approaching Tongluo township 銅鑼鄉
a thousand year old camphor in the elementary school yard
Camphor tree 樟樹 Cinnamomum camphoraknown as
tree hug

ladybug in the camphor
school gate, 10:30 AM

Following Hsuhua to his farm

Yarong driving

Tammy in Hsuhua's shelter, 11AM
Hsuhua presents his plan

composting toilet
野杜虹
green persimmon

Gourian Clematis 串鼻龍 Clematis gouriana
local earth god temple
betel nut

web covered plant

butterfly on elder

flies on elder

Taiwan Lily 台灣百合 Lilium formosanum
aiyu 愛玉子 Ficus pumila L. var. awkeotsang (Makino)
fern
dew on web
Short-legged Japalure 短肢攀蜥 Japalura brevipes
Short-legged Japalure
view out from shelter

薑荷花
Hsuhua's dog
driveway test as we leave, 2:15 PM



second student's plot, 3:20 PM
Daiwen picking guava
Tammy
the farmers

view of the L shaped plot
the tung trees have been removed from the forest, the ground is now overrun with heartleaf hempvine 蔓澤蘭 Mikania cordata

diesel buffalo
Tammy

the farmers' family home
Peter eating dragon fruit (pitaya) 火龍果 Hylocereus
Philip
the farmer's homestead
leave at 5:30, we drive back to Taipei in heavy rain

We travel to Miaoli County 苗栗縣 in western Taiwan to visit the projects of two graduates of the PDC course. Arriving in Tongluo Township 銅鑼鄉, we leave the highway to visit an ancient camphor tree in an elementary school yard. Tongluo Township is one of Miaoli's eleven townships. It is a rural area with a population of 20 thousand people in an area of 75 square kilometers. From the school, we still have a good drive through the charateristic rolling hills of Miaoli before we arrive at Hsuhua's farm.

Hsuhua explains that his land holding is 3 jia 甲 and 6 fen 分. A ping 坪 is the space occupied by two tatami mats or 3.3058 square metres. A fen 分 is 970 square meters or 293.4 ping 坪. There are 10 fen 分 in a jia 甲, or 2934 ping 坪. An hectare 公頃 is 10,000 square metres or 107,639 sq ft or 1.031034 jia 甲 (very close). There are 100 hectars 公頃 in a square kilometer 平方公里 of land. There are 640 acres in a square mile of land. So Hsuhua's land holding is simply (very close to) 3.6 ha (hectares), or 8.9 acres, or 387,500 square feet.

The name Miaoli originates from a combination of two Hakka words, cat (貓) and raccoon dog (狸), which phonetically approximate Pali (Bari), a community of Taokas. The Taokas (道卡斯族) includes a number of indigenous ethno-linguistic groups which inhabited the plains of western Taiwan. The Taokas lived in a region including modern Hsinchu, Taichung and Miaoli counties.

At the second site we visited, the heartleaf hempvine 蔓澤蘭 (Mikania cordata) had managed to almost fully invade a recently cleared area in the forest. The word in conservation circles is that it was the Council of Agricultural Affairs that originally introduced this now very serious weed for soil erosion control purposes. Pictures of the plant, the story of its arrival and spread, as well as means of control. The moral of this story is: Know your plants and their behaviors!

Gourian Clematis 串鼻龍 Clematis gouriana is also known in Chinese as: 台灣鐵線蓮、鐵線蓮、梨山小簑衣藤、綴鼻草、威靈仙、威玲仙 Its uses include: 1. 園藝庭植用：庭植為綠廊植物或搭架使攀援成綠牆。 2. 替代繩索用：蔓莖常供綑束薪材。 3. 藥用：藤莖：微苦、溫。效用：藤莖：行氣活血，祛風濕，止痛。治跌打損傷，瘀滯疼痛，風濕骨痛；根：搗爛敷創傷和治毒蛇咬傷。鮮莖葉具發泡作用，用治皮膚病。