Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
way to long-needled pines, and trudging along the road was a pha­
lanx of Naxi women collecting the fallen needles.
“What do they use those for?” Marlena called out to Miss Rong.
Miss Rong struggled to say it was for the animals. Everyone as­
sumed she meant that the animals ate the needles, which is not so. In
the winter, the animals nest in the needles to stay warm, and in the
spring, the Naxi women use the manure-soiled needles as fertilizer
when they plant the new crops. With a limited diversity of life, there
is greater diversity of purpose.
“Where are the men?” Wendy demanded to know. “Why aren’t
they out there breaking their backs?”
“Yes, very lazy,” Miss Rong joked. Then she added, “They play out­
side, do poetry.” She was partly right. The rest she knew but didn’t
know how to verbalize clearly, so I will translate: In China, there is a
saying made popular after the revolution: Women hold up half the
sky. In the Naxi Autonomous Region, women have always held up
the whole sky. It is a matriarchal society, where the females do the
work, handle the money, own the houses, and raise the children. The
men, meanwhile, ride on the backs of shooting stars, so to speak.
They are bachelors, boyfriends, and uncles, roaming from bed to bed
at night, not knowing which children they have fathered. They take
the animals out to graze early in the morning, they bring them back
at dusk. In the mountain pastures, they roll their cigarettes and
smoke, and when they call the animals, they lure them with love
songs. They sing at the top of their lungs, which extract oxygen
much more efficiently than those of most Americans. So Miss Rong
was correct in what little she said. The men do poetry. To hear a song
sung in the mountains is always poetry.
At the entrance to the temple park, the bus stopped and my
friends jumped out for camcorder documentation of their arrival.
They gathered behind a sign, “Sincerely Welcoming You to Farmous
Grottoe of Female Genitalia.” Harry had his arm around Marlena’s
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