Clean water was a highly regarded resource to the Naxi people in Yunnan, China. In its villages where I visited, streams and canals were a dominant feature. When walking through the village of Shuhe, I saw these three pools/wells with a signpost. Streams were guided by farmers into the village, where they were diverted into three small pools; the first one for drinking/cooking, second pond for washing food, and the third for washing clothes.
Nowadays, most homes have their own indoor water, but some people (as this woman) still make use of these public pools. Even now, the water looked rather clear.
How different this scene is to what I recalled from my time in India, particularly the Adyar River which flowed close to my apartment in Chennai. How fitting that The Hindu, one of India's main newspapers, wrote and compared the waterways of the Yunnan region to that of the main rivers in India.
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| Adyar River, Chennai |
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| Sunrise silhouettes obscures some of the garbage strewn along the fowl-smelling Adyar River |
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