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February 2001
Dear Friends,
As is often the case, my good intentions about writing a circular
letter have been repeatedly pushed aside by other matters—not
necessarily more important, but at least apparently more pressing.
However, visits to Amity projects during our recent winter teachers
conference have finally prompted me to put pen to paper and tell
you about one of the kinds of poverty alleviation efforts your
churches are helping to support in China through Amity.
This January our winter teachers conference was held on the
island of Hainan, China’s southernmost province, and we had
the opportunity to visit some of Amity’s rural development
and medical projects. Among the sites we visited were several
villages where Amity has been promoting bio-gas projects, and
since I learned a fair amount about bio-gas during this visit,
I am going to share some of that new knowledge with you.
One basic problem of rural life in China is finding adequate
fuel for cooking and other purposes. Purchasing fuel from commercial
sources is an expense many rural households can ill afford, so
villagers often cut down local wood for fuel. This tends to denude
local hills, resulting in erosion, and takes time and effort from
other more productive pursuits.
Amity has been trying to address this problem by promoting bio-gas
systems that take waste matter (manure, garbage, and so forth)
and use it to produce methane gas for cooking and lighting. A
typical family bio-gas system requires an outhouse, a pig or cow
pen, and fermentation tanks for the waste matter. The system works
as follows: Waste matter from the outhouse and livestock pen is
channeled into a buried, sealed, fermentation tank. There, as
the waste matter decomposes, it produces methane gas. The methane
gas is led off to the family house through a tube connected to
a cooking stove (and perhaps a gas lamp), producing enough gas
to meet all the cooking needs of a family. As the waste matter
decomposes in the sealed tank, it also produces pressure and heat.
The pressure drives the bottom layer of waste matter out of the
sealed fermentation tank through a channel into another smaller
tank, where it is stored for use as fertilizer. The heat kills
most of the bacteria and parasite eggs, hence making the newly-produced
fertilizer cleaner and safer than the untreated sewage rural communities
often use to fertilize fields.
Bio-gas systems provide a regular energy supply for cooking
and lighting, eliminating the need to buy fuel or cut down wood,
and they supply high quality sanitary fertilizer that can enhance
crop yields. The community as a whole also benefits in that the
problem of defoliation is reduced, and spread of disease becomes
less of a problem. Bio-gas systems can’t be used in all poor
rural areas because they only work efficiently in fairly warm
climates, and their construction also requires a larger financial
investment than extremely poor rural families can manage. However,
they are a good option for the "middle poor" in warm
climates because they pay for themselves quickly. In Hainan, government
estimates are that a household with a bio-gas system saves 1,400
yuan on fuel and 1,200 yuan on fertilizer per year, thus enabling
villagers to recoup the cost of the system in less than a year.
(Once built, a system is expected to last 20 years with relatively
little maintenance.)
However, the greatest virtue of bio-gas projects in Hainan is
that they seem to be largely self-sustaining once the ball gets
rolling. The main obstacle initially in Hainan, as in other places,
was to convince poor rural families that it was worthwhile to
invest a substantial sum of money in a family bio-gas system.
Even though Amity provided a subsidy of 500 yuan (about $62) for
the first 100 systems, villagers and local government still had
to come up with the remaining 1,000 yuan of the initial construction
cost. However, since these pilot systems went into operation and
their benefits became apparent, residents of neighboring villages
have been jostling to get in line to have
a team come and install systems in their villages as well—entirely
at their own expense. Since the initial 100 Amity-supported systems
were installed, 400 more have been installed and paid for entirely
by local people, and the teams have work orders that will keep
them busy for months to come. This, of course, frees Amity’s
time and finances to move on to other projects, hopefully starting
another fruitful chain reaction somewhere else.
This fall, after Wei Hong finishes her seminary library science
program, we expect to be in the United States for almost two months
(September and October) visiting family, friends, and supporting
churches. Our schedule is still rather murky, but we will probably
be operating out of my parent’s apartment in Holland, Michigan,
much of the time, and wandering a bit around the Midwest as well
as one or two points further west. We can still be reached here
in Hong Kong until the end of August, but in September and October
can be contacted through my parents:
Robert and Rita Snow,
Apt 440
145 Columbia
Holland, Michigan 49423-2979
Tel: (616) 393-9402.
E-mail: rsnows@juno.com
We hope to have the opportunity to see many of you during this
time to catch up on events in your lives and
also let you know what we have been doing.
God’s peace,
Don and Wei Hong Snow
The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 179
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