On the morning of the second day, I accompanied Fagen and Barbara to look at livestock for Barbara's research. When we hiked down the backside of a hill, I noticed there was a lone pine tree standing. I asked Fagen about it and she said her grandfather once told her that all the hills surrounding the village used to be forested. Unfortunately, I failed to find out exactly when this happened although I am sure it is located in the forestry group notes. Walking further, we saw huge bundles of shrub branches that were cut and stacked together. Fagen explained that this shrub, called qin gan, was used both as animal bedding and as fuelwood.
As we neared the school, we stopped by a house that had a large stack of firewood. I didn't have any measuring tools with me, but by estimation, the stack was about 10 feet wide, 8 feet high, and 6 feet deep. The people living there said that it would last about 2 months in the current season, and 1 month during winter. I had only planned on asking a few questions and taking some pictures, but then a really old lady came out and invited us into her house to eat. The three of us went into her house and sat on a felt blanket while her son-in-law helped build a fire to cook potatoes for us. The lady who invited us in apologized saying that since she was so old she didn't have any chickens that she could kill and cook for us. When Fagen translated this to Barbara and I, we felt really "bu hao yisi," because we were already stunned by her show of generosity. Even now, when I recall this incident, I am still so amazed by this lady's kindness toward us. I would have felt even more embarrassed if she did have a chicken, killed it, and served it to us. I am sure she would have if she could.
In that same afternoon, I went with Fagen and Barbara to visit the first household for my research. This house turned out to be the home of Juer, the kind lady who cooked for us during our stay at the school. With a total of five family members, their house was dubbed the "medium consumption" household. To prepare dinner, they were burning five branches of wood, averaging between 3-4 feet in length. It was at this time I found out it might be difficult to tell exactly how much wood is used, because the whole piece isn't burnt at one time, just the end. And as I found out later, not all families continuously keep a fire going throughout the evening.
As we were waiting for the food to cook (potatoes again), I asked Fagen about the different types of wood collected and to rank them by peoples' preference based on how well/long they burn. The most preferred wood was qing gan because it was very long-burning. In my notes I wrote that it was a shrub-like plant that grew all over the rocky hillsides. However, the qin gan branches that were burning definitely did not come from a shrub. When I asked Fagen about this, she said that the ones on the hill were small because people kept cutting it to use as animal bedding and kindling. In reality, fully-grown qin gan were actually quite tall trees (later identified by Jiro as a species of scrub oak). According to Fagen, one had to travel further to collect from these larger trees. The second best kind of firewood came from a tree called song ma. I wasn't able to see any of these trees, and the little I do know about it is that it has white flowers. The next preferred one was called hu bu. I do not know any further details about this kind of wood. The last preferred of the most commonly used trees for firewood was pine (song shu).