美国国家公共电台 NPR Water Spinach Farmers Struggle To Recover After Hurricane Harvey

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep with the deeper meaning of water spinach¹. It's a staple² food among some Asian-American families - they use them in stir-fries and soups - but it's grown commercially in only a few parts of the United States. And one of those places is Texas, which is still recovering from flooding after Hurricane Harvey. Many farmers in Texas are worried about what happens to their way of life. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE³: Water spinach goes by many other names - ong choy in Cantonese, rau muong in Vietnamese. But in this Cambodian-American community tucked down the gravel⁴ roads of Rosharon, Texas - about a half-hour south of Houston - a farmer named Paul Boeur says most folks here call it...

PAUL BOEUR: Trakuon.

WANG: Trakuon?

BOEUR: Trakuon.

WANG: That's the Khmer name for this stocky vegetable with arrowhead leaves and hollow stems. You can find water spinach in the produce section of many Asian-owned supermarkets around the country. Here in Texas, they're grown in greenhouses behind the homes of farmers like Sok Sum.

SOK SUM: You know what? This is hard work. When you see stuff at a store, the vegetable, you don't know how hard work over here is.

WANG: For a demonstration⁵, Sum grabs a meat cleaver⁶ from his kitchen and walks inside one of his three plastic-covered greenhouses, each more than half a football field long. And the soil is a thick bed of water spinach vines with stems sprouting⁷ just below his knee.

SUM: I get on my knee - like that.

WANG: He whacks⁸ close to the ground with his cleaver until he has enough for a small green bouquet⁹ of water spinach. Filling one 25-pound box with these bunches can take about two hours.

SUM: And you write your name on it. And then you're ready to go sell, make money.

WANG: Sum says he and his wife working together can usually make about 300 dollars a week to add to his disability benefits. Water spinach is the main source of income for most families here, but Sum hasn't been farming since Hurricane Harvey and the flooding turned his home into a ramshackle shell. It took about a week before the water receded¹⁰ and he and his neighbors could return to their houses.

SUM: When I opened the door, I was crying.

WANG: You were crying?

SUM: Yeah, I cry 'cause my house gone, even my clothes gone.

WANG: Sum's wife, Sreyaun Pin, says donations from churches and volunteer groups have helped them survive since Harvey.

SREYAUN PIN: Before, I'm very, very sad and struggle. Now it's better, but still need help. Yes, really still need help.

WANG: Pin lived in a tent with her husband and their 10-year-old daughter for weeks waiting for their house to dry out. It's still damp inside and smells moldy¹¹, but they've moved back in. Now, she says, they and many of their neighbors are worried about the fallen beams and torn plastic sheeting for their water spinach greenhouses.

VUTH YIN: The water kind of moved fast so it's damaged on the bottom, but I don't have time to fix it.

WANG: Vuth Yin lives down the road and says his greenhouses need work too after the flood.

So what is your plan now?

YIN: We have no idea yet.

WANG: Do you have flood insurance?

YIN: No, none. We don't have anything.

WANG: And even after their greenhouses are repaired, it's not clear when they can start selling water spinach again. At least one local supermarket says after Harvey, it stopped selling water spinach from Rosharