Timely Rains During Severe Drought

Timely Rains During Severe Drought

Invaluable rains finally come. As a Chinese proverb says, in Spring, every drop of rain water is just like a drop of oil.

North China is experiencing the most severe drought in the past 50 years, as officials say. I also heard a lot about the situation in Henan, and Shandong province during the Spring Festival. Although no one want to miss the season for crops, some peasants do select to do nothing. Why? For economy. Wheat price is relatively low. In normal years, one can only get a little from the farm. Now, you just can not recover the cost for watering the farm. In addition, farmers needn't to pay agricultural tax and even can get subsidy from the government. So some of them just select to do nothing. However, this kind of selfish behaviour may jeopadize the food security of our nation.

Of course, we should not only blame these peasants. Government, and all citizens, should take our responsibility, doing whatever we can to assuage the severe drought now. In the long run, Government should pay more attention to the construction of irritation systems. I can still remember that, when I was a child in 1970s, peasants were assembled together, by the government, to dig trenches and waterways in the winter. It was called "HeGong(河工)" in Chinese, which means "watercourse digging project". A relatively-perfect waterway network was constructed at that time. And now, many of them are destroyed, flatened, or just ruinned because lack of maintainance.
Whatever operating system a society runs, important things, such as the irritation system, should be handled properly. As another Chinese apothegm says, food is foremost important for people or bread is the stall of life. Anyone ignoring the food problem will be punished in some way.

I hope our country will have more timely rain, both from the heaven and from our own efforts, in the future.