Maja’s message is spot-on. Our grandparents came from peasant farm families in Sweden. They left the near-feudal society of late-19th-century rural Sweden to come to America (or the big cities of Sverige) to better their lives. For me, visiting my friend’s grandparents — who have a sow crib next to the pit toilet inside the house — was like stepping into a time machine to visit my great-grandparents’ farmhouse in Gotland, Sweden. The languages are different, but farm life is universal.

As for Wei Minzhi, credit the power of Facebook. When I found out she was studying in Hawai’i, I searched for her on Facebook, found her, and sent a friend request. To my delight, she accepted, and has even added a few of my students as FB friends as well.

Deal — on visiting Huaihua.

With help from my husband I have read about your journey to a farm in China. I understand most of what you wrote, but sometimes you use words, English or American, that I don´t understand exactly. I think it was interesting, and so did my husband.

In my perspective, the development is about the same in China as in Sweden, but it comes some years later in China. Both of us, you and I, come from a little farm in Gotland. It was my grandfather and your grandmother that left Gotland to get a better life, and I must say, that they were successful.

I am interested in the difference between small and big. When you [take a] photo, the macro-picture looks about the same as a normal picture. When I left my classroom to become a driving consultant, I thought I left the small world for the big one, that will say about 1/12 of Sweden. I found that it was about the same. Now you live in the big world, indeed, but in fact it is rather small, too. It is a very small part of the big China. I wonder, how much the Chinese regime knows about the farm that you visited and the people that live there. Is a big country better than a small one, like Sweden? I doubt it. But yet, when I read your blog, I think that it comes from the big world, and I like it.

We got a lot of snow last night. The spring-flowers had come up, and we look forward to see them again.

I want to send my greeting from Sweden to your student-girl and to you yourself.

On the other side:

If all people leave the farms for studying at the universities, we will at last have nothing to eat. Now I can look into the future and see, that in some years we will have one doctor, one psychologist and one engineer that come from the little farm on Gotland. They are 3 of my 5 grandchildren, and I am very proud of them. I do wish them, as well as your student-girl, a very good life. But I also hope, that they will understand, that without farmers, cooks and cleaners, life won´t go on. We all have to show them respect and give their work a higher status.

And:
If you have given life to one or many children, you deep in your heart hate those clever but evil people, that make war and terrorism. I don´t think that there is any difference between China, USA and Sweden. In many situations, mothers have gathered against those evil forces. Let us go on with that.

Now I can see the snowdrops, our spring flowers, again, and we have 7 degrees C. Life is wunderful!
MAJA