The Miao people carried baskets on their backs to receive rice from the Tzu Chi relief team. It was common for farmers to plant many crops, but they often yielded only a small harvest. Local people said that normally they could not afford to eat rice, but the rice they received from Tzu Chi would last them six months.

It started snowing in Guizhou Province in January. The wide, vast terraces on the hillsides gradually shed off their colors under the snow and fell into a deep sleep.

The land had become completely white, so it was not easy to notice a small pathway leading from the main road down to a village at the bottom of the valley. We thought it was part of the cliff, but it was the only path by which villagers could go to the city.

After slogging down a muddy, winding path for about twenty minutes, we came to Zuojiujia, Nayong County, 1,700 meters above sea level.

Xiazhai Village, near Zuojiujia, lay in a serene valley surrounded by small, thickly forested mountains. Houses huddled close to each other. Snow covered the rooftops, and icicles hung down from the eaves. Once in a while we could hear dogs barking and chickens crowing. The sound of frolicking children and their laughter surrounded us. Villagers shuttled back and forth with baskets on their backs. The whole place looked like Shangri-la.

Despite the picturesque scenery, life is difficult. For several decades, farmers in remote mountainous areas in Guizhou Province, southern China, tended to have many children to meet the demand for labor. However, this created a problem of too many people competing for rather limited land. To assuage their hunger, villagers cut down trees and carved out terraces on the mountain slopes. In reality, the steep hills, poor soil and severe weather are not suitable for intensive agriculture. The farmers plant many crops, but in the end harvest little. Thus, this system contributes little to solving the food shortage.

Between January 25 and 29 of this year, the Tzu Chi relief team to Guizhou distributed relief items and scholarships in four places. The team also sponsored a free clinic in Nayong County and inaugurated the Tzu Chi Dongjia Village in Rodian County.

Nayong County is located in northwestern Guizhou. The area is hilly with ravines crisscrossing the land. Close to half of the total 700,000 population are aboriginal groups, with the Miao being the largest group. Towns like Kunzhai, Zhuyang and Zuojiujia, populated mostly by minority groups, are very poor.

Two days before the distribution, we visited the residents of Xiazhai Village. Seeing mountains of snow, we asked the villagers about their crops. They told us that they plant various kinds of melons in the summer, but in the winter they can only plant soybeans, corn, and other winter vegetables. Because of the poor soil, harsh weather and primitive farming techniques, harvests are not very good. They gather only one harvest a year, enough for only six to eight months.

Bamboo is widely cultivated and made into baskets and other items which can be sold in the markets. These handicrafts are a very important part-time work.

People living on the hillsides live in houses made of clay or wood boards. The houses are rather claustrophobic and have no water or electricity. People burn coal in their houses to keep themselves warm. Animals live with the people in their houses. The upper parts of the houses are used as storage rooms where children sleep on hay, along with dried corn.

Transportation is not convenient in the area and the village does not have any industry to sustain itself. Therefore, young men tend to work elsewhere for higher pay, when they do not need to work on their farms. In some families, only women and children stay behind to plow the fields while men work in other places all year round. Families that do not have anyone who can work must wait for help from the government.

Yang Dezhou, 87, and his wife, 83, are the oldest people in Shuijing Village. Their grandchildren are over thirty years old. They cannot get around very well, so they sit by their bed and warm themselves by the fire. We were a little envious of their gentle intimacy in their old age.

We gave them some Chinese buns and snacks and kept inviting them to enjoy the food, but they simply held it in their hands. Perhaps the buns were too precious to them. They burned coal for heat and cooking, and the air was full of carbon monoxide. The old couple simply coughed, but we weren't used to the fumes and we kept covering our noses and wiping tears from our eyes.

Despite their hard life in the mountains, the old couple were spirited and could talk clearly. It made us wonder how they had managed to live for more than eighty years in the mountains, how they had lived peacefully in this difficult environment, how they had grown old together, how they had raised their children...

Zhou Xunmin, 70, had worked hard the whole year, but the harvest was still insufficient to feed his family, so his children were working elsewhere.

We wondered how those old people would carry home the many bags of rice along the treacherous roads from our distribution site two days later without the help of young men.

"Don't worry, we'll go and bring the rice home... We'll find a way." I figured the "way" referred to children working as adults, women as men, old people as young people...

