A rice paddy in the early morning

I walked further this morning, and didn't take my camera with me. I just wanted to walk and think, but then I was stopped by the light on this little field, and took a picture with my small phone.

Behind me, sheltered in trees similar to those around the house in the left of the picture, some of which will be papaya, came the morning noises of a small farm. There was the chopping of firewood and the sweeping of the yard, but mainly there was gentle morning exercise music. A bird called from the coconut tree opposite and every minute or so a motorbike passed. The early morning motorbikes are much more relaxed than those in the middle of the day, which hurry home for lunch.

I grew up on a small farm close to the Welsh border -- small, of course being a relative word. Although it was very different to the farms here, and in other parts of China that I have lived, I always feel a pull, a gravity, to this kind of countryside. I can even imagine myself living in one of these small countryside homes, with chickens and a goat or two. As long as there was broadband!

My first teaching job in China was in Shanxi, and each weekend I would cycle the 10kms or so to the local mountains, leave my bike somewhere safe, and then spend the day wamdering about. In Hainan there are no sheep, it's too hot, but in the north there are sheep a plenty. The shepherds took them each day up onto the slopes to graze. And they shouted and cursed at their flocks in just the same way as the Welsh shepherds:

"Geeyaa! Argh"

A universal language for cursing at sheep.