ASIA / PACIFIC
February 6, 2017
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Farmers battered by Thailand floods find a golden upside
By Kaweewit Kaewjinda
The Associated Press
B
ANG SAPHAN, Thailand —
Nature regularly taunts the
farmers of Thailand by flooding
their fields, but this time she’s tossed some
of them a potential safety net: the chance
to pan for gold.
Crops in Bang Saphan district, a rural
community 150 miles south of Bangkok,
were decimated by heavy flooding that
affected much of southern Thailand in
early January. The opportunity of
villagers to eke out a meager living
diminished further when the waters
destroyed a local market.
Over generations, however, the villagers
have learned to turn adversity into
opportunity.
More than two dozen people were
searching for gold along the local canal,
called Klong Thong, or “Golden Canal.”
Many brought food and family along, as
well as pans for sifting and small glass
bottles to hold whatever they might be
lucky enough to find.
“It is local knowledge that has been
passed down through generations that
whenever there is a flood and the waters
have receded, locals will go searching for
gold,” said Boonyarit Daengraksa, deputy
chief of Ron Thong sub-district, through
which the canal runs. He said the flood-
waters destroyed the sides of the canal,
exposing potential deposits.
This is not a typical gold rush. Few if any
of these part-time prospectors are count-
ing on getting rich.
“We have nothing else to lose,” said
Nusra Tubtang, a 72-year-old pineapple
farmer whose crop was mostly wiped out
by the flood. “I come here to relieve stress.”
Nusra said that in three days she was
able to gather small particles of gold
that she could sell for the equivalent of
$35.
Villagers commonly find small flakes of
gold, and a few fortunate ones have come
across nuggets. In an exceptional case, a
villager found a big nugget and made a
$1,000 sale to the chief of the subdistrict’s
administration.
“With a pan or a sieve, a shovel, and a
can, and four to five hours, you probably
could find some gold here that you can sell
and earn at least 300 to 500 baht (about
$10 to $15). Villagers can use this money to
support themselves during this time of
crisis,” said Kritsada Muadnoi, a gold
buyer and adviser to the local government.
“We are lucky here that nature has
compensated us for the disaster.”
GOLDEN CANAL. Locals pan for gold in the
Klong Thong, or “Golden Canal,” in Prachuap Khiri
Khan province, southern Thailand. The canal, ex-
panded by devastating flash floods, has washed up
gold for villagers whose businesses were swept away.
(AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Pineapple farmer Samruay Kamlin, 59,
said just the prospect of finding gold
thrilled her. She only uncovered a few
flakes, but obsesses over the hunt day and
night.
“It is like a magic drug for me,” she said.
“I wake up at 3:00am thinking that I have
to go look over here or there for gold.”
Some, inevitably, are disappointed.
Local villager Yuang Padthong, 67, said
she earned around 2,000 baht ($57) a
month cultivating coconuts, but since her
crop and the local market were destroyed,
she tried her hand in gold panning. She left
empty-handed.
“There were more people here a few days
ago and they were able to find a lot. There
is a lot less to be found now,” she said.
Still, community leaders want to trade
on the area’s golden reputation to develop
it as a tourist site. Some small efforts were
made in that direction, but lights and
bamboo shelters erected before the recent
storms were swept away in the floods.
Boonyarit said the local government will
try to rebuild.
“It is important that we preserve this
tradition that dates back generations,” he
said.
China’s birthrate rises after one-child policy loosened
BEIJING (AP) — The number of births in China has
risen nearly eight percent in the year after the
government loosened its unpopular one-child policy.
China’s National Health and Family Planning
Commission said 17.86 million children were born last
year, an increase of 1.31 million from 2015. Nearly half of
the children born were to couples who already had a child,
the commission said.
China enacted its one-child policy in 1979 to control
population growth, enforced with fines and in some cases
state-mandated abortions. But it now faces a rapidly
aging workforce and the prospect of not having enough
younger workers to support them.
It has gradually allowed more exemptions to the policy,
such as allowing rural couples to have a second child if
their first was a girl, before moving to let all married
couples to have two children beginning in 2016.
The commission acknowledged that families remain
reluctant to have a second child for financial reasons, with
spiralling real estate costs and the intense demand for
places in China’s best schools driving many parents to
high-priced private institutions.
An increase in births also places pressure on China’s
already strained health system for pregnant women. The
commission said it would aim to train and hire 140,000
maternity health workers “in the coming years,”
according to state media reports.
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RISING BIRTHRATE. A woman and a toddler ride a tricycle taxi on
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