No matter what it took, they would surely bring home those hundreds of kilograms of rice because rice is extremely valuable. Poor families only add it to corn during the Chinese New Year. They can't afford it the rest of the year.

Generations trapped in the mountains

We saw children playing in the woods and by the rivers. When we talked to them, we noticed that they couldn't speak Mandarin very fluently. It indicated that most children had gone to school, but many had dropped out.

We saw many young Miao girls in their traditional garments. They were probably seventeen or eighteen years old, but they were already holding babies in their arms and toddlers stood beside them. It is customary for women to get married at very young ages. Because they hardly ever marry outsiders, people tend to be closely inbred. A high number of children suffer from hereditary diseases.

Thirteen-year-old Wang Hui carried her three-year-old sister on her back. She had dropped out of school, but she could still speak fluent Mandarin with us. It made us feel quite warm. Her naturally poised personality might allow her to leave this impoverished region someday.

She was now back at school in grade four, but her twelve-year-old sister had not gone to school yet. Children from poor families mostly stay at home and farm the land because their families are too poor to send them to school. If the harvest is good, the family might allow one child to get an education.

Thirteen-year-old Yen Chun from Shuijing Village was not so lucky. She had dropped out of school and was helping at home. She had not received any further education and could not speak Mandarin, so she could not leave this destitute mountain. She would have to follow the path of her mother and sisters: stay there, get married, and worry every year about the land that could not feed them.

She had only studied for one year and could not write. When she saw us writing down her name on a piece of paper, she was amazed. She said she would like to study but...

I recalled that on a wall in the Zhuchang Elementary School in the city center, about a one-hour drive from here, there was a poem by Dai Yen, a secondary school student. The poem spoke of the worries and helplessness of the villagers:

Until the mountains of yellow leaves have completely dropped to the ground,
Until the rain has drenched my heart,
I suddenly realize
What I am seeing
Is the drizzly shadow of the departing autumn,
Just like my youth that I helplessly watch pass away.

The torture of sickness

On January 27, the free clinic and the distribution of relief supplies were held simultaneously. Dr. Wang Li-hsin, deputy superintendent of Tzu Chi Hualien Hospital, led a medical team, in cooperation with the medical staff of the Nayong People's Hospital, to treat local residents.

Because the Miao people spoke Mandarin with a strong accent, the doctors from Taiwan still needed interpreters to help make proper diagnoses.

Dr. Wang, who was in charge of internal medicine, indicated that many villagers had been suffering from upper abdominal pains for more than eight years. He suspected it was caused by parasites.

Wang Haiguang's nose was twice the size of a normal person's nose. It looked very stiff and it bothered him very much. It was caused by polyps inside his nose. If they were not removed, they would affect his life. Unfortunately, like many other people, Wang's mind was on the distribution of relief packages. He came hurriedly for a medical examination, and once he received his medicine, he rushed back to pick up his supplies. He didn't take the doctor's suggestion into consideration.

Huang Dexue, 52, had a badly swollen neck. It looked like an apple hanging down from his chin. He walked for miles to pick up his rice. When we told him to go to the city for an examination, he kept saying that he didn't have the money. The swelling caused him great pain but he still carried the rice home. He felt that the problem couldn't be cured, so he just wanted a painkiller to stop the pain.

Many villagers had never seen a doctor in their lives. They simply collected herbs in the mountains to treat their ailments. They realized that they had acute or serious illnesses only after they came to the free clinic. Not even the Nayong Hospital had the equipment and technology to treat their problems. The villagers understood their illnesses, but they simply had no money to see a doctor or buy medicine. They could not even afford the transportation to the city.

Lu Shauying, 55, had swellings on her face which contorted her face and prevented her eyes from seeing clearly. There were also tumors in her oral cavity, so she had problems eating and swallowing. It was hard to believe that she had not dared to see others and had not been able to eat properly for more than ten years.

We didn't know how many people in the mountains were like Lu. She didn't have the money for surgery to remove the swellings, which might be cancerous. It would cost her RMB$30,000 [US$3,624] for examinations, radio- and chemotherapy, and bone transplant operations. Thus, an old woman like Lu, living in the mountains, could not understand or afford it and was not willing to continue treatment.

