Phase 3: Interpreting Information
In this stage, I gather information from local contacts here in the village as well as information that I found online before arriving in the village. I have organized it into categories stating where it came from.

Phase 3: Interpreting Information
In this stage, I gather information from local contacts here in the village as well as information that I found online before arriving in the village. I have organized it into categories stating where it came from.
Background Information (From Phase 1)
Food distribution is transporting food from the supplier to the consumer. Food distribution can be the cause of building faster, more direct roads or creating warehouses to store food. There have been many issues in China with food distribution, such as fruit being transported in bags that previously contained animal feed. Some of the food does not have very far to travel because there is farm land right next to the village. The processing of the food (taking the raw ingredients and turning it into food products) takes place in town. For example, the Er Kuai is made from the rice right in the town, where people can buy it and take it home.
There are many different styles of cooking which require different ingredients. For example, there is Sichuan cuisine which uses the Sichuan pepper. There is also Hunan cuisine, which uses the red chili pepper. The cuisine of Xizhou is mostly fresh and does not require advanced equipment to transport. There is a lot of rice and wheat farming in Xizhou. The main agriculture products are rice, wheat, corn, broad beans, and garlic.
Another food industry that is important in the Xizhou life is fish. Because of the close proximity of the village and the lake, there is a high amount of traffic bringing fresh fish to the markets. The time that I am in Xizhou is peak fishing season (March-April)!
I found a chart by the United States Center for Disease Control which shows the food distribution chain on a small scale:
Many foods are imported into Shanghai because the foreigners want the same food they had in their home country. The average miles traveled by foreign steak that comes to Shanghai is 13,000 miles. Tea has always been a drink staple in the Chinese diet. For over 1,000 years, mules and horses have carried tea over a network of mountain trails in the Xizhou and Yunnan area.
The entire purpose of food transportation and distribution is that there is no one location which has all the needed resources. Say there is a Californian avocado plantation. The soil and sun are great, but there is a lack of water. The water has to be transported to the location where the food is grown. Because people far away from the avocado plantation also want to consume avocados, the produce has to be transported. This is the backbone purpose of transportation and distribution.
Information From 3-to-5's:
All of the original Baba have died and loca