The King of Artificial Pig Insemination

THIS IS REALLY LONG, I'M SORRY, BUT IT IS WORTH IT
I'm sorry for those of you who were offended by the title of this post--you'll probably even be more offended by the length, but I'm not terribly worried about sensibilities right now, especially given the topic of what I'm about to say. Believe it or not, a post with such a title, can be considered (at least by foolish people like me) to be incredibly important.
The first side note of this weekend, is that I have now officially been to the tropics, having traveled as far south as latitude 23.37 which is just below the Tropic of Cancer (23.5). I ventured out into the more rural portions (农村--nongcun) of Yunnan accompanied by some very interesting people. Indeed, one of these people was the reason for this trip. Enter the King of Artificial Pig Insemination, Howard (I would include his last name but never learned it). Howard is a large man is his mid fifties, who looks like your stereotypical farmer from Wisconsin. This is because Howard is your stereotypical farmer from Wisconsin, or at least was until a few years ago. It is one of his accomplishments, which he will proudly tell you of, that he is responsible for the births of around 100 million pigs and 12 million calves. I won't go into the nitty-gritty of his business, in order to save your eyes the unpleasant details which I learned from him over dinner, but I feel I should give some background. He makes what he calls a "buffer." This term of course is not what you would call scandalous--it should be. He explained it this way: if you have a sow in Beijing which you really think is a good sow, and I have a boar in Kunming which is really a good boar and you decide that this boar is good enough for your good sow, you say "That boar...That's the boar for me," well then you can't simply fly your sow down to Kunming to have a whole passel of little piglets which would of course be the best, nor can you fly them back. Solution? Howard's "buffer": a solution which guarantees that everything important will make it up to your sow in order to produce the desired results, in this case: a whole passel of really good piglets.
However, there is more to Howard than his "buffer," much more (he's about 6'5" and over 300 pounds). Being from Wisconsin, he speaks with a very heavy Minnesotan accent (goatta be supportive, eh?), but no one should be judged by their accent, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Howard is also a man I respect more than most. Without the aid of any other philanthropies or even people, he is building schools in the poorer portions of Yunnan's south. This in and of itself, while being amazing, is not something which would necessarily qualify Howard for my respect, however there is more to Howard.
As he told me, he had been working on his artificial pig insemination business for twenty-five years in the states (particularly in Wisconsin) without ever taking a vacation. One day, he apparently decided that this whole no vacation policy had some defects. In short he decided to take a vacation. His expressed his methodology for choosing a destination in this manner (read with half french, half hick, half Minnesotan accent): "Well, I was looking for a place to go and really didn't know since I haven't been out of the States much, but I got an Atlas, you know, and I found this place that started with an "X" and had lots of letters, so I said, that's the place for me." The town Howard found was Xixuanbanna, a tropical resort town in southern Yunnan. Apparently it was a good choice.
He planned a vacation for two weeks, and by the end of the first week, with the aid of his tour guide, had planned to build a school in the countryside. Enter Tony: Tony is a Yunnan native who happened to know some English and was working as a tour guide at the time Howard came to China. Tony, for some reason I do not know, went from being Howard's tour guide to his liaison and partner in building the schools.
For all of this, I respect Howard, but even more I respect him for his understanding of reality. He does what he's doing, and doesn't make any big deal of it (unless he's trying to get someone to help him out). He was genuine about all he did. What there was there was. Perhaps it was his appearance which disarmed me, or his accent, but he came across as not caring in the slightest whether people though him good for doing this, not caring whether people noticed he was doing anything at all. In everything, he came across as simply wanting people to notice the villagers. I don't know how I would act if I were single-handedly helping entire villages of people, but it would probably involve a dose of pride. Not so for Howard.

