in the world. It'd be great to connect with others doing their bit to make a difference. 
• a third core value is to do with education and personal development. I like to extend myself. I enjoy being educated, informing, sharing and trying to explain concepts clearly

To live comfortably with myself, I'll embrace my values and move in a direction where I act on them, even though it may be difficult. I'll try to ignore my inner demons of "Nothing's going to change", "I'm setting myself up for disappointment because no-one's interested anyway" and "Who do you think you are? You're getting too big for your boots if you think you can make a difference".

ACT: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
To help me through, I'll apply the principles of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and mindfulness meditation and make space for the feelings of anxiety and self-doubt, find room for my demons and breathe deeply into any discomfort. (Information on ACT here.)

Preparation is the key!
Rather than leaving the preparation to the last minute (silly me) like last year, when I blogged about Workplace Bullying (list of areas I covered here ), I've been thinking ahead, mulling over how to present the whole depressing schemozzle so it’s not a major turn off.

Pilfered from Burrowers, Books and Balderdash here.

But, first, I needed to drag myself out of the chasm of despair and fear that envelops me when I think about climate change and the destruction of our eco-systems. So I took some time off to relax, be inspired, blow away the cobwebs and re-energise. And it was fun!

Once upon a time, this was the seabed.
The track is at the top of a range of hills in Mutawintji National Park NSW

 After rain, the dry river bed becomes part of a river system
extending for many kilometres
Mutawintji National Park NSW.

North west NSW. 

Menindie Lakes

Click here to join the A-Z blogging challenge in 2012 with Arlee Bird and his great band of helpers.

Themes
It'd be great if you join me and the other participants who'll be blogging from A-Z in April. Not all the topics are heavy! Participants cover everything from gaming, film, books, writing, photography, painting, gardening, birds, grammar, haiku, travel, art, artists, anime, stamps, science, the solar system, old postcards, craft and everything in between. You'll meet witty, wise, poetic experienced bloggers as well as people who started blogging purely to join the fun of the challenge. It's simply amazing!

I'd like some encouraging company! I'd been feeling insignificant and scared when I allowed myself to think about climate change and environmental damage in the privacy of my head. It was only when I made veiled comments to others, including my doctor, that conversations opened up and I realised I'm not alone in with the continual sense of fear and doom. My doctor commented that he is treating more people for depression than ever before, and suspected that isolation and fear about the future may be part of the cause.

Click on the ENGAHC button at the top for more information about my theme. Please 'follow' if the topic is something you're interested in, or can contribute to. I'd like you to share your insights, stories and comments.

Do you have something you'd like to blog about?
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Ocean or desert?

Have you ever been involved in one of those group personality events? The kind where the facilitator asks an either/or question, and you are directed to the corner of the room designated for people who have chosen the particular answer. The ones I've been involved in were meant to help you get to know yourself, but they haven't been very effective for me. They seem rather pointless as in Real Life, we often have the option of a "both" scenario, and possibly even a "neither".

The one I clearly remember is "Would you choose the ocean or desert?" - I was unable to make a decision 30 years ago, and I am unable to choose now. Maybe it shows an unclear mind, but I prefer to think that I would, at times, be perfectly happy with either. But it's more likely that I need both - depending on the circucmstances.

The times I crave being near the desert are when I am completely disillusioned with politics (the at work kind as well as the governmental kind). When the world seems to have gone completely haywire and mad and be totally senseless and unreliable. That's when I say, only half joking: "It's time to go live in the desert". The wide open space, the huge sky, the extremes in temperature night to day, the cleanness and scarcity of evident life, the relative silence - bliss. I never need the ocean at times like this.

But walking beside the crashing ocean, being whipped by the salt laden wind, overdosing on ozone (is that possible?) ahh, that is so energising and satisfying. It never ceases to delight me that in the instant of dunking beneath the waves, most harrowing experiences are washed away, even if only temporarily, leaving you feeling cleansed and revived. It's pretty neat that such a simple and inexpensive pass-time can be so therapeutic. (I wonder if research has been done into sea swimming as being beneficial for mild cases of depression?)

So, ocean or desert? I choose both.

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