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April 29, 2017

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Craftsman and farmer keeps tradition alive

IT’S the usual busy spring ploughing season now. Although Guo Xican, 72, no longer works the land with oxen and plow to cut the earth, he commemorates the “tradition of plowing” he used to do in his youth in his own way.

Guo lives in the Kangle District of Wanzai County in east China’s Jiangxi Province. As the countryside is now making way for urbanization, traditional farming methods have gradually been fading out.

Many villagers have ditched their muddy tools since they moved into apartment buildings.

To preserve the lifestyle of a time gone by, Guo starts making models of farm implements which now become a rare sight in Wanzai.

Making use of wood, iron and steel frame from wasted tools, he has so far restored more than 200 traditional agricultural instruments, such as the plow, the mattock, the wheelbarrow, spinning machine, stone mill and even a waterwheel.

The models of Guo’s farm implements are so good that they remind people of the natural methods of farming before the 1980s, which were once an essential part of rural life.




 

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