Our second grade China Unit here at DAIS is entitled Rural to Urban and I can't think of a better place to teach this concept than right here in LongShan Valley. It's a harsh reality unfolding right here in our midst. We took our students to the Wolong Bay Visitors Center which has a model of what this area will look like in the next 10 years. Along the way, we stopped to witnesses the changes first hand.
This whole area, just east of our school, used to be a mountain. There are still a few houses left, but the landscape around them now resembles something like the moon.
WoLong Bay Visitor Center
Model of what our area will look like in 10 years
It all looks very impressive...until you step outside and see what is being removed to make way for the development.
These houses will soon be buried.
We walked the kids out into the neighborhood that will soon be either demolished or buried underground. You can see that there are still homes, but they now sit atop a man-made mesa.
People are still holding out and living in the homes.
This woman is harvesting oyster shells to use as fertilizer.
Hard to believe that this little farm will be replaced by skyscrapers.
This was once a fishing village.
Juxtaposition of the old and the new...
Here are our second grade classes with Ms. Gill. She has been here in JinShiTan for the last five years, so she has seen tremendous change and was a wonderful tour guide.
The bus drivers then took us through the fishing villages that still remain.
Hard to tell in this picture, but this overlooks WoLong Bay...those little dots are fishing boats.
We certainly learned a lot about progress AND compassion today.
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