This isn’t a way of life I chose. My father and grandfather were peasants like me, from Ningxia. I never went to school – well, just briefly, for two years, enough time to recognise 100 Chinese characters. The main thing for me now is to be able to feed my family. We hardly ever eat meat at home. The most important thing in life is to eat well. If I were to have one real regret in life, it would be that I hadn’t appreciated the good things enough.

For the past five years our economic situation has been getting steadily worse, partly because of the drought. My harvest has shrunk by thirty per cent… In May, the season for sowing, I didn’t have enough water to water the millet, the barley and the colza. Of course our income has dropped significantly as a result. To be honest, we don’t really have an income at all. What we cultivate, we eat. If we really were to fall on hard times I would sell our calf. At today’s prices I’d get 1,000 yuan, no more. But I’ll feed her up a bit and wait for next year, if I manage to hold out. With a bit of luck we’ll get double that.

For the last sixteen years I’ve lived in this mud and brick house with my wife, my six sons and my daughter, the eldest. My sons all went to school. Only my daughter has stayed at home all these years, to help my wife in the fields, with the cooking and the housework and the care of her younger brothers. Five of my sons are married. Depending on the season they either work in the fields or as migrant workers. In the summer they travel long distances, towards Inner Mongolia, or a bit closer to home, to Tongxin, to work on construction sites. It’s hard for them. I don’t know exactly what goes on but they aren’t paid regularly. They have their wives and children - who stay behind here with us - to look after. I feel badly for them, it’s a great weight on their shoulders.

We’ve only got one unmarried son left. Jing Long is twenty-five this year. We’ve got no money or belongings of any worth to give to a future wife, which makes it difficult for him to find a wife. But I’m going to do everything I can to make my harvest better this year and to make him happy. Jing Long is quite a character. One day he ran away from school. He was twelve years old. For an entire month we had no idea where he was. Some mingong workers from the village told us that they had seen him in Yinchuan, five hours from here. I didn’t think twice, I left the village - for the first time in my life. I got on the bus. Eventually, I found him. he was in good shape. I told him to come home. He realised right away how much I love him. It was perfectly normal: a father who loves his son, a son who loves his father. That’s how it is round here. Afterwards he explained it all to me: he just wanted to earn some money to pay for school and for his books… He went back to school and stayed there until the first year of high school. Then he dropped out. He wasn’t a good student. Education is important to us here. If you haven’t got an education you are like a blind man. That’s why I wanted all my children to go to school. What comes after that is zhenzhu, as Muslims say, fate.

I pray five times a day. Don’t tell, but when the Imam is in town I go to the mosque. Otherwise I pray at home, on my kang where I keep my prayer mat. Being a peasant is a state of mind, nothing more. When I look at my hands I tell myself that they are hands that have worked hard. But they also tell me that I’m getting old and that I’m not much use for anything any more. My back and my knees play up. I’m sixty, I don’t ask questions and I’m not afraid of death. All that is just in the normal way of things…