If you were a peasant farmer in southern China, by contrast, you didn't sleep through the winter.

相反地，生活在中国南方的农民，是不会在冬天里睡觉的，

In the short break marked by the dry season, from November through February, you busied yourself with side tasks.

从11月到来年的2月，农民们大多会做些副业，

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.

如扎竹篮，做竹帽，

You set one of your sons to work in the nearby village for a relative.

而且还会派自己的一个儿子到附近村庄的亲戚家里干活。

You made tofu and dried bean curd and caught snakes (they were a delicacy) and trapped insects.

不仅如此，还会做豆腐、做大酱、捕蛇（蛇的味道很鲜美）、捉昆虫。

By the time the turning of spring came, you were back in the fields at dawn.

到了立春时节（意味着春天快到了），农民日出晚归的务农生活又开始了。

Working in a rice field is ten to twenty times more labor-intensive than working ong an equivalently sized corn or wheat filed.

相对于那些机械化务农的农民，他们需要付出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.

据统计，每年一名种植水稻的农民的工作量有3000多个小时。

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，生活在那个时代，珠三角地区农民们的生活会是多么的辛苦，

3,000 hours a year is a staggering amount of time to spend working,

每年花费在工作上的时间居然有3000多个小时，这的确让人感到不可思议。

particularly if many of those hours involve being bent over in the hot sun, planting and weeding in a rice paddy.

尤其是大多数的时间都是在烈日当头下弯着腰在地里播种、除草。

What redeemed the life of a rice farmer, however, was the nature of that work.

而农民们唯一可以改变自己命运的，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.

这同在纽约做服装生意的犹太移民一样。这非常重要。

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，对于耕田的农民来说，付出与回报是显而易见的。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，农活是一件很复杂的工作。不会只是简单在春季播种，然后就可以在秋季里收获，

He or she is effectively a small businessman,juggling a family work force, hedging uncertainty through seed selection,

他们需要有效率地去经营运作，比如说需要整合人力，选择不同的稻种以保证一年的收成。

building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system, coordinating the complex process of harvesting the first crop while simultaneously preparing the second crop.

同时管理复杂的灌溉系统，做好协调准备工作，使得第一次收割和第二次的播种工作可以同时进行。