Having introduced these two people, this brings us back to my weekend trip. They were going to visit one of the schools Howard is helping to build, and invited our program to accompany them. They warned us at the outset that it would not be an outing or any sort of enjoyable experience. While the cities in China may appear to be developed and not have many poor beyond any other city, the countryside of China is in desperation.
After five hours in a bus on the freeway, we spent the night in Jianshui which is a tourist-type city in the south of Yunnan. The next morning we headed out on something akin to the forest service roads back in Washington for another two or three hours, passing through the various levels of Chinese development and poverty. Essentially, we started at 7:30 am in a first world city, and ended up by 10:00 am in the third world.
The villages we visited were of the Miao minority which are also widely found in Vietnam and have a huge population in the United States (they're called the Hmung and live near Michigan). These villagers had, a little before the Communist Revolution, been driven into inhospitable lands by their opposition to the Qing dynasty. By inhospitable, I mean they cannot grow anything worthwhile. The land is almost devoid of water, over-populated by their forced migration, and incredibly remote. Currently the Chinese government is debating whether to simply abandon all efforts to aid these people and let the problem go away (they all die) or to bring them into the cities (difficult because these minorities do not speak any Chinese). Helping the people where they are is not an option, as far as the government sees it. The situation is un-sustainable, and it seems, no matter how much money is thrown at it, it will only get worse.
Currently the Miao people are growing onions, one of the few crops the land will support, but onions are not what you might call a cash crop, and these people barely survive. It is considered doing well if you can make 1200 yuan ($250) a year for a whole family. Out of this they must return some to keep their crops going the next year, and they also have to feed and clothes themselves. Saying their life is hard is a waste of time.
Medical care is non-existent in these villages as they are too remote and anyone with the education of a doctor is smart enough to go no where near these villages. The children go barefoot, all have worms, fungal infections on their skin, various other diseases and their parents are surprised by their survival. I saw one little girl (no more than two or three) who was floundering in her crib--completely covered in flies. I learned through the broken Chinese of her grandmother that this child had had some fever which gave her brain damage, and so they were waiting for her to die. I do not know what else to say, but I can't simply stop.
They have no sanitation, and since the water in the area is severely limited, they drink out of their sewer. I mean this literally. There is only a pond to service three villages (about 2000 people) and since this pond is the lowest place in the area, everything drains there. The insecticides they use in order to compete with produce from wealthier areas, the sewer and runoff--all of this ends up in the water they drink. I am surprised that they can survive at all. The situation sucks.
Because they cannot speak putonghua (Chinese) they are essentially doomed to continue this existence. It is impossible for them to go to the city even to wash dishes or collect trash, since the most basic elements of life in a Chinese city, inevitably involves speaking Chinese. If ever the word doomed came into play, it is in this situation.

And so we have the King of Artificial Pig Insemination. He, on his first vacation in twenty-five years, happened to learn a little of this situation. Most people would have tried to give some money to a charity already in place or petitioned somebody to do something. But there are no charities in place, and petitioning often is just another excuse for returning to a comfortable life without too much guilt. Howard did something which I do not know whether I would have had the courage to do: he decided to help, stopped most things which were going on in his life and actually did help. On that first trip he decided that he would build a school, that same year he returned, started and actually completed a school (mostly with his own funds). He hopes that if the children of these villages can at least learn to speak Chinese they will be able to break their doom.
But now comes the really convicting part, at least for me. Howard is not an especially rich man. He gave around $15,000 to build the first school and supports about 70 students who graduate from it with scholarships so they can attend highschool and college ($125/year per student for this first, $300/year per student in the second case). These numbers shocked me. They are so low, they are very real numbers which any middle class person in America with a fair bit of tightening the belt, could come up with--they are less than one semester of my own tuition. I thought about that one for a very long time.
Howard did not think though that one school was enough, being a smart enough guy to realize that this is no isolated problem in China. So he returned the next year to stay for two months, and a year later moved to Kunming for good. Luckily his business is such that it can be moved from Wisconsin to China without too much difficulty. Everyone has a pig "which is the pig for me." He has built two schools now and has almost completed the third (the one which we were visiting in the Miao villages). Tony has been his go-between to the government at all levels and the villagers themselves, he meets twice a year with every student (as well as their family) who receives a scholarship from Howard, and is generally helpful in a million other ways. I was shocked yet again when I found out that Tony is not paid. He still holds down his tour guide/interpreter job in Kunming. Humbling.

Howard and Tony, building schools because they decided they couldn't fool themselves anymore by giving vague funds to major philanthropies. I can tell you it was one of the weirdest feelings I've ever had, walking into these villages for no more than an afternoon to gawk, giving away candy (Tony suggested we do this). Many of the kids in my program complained in hush whispers about how horribly patronizing this was, or how stupid it was that we came here for a day to gawk and then walked away. But then again, no one stopped them from staying. And frankly, I don't think any one of us had the right to speak, much less question anything Howard and Tony were doing. At least they weren't so paralyzed by political correctness (which in this case is a second name for cowardice) to ignore the problems they saw. While driving into a village on a bright green bus, hopping off and giving candy to the children may be patronizing, I really don't think the children gave a flying rat's hind-end whether it was patronizing. Candy is candy, world-wide.
I won't deny I felt pretty miserable, but since I'm still too much of a coward to stay in the village and help, too much of a coward to do what Howard is doing, I'm not going to complain about any feelings I have. I mean sure, I could say that we shouldn't have gone to these villages, that it was something rude to traipse around their homes, but most of this doesn't mean anything when I think of the little girl I saw in the crib.
I have much more to say, but won't right now. There was another experience with Howard which may have disturbed me more than the villages. Whatever the case, I'm glad I went and I ask everyone of you to remind me of this if you ever hear me complain about anything again.
Phil.