History Commons^™

The Danish Immigrant, Signe Nielsen Betsinger

The Bridge

In 1979 I had the opportunity to travel with a group to China where I had the good fortune to visit Tachai, a model agricultural commune. Up until the mid-1940s, generations of the inhabitants in this area had been impoverished. They had lived in caves in hills. Their crops had been destroyed over and over by drought, flooding, insects, and hailstorms. In 1945 land reform was insituted and the peasants set up the first mutual aid team in China. By 1953 they had a ten-year plan for reclaiming the land and building new homes. Just when the plan was finished …