I was a potato farmer for a day! We traveled an hour outside of Xining to visit a local farm family.  They were beyond nice to us but maybe that’s because we were going to do some hard manual labor for them!

The fields were all terraced land built into the mountains.  We had to take precarious “paths” up the mountain, passing random sheep, to get to the field we would be picking.  We were instructed to first pull up all the weeds, then get to work by digging up the potatoes. 

My roommate was very excited to find some potatoes!

We dug up bags full of potatoes.  It was difficult work to be outside but uncovering food from the earth was like a treasure hunt.  We cleaned them then sorted them based off of size.  The larger potatoes would be used for cooking while the smaller ones would be fed to their farm animals.

After all the hard work was done, the farm family fed us all potatoes for lunch.  Han Bing told us (and I have agree with him) that Qinghai potatoes are better than Idaho potatoes.  We ate them plain and they were better then any dolled up potatoes I’ve had.  Straight from the ground fresh!

Although I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot about how rural families sustain themselves, I loved spending time with this family. They were kind to us and when the father learned that it was one of my classmate’s birthday, he insisted that he change to his best clothes in this kid’s honor. 

When we had to say goodbye, the father followed our bus out of the community with his tractor.  He was very proud to show us his working tractor!  I realized that he may not have another opportunity to host foreigners in a very long time.  I’m very grateful to have had this opportunity to meet this great family and help them pick their potatoes!