After the doctor had told Lu about her condition, she seemed to comprehend, but she also seemed equally confused. Watching her as she left the clinic to pick up the medicine, I felt that no ordinary medicine could ease the pain that each and every person like her had suffered for the past ten years, or prevent the grief that will be suffered in the future.

Luo Xiulan's sickness couldn't be cured by ordinary medicine either. The thirty-year-old woman often didn't give proper answers to questions. She mumbled about an uncomfortable sensation in her chest and abdomen. She thought she might have asthma, so she had taken all kinds of medicine and had gone to see the doctor many times, but it was still useless.

Dr. Wang determined that she didn't have asthma, so he asked the local medical staff to interview her in the local dialect. They discovered that she had had ligation surgery. She looked very nervous as she described the surgery, because she believed that it had been very serious and that it had ruined her health.

Dr. Wang indicated that her problem was not physical, but psychological, rooted in wrong ideas she had about her surgery. He told her that it had been a minor surgery that could not ruin her health. She could relax about it.

People in impoverished regions don't have enough knowledge about hygiene, so their use of traditional medicines or their wrong perceptions result in delays in getting treatment or unnecessary worries. Here, Wang Haiguang's treatment had been delayed, Huang Dexue was careless, Lu Shaoying experienced delays, and Luo Xiulan was misinformed. The primitive environment and lack of education were the major causes of their problems. Most importantly, poverty forced them to rely on local medicines for their lives.

Full baskets for the winter

At the distribution site, the street was filled with people, mostly Miaos dressed in their traditional turbans and dazzlingly colorful pleated skirts. Each person had a basket on his or her back to carry the rice and cooking oil.

These villagers, who had come a long way, looked frozen from the low temperatures. When Tzu Chi volunteers wanted them to fingerprint their coupons [as identification for those who were authorized to pick up relief supplies], they discovered that the fingers were too stiff to bend, so they had to turn the coupons over and press them on their fingers instead.

There was mud on the ground outside the main gate, two inches thick in some places, and it was very difficult for people with heavy loads on their backs to get through. Many people were bent with the rickets, but they still thanked us when they saw us walking on the road. Their strong accents couldn't hide their happiness.

Many villagers said that because they lived quite far away, they were afraid that they would be too late to pick up their supplies, so the day before the distribution they stayed in relatives' homes closer to the distribution site. Some Miao girls walked home alone carrying four bags of rice, weighing a total of 120 kilograms [264 pounds]. Some had to walk thirty or forty kilometers [18-24 miles]. After walking for three kilometers [1.9 miles], villagers young and old had to rest by leaning against a cliff or placing walking sticks on the ground to support the baskets.

Zhu Guangxu, with his wife and son, came to the distribution site together and they were all very happy. Zhu had been working elsewhere for the whole year, but he came home when the village chief informed his family about the distribution. I believe those bags of rice were great gifts for the Chinese New Year.

Zhu's family of four live in Xingwen Village. They have about three quarters of an acre of farmland, which is not enough to feed the whole family. Most villagers earn extra income, or more correctly their main income, in the city of Shuicheng.

In Shuicheng, these villagers mostly work as coal miners. They also work at laborious jobs like carrying things on their backs or knocking out rocks from the mountains to pave roads. As long as they can make some money for the family, they are not concerned about how hard the work is. That is how simple and zealous they are. It also indicates how restricted they are by their natural environment.

At seventy-one years of age, Zhang Changde was the oldest relief recipient. All his children had gone to work elsewhere, so he came alone to pick up his allotment of rice. The chilly wind made him shiver. We were quite concerned that his fragile body would be blown away by the wind. The pick-up notice in his hand trembled as well. How could he carry home four bags of rice and a large bottle of cooking oil?

Fortunately, his neighbors were old friends. Their spirit of mutual help was in sharp contrast to the nonchalant selfishness often seen in the big cities.

With six people in his family, Zhang Zhongrong could receive twelve bags of rice. They were really excited about that. Zhang also had to work in Shuicheng. He said that his pay was eight yuan [US$0.97] a day, barely enough for each member of his family to have a bowl of corn.

He added that he usually couldn't afford to enjoy rice, not even during the Chinese New Year. He had never before used cooking oil. The two months' worth of rice we gave him would be cooked for his children. "The rice can last us six months," he marveled. "We will have rice to eat for the Chinese New Year."