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Volunteering as a Teacher in a rural Chinese elementary School

1/6/2014

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(Article originally published on Dalibar)

At the end of September a group of seven students from 
Princeton University’s China Bridge Year Program arrived in the remote village of Bangdong, perched on the slopes of the Upper Mekong River (澜沧江) valley in Lincang Prefecture in China’s southwestern Yunnan province.

Participants in the China Bridge Year Program are Princeton undergraduates who have deferred their first year of courses at the Princeton campus in order to experience China firsthand and get intensive Mandarin exposure by living with local families in Yunnan’s capital city, Kunming. The students also take part in additional shorter home-stays and service projects in rural areas of Yunnan.

Dali Bar Co-Founder Colin Flahive and Village Progress organized the students’ homestay and service project in Bangdong through contacts made from earlier work with village schools and health officials in the area.

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A Tale of Two Stoves

12/15/2011

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Zhenglong Gasifying Stove
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Rocket Stove
On a recent trip to Bangdong, we brought five gasifying stoves to be tested alongside the Rocket Stove that we brought over in May. This time, the cost of the stoves was paid for from generous donors. One stove went to testing at a restaurant in Bangdong Town at a restaurant run by the parents of one of Salvador's employees while the other stoves will be tested with village families. The gasifying stoves take a little getting used to, but once the water-filled gasifying cartridges begin fueling the fire, the heat generated is far higher than that of the rocket stove.  

The advantages of the gasifying stoves include a high temperature flame with little to no smoke and the ability to incinerate other materials like dried corn cobs and walnut shells. The disadvantages include the time needed to ignite the gasifying cartridge and the fact that the fuel must be chopped into much shorter lengths than most families are used to. The advantages of the Rocket Stove include an efficient flame with only 30% as much wood used in traditional fire pits and a side entrance for fuel that allows for longer cuts of wood. The disadvantage is that when more food preparation is needed, like when they have guests, the rocket stove is a little too slow. The villagers said that they think the hot flame of the gasifying stove would make for better tasting food.

Both need more testing, especially by the villagers themselves, but my initial feeling is that a hybrid of both stoves might be best. If the Rocket stove was scaled up in size and had a slot for a gasifying cartridge but kept the side entrance for adding wood, perhaps the disadvantages of both stoves could be eliminated. 




 
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Organic Coffee in Bangdong

11/5/2011

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On a recent visit to Bangdong, I met up with the chair of the Lincang Bangdong Cloudland Coffee Cooperative. Zhuhong is a young man who left Bangdong at the age of 14, and after an assortment of jobs throughout Yunnan, eventually moved to Beijing and started up his own business making hand drums. His drums are widely recognized as some of the best around and are even featured in Yang Liping's nationally-respected dance performances. Zhuhong has now returned to Bangdong to start up a coffee venture in hopes of bringing economic fortune to his village. 

With a cooperative board led by twelve Bangdong families, Zhuhong has organized his entire village into a new company with the goal of producing Yunnan's finest coffee beans. Moreover, he aims to be the first in Yunnan to provide certified organic coffee beans grown, roasted and packaged all at the village level. 

On this trip to Bangdong, I was accompanied by an Indian man and an American woman who came with the goal of helping Zhuhong start his own organic fertilization production. As fertilizer accounts for a large portion of the costs of coffee farming, even more so if one commits to growing organically, composting locally is extremely important. 

Zhuhong now has over 300 mu planted and hopes to plant another 700 mu early next year. Right now he remains focused on organic certification, licensing and fertilizer production. If all goes well, we'll see his coffee on the market by 2014. His commitment and ever increasing professionalism serve him well as he moves forward with a project that holds great economic potential for the entire village. 

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    Colin Flahive

    Village Progress Coordinator

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