US grower helps to boost berry industry in China
Most Westerners who visit China for the first time are overwhelmed by how different the country is from their own. For 59-year-old Henry Sunda, though, a lot of his experience in Shandong has been rather familiar, although not the same. In 1988, when Sunda first started growing blueberries in his native East Texas, it was a new idea in that part of the US. He retired from managing a 9,000-acre (3,642-hectare) mixed farm in 2010, but he's not been fishing or playing golf. For the past two years, he's been working with Chinese farmers in Shandong province's tiny Xihue Village. His mission: to expand production of the tiny, sweet "superfruits" in a new industry that's seeing explosive growth here.
Of course, not everything was like back home.
"It was a step back in time to live with the farmers," he says. "They had electricity and running water but beyond that not a whole lot. I would say the living conditions were similar to rural East Texas in the 1920s, although electricity didn't arrive (there) until the 1950s.
"At home I live in a very rural setting - literally at the end of the power line, with my nearest neighbor one mile away. So here I have been very aware of the numbers of people living and working in such close proximity to each other," says Sunda.
"The villages are compact and the individual farms and gardens immediately outside the village proper are immaculate and well-tended. The tools are simple. The older folks still use hand carts and water buffalo, while the younger generation use the very utilitarian two-wheel motorized tractor for hauling incredible loads of brick, tilling, plowing and pumping water to their fields," he adds.
Source: www.chinadaily.com.cn