SHEEPFARMERS AND WOOL FOR CHINA

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29792, 7 April 1962, Page 8

SHEEPFARMERS AND WOOL FOR CHINA

Good Fabrics Now Being Manufactured

(By

REWI ALLEY]

YOUNG friend brought over a newspaper. “Look at this,” he said. “They are making a good fabric out of wool that keeps out the cold well. Light and cheap, too.” He was wearing a bright woollen jersey of which he was obviously fond, and as he had just come down from the North-west with his father, I asked them about the state of the wool industry there, and how sheep-breeding was going on.

One thing led to another, and gradually a picture began to emerge of a very different situation to that I had grown accustomed to in my years in those areas. Since 1949, actually, China’s stock of sheep and goats has doubled. I know many a New Zealander will sniff at the mention of goats in connexion with sheep, but on most Chinese pastures they run together. Personally I’m against them, as they are erosioncreating animals, but old custom and useage cannot be lightly passed by. Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, Ninghsia Chinghai and Tibet are the leading sheep-raising provinces. The Sinkiang wool clip sold to the State this last season had three times as much fine or semi-fine wool as came in during 1957. Better stud sheep have been introduced there, and in my travels in the Tienshan region near Hi in 1957, I could see that considerable progress was being made at making a base in better flocks that is now having its effect. The big-tailed Chinese sheep, used to wintering hard, clipped two or three pounds of wiry carpet wool at its best.

Lambing now takes place in China at the beginning of the winter, rather than in the early spring as in New Zealand. The ewes are strong and fat then after good autumn feed, and experience shows that the lambs do better when they come at this time. The movement for the erection of warm sheds for the lambing season has spread all over the grasslands stock-breeding communes, which are reporting an excellent survival rate as a consequence of better care.

Pasture Land

One of tire best pasture lands is up in the Great Hsingan mountain area around Ulanbadu, in northern Inner Mongolia. Here it is easy to collect ample fodder to last flocks through to the spring—a thing harder to do in the drier parts of Ninghsia and Kansu, for instance. Success with artificial insemination has made a flock of 25,000 improved crossbred sheep possible around Ulanbatu. In this area, the commune operated a creamery, and the commune machine-repair shop are both familiar landmarks now. the old huts and tents of shepherds changing to brick-and-tile cottages, for mixed farming is becoming more common in this predominantly stock area, farmers growing their own grain and vegetables. in line with the national drive to get all who can to do so. One of the curses of Inner Mongolia has been undulant fever (Brucellosis), which affects both people and stock. Combined Western and Chinese medicines have in the Last seven years been able to cure more than 40.000 people of this disease, while 4,000,000 head of cattle have been given preventive injections against it. Centres for combating the disease on a mass scale were set up. with mobile medical teams, so that the scourge can be combated on a mass basis. In the Tibetan area of the north-west, the farmers on the Northern Tibetan steppe brought their herds safely through the first bad snow-

storms, which hit the area a month earlier than usual. There were two seasons such as this 0ne —1924 and 1956, shepherds say—but this time, with everyone prepared, they have been better able to cope with the tough winter. Better collection of winter fodder, better stock shelters, and better shepherding in getting animals out of the coldest areas quickly, have saved bad losses.

One of the places I spent a good deal of time around during my first years in China was the old walled city caUed Kweisui, or Kweihua, then the capital of Suiyuan province. Today, it has reverted to its Mongol name of "The Blue City,” latinised now as “Huhehot," and by others in past times as “Kokokhoto." It is the capital of Inner Mongolia which has absorbed Suiyuan, and from a walled city of landlords, traders and soldiers, has become a big new Chinese woollen textile centre. This year it has already produced around 200,000 feet of woollen cloth, and 235 tons of worsted in excess of its original target. Its modem woollen mill, which started operations in spring 1958, is now second largest in the country. I have been to some mod-

ern large-scale woollen mills in Harbin, Shanghai, Peking. Tientsin and Lanchow, but to have a woollen industry starting away up in the tough frontier areas of Inner Mongolia is a new thing.

As I passed through Huhehot last year at night, the sky was red with the glare of iron furnaces. There were factories all around, and one felt that here was truly a new hub that will mean much to all those farm folk scattered over its wide plains and its many hills. The Inner Mongolian region, by the way, since the setting up of communes in 1958. has more than doubled its irrigated area. It has built five big reservoirs, put a project across the Yellow river at Sanshenkung from which a system of canals runs; installed electrically-powered pumping systems from deep wells, having effect on 3,000,000 acres of land, which before could not be fully used because of lack of water. I asked some friends from the pastoral areas what were their chief problems. “Lack of man-power in the rush periods" came their answer unhesitatingly. I asked if pastoral peoples were increasing, and one told me of the Evenki folk, one of the smallest minorities in the north-eastern portion of Inner Mongolia, whose people had been ravaged by smallpox, typhus, venereal disease, and so on to the extent that they were swiftly dying out. There were 3000 of them in 1931, by the Hui river and only 1000 in 1949, a typhoid epidemic having killed off a great number. Families now average two children under 10 and numbers are rapidly increasing. Now in all. counting those in Sinkiang, and Heilunkiang, there are around 7000 of them, a 42 per cent, increase over 1949. The area by the Hui river has been given them as an autonomous county, with its own schools and factories.