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The woman balanced a heavy ceramic jug on her shoulder as she trudged up the steep hillside.

Her bare feet stepping wearily around rocks and overtree roots.

Careful not to spill her water as she climbed a slope.

The burbling of the stream behind her faded, overwhelmed by the sounds coming from the

camp, perched on the ledge above the river.

Dogs barked and yipped, nosing through the refuse, piled behind the cluster of small wooden

brush-huts that made up the camp.

Twigs and branches crackled and stone-lined fire pits, the flames scorching the bottoms

of pottery vessels as mashes of starchy tubers and millet grains cooked inside them.

Stone ground against stone, over and over and over again.

Saving river cobbles in their hands, several women scraped them against a larger slab,

crushing and grinding acorns, breaking the nuts first into pieces and then down further

into a fine flower, which they scraped into pottery jugs.

The woman who had brought the water up from the river poured it into the jugs of acorn

flower and mixed it with a stick.

Later, the mixture would dry into a paste, which would keep for months, sustaining the

group during the lean winter months when the jagged hills of northern China were covered with snow.

People wandered into the camp carrying various items of food.

Baskets full of nuts collected from the hillside forests all around, grasses like millet,

hackberries growing wild, roots dug out from below the ground with tools made from sharpened

...