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Tibetan peasants resume spring ploughing

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-03-26 14:27

KANGDING, Sichuan Province -- Peasants had resumed spring ploughing following local governments' guides after rumours of "to quit farming for Dalai Lama's return" spread in southwest China's Sichuan Province, local official said on Wednesday.

Peasants in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan had been threatened since the beginning of March by the rumours, including "preparing for Dalai Lama's return by refusing to farm", "non spring ploughing under the respect for Dalai Lama", and even "anyone farming will be killed and whose house will be burned", said Lodro, deputy director of the prefectural agriculture administration.

An explosion happened on March 19 out of the house of a village official Gonpo Shaye who tried to persuade villagers to farm in Dotuo of Xiala Village in Ganzi Town, Lodro said.

"But what shall we eat if we do not farm?" Lodro said.

Among the 800,000 residents in the prefecture, more than two thirds  live on agriculture, he said.

Due to the mountainous climate, one million mu of the total 1.36 million mu (about 91,000 hectare) has only one harvest time each year. "The fact makes the spring ploughing precious, and the crops vital to us," Lodro said.

"If we miss the spring time, we miss the whole year," he said.

The Ganzi prefectural government posted open letters trying to persuade the peasants back to farming and the local officials went to the villagers' homes one by one, to talk to their villagers.

"The spring ploughing had been resuming across the prefecture. It is gradually recovered from south to north, because of different climates. It has been finished in some southern towns," he said.