roads that conform to the human foot

[asakiyume]

Paul Salopek, this morning, talking about traveling in rural Yunnan Province, China:

Almost without being aware of it, [we] are losing touch with the human hand itself, what the human hand can make ... This realization paradoxically gelled when I stepped over the Myanmar border into China, possibly because I had these conceptions that I'd be walking into the most industrialized country in the world. And I didn't. Instead ... not only [are] the houses all handmade, but the roads to reach them were conformed to the human foot. People were still moving between them on foot or on bicycles or, on occasions, by pack horses. And even the tools to make this environment, I noticed, were handmade.
Source: "Writer Paul Salopek started a global journey ten years ago. Where is he now?" NPR Morning Edition.

The human hand and foot. I'm not holding this up as a way everyone should live--not at all. (I want there always to be thousands of different ways to live.) I just really appreciate how this show what people can do. We're not merely catalysts for automated processes.

Comments

[sovay]

(I want there always to be thousands of different ways to live.)

I like that a lot. And none of them data-scraped, please.

[sartorias]

Ah, I like this thought. I also have noticed he's right, from my HeyGo excursions into Chinese villages far from big cities.

[anna_wing]

Yunnan is the one of the poorest provinces in China.

Tangenting

[amaebi]

Something that bothers me a lot in the US is my strong impression that in urban, suburban, and tech society the physical world somehow implicitly imagined to be quaint, small, and trivial. In these sectors, engagement with a traditional craft seems to be displayed as a performance art choice when personal, an anthropological phenomenon in backwater life when mentioned as a regularity in some societies.

Going by public discourse you'd think agriculture was a minor enterprise, and mostly not worth considering.