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If you were a peasant farmer in southern China, by contrast, you didn't sleep through the winter.
相反地，生活在中國南方的農民，是不會在冬天里睡覺的，
In the short break marked by the dry season, from November through February, you busied yourself with side tasks.
從11月到來年的2月，農民們大多會做些副業，
You made bamboo baskets or hats and sold them in the market。 You repair the dikes in your rice paddy, and rebuild your mud hut.
如扎竹籃，做竹帽，
You set one of your sons to work in the nearby village for a relative.
而且還會派自己的一個兒子到附近村莊的親戚家里干活。
You made tofu and dried bean curd and caught snakes (they were a delicacy) and trapped insects.
不僅如此，還會做豆腐、做大醬、捕蛇（蛇的味道很鮮美）、捉昆蟲。
By the time the turning of spring came, you were back in the fields at dawn.
到了立春時節（意味著春天快到了），農民日出晚歸的務農生活又開始了。
Working in a rice field is ten to twenty times more labor-intensive than working ong an equivalently sized corn or wheat filed.
相對于那些機械化務農的農民，他們需要付出10倍到20倍的辛苦．
Some estimates put the annual workload of a wet-rice farmer in Asia at 3,000 hours a year.
據統計，每年一名種植水稻的農民的工作量有3000多個小時。
Think for a moment about what the life of a rice farmer in the Pearl River Delta must have been like.
想象一下，生活在那個時代，珠三角地區農民們的生活會是多么的辛苦，
3,000 hours a year is a staggering amount of time to spend working,
每年花費在工作上的時間居然有3000多個小時，這的確讓人感到不可思議。
particularly if many of those hours involve being bent over in the hot sun, planting and weeding in a rice paddy.
尤其是大多數的時間都是在烈日當頭下彎著腰在地里播種、除草。
What redeemed the life of a rice farmer, however, was the nature of that work.
而農民們唯一可以改變自己命運的，就只有努力的工作，
It was a lot like the garment work done by the Jewish immigrants to New York.It was meaningful.
這同在紐約做服裝生意的猶太移民一樣。這非常重要。
First of all, there is a clear relationship in rice farming between effort and reward.The harder you work a rice field, the more yield.
首先，對于耕田的農民來說，付出與回報是顯而易見的。你在稻田地里付出的越多，收成也就越多。
Second, it's complex.The rice farmer isn't simply planting in the spring and harvest in the fall.
第二，農活是一件很復雜的工作。不會只是簡單在春季播種，然后就可以在秋季里收獲，
He or she is effectively a small businessman,juggling a family work force, hedging uncertainty through seed selection,
他們需要有效率地去經營運作，比如說需要整合人力，選擇不同的稻種以保證一年的收成。
building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system, coordinating the complex process of harvesting the first crop while simultaneously preparing the second crop.
同時管理復雜的灌溉系統，做好協調準備工作，使得第一次收割和第二次的播種工作可以同時進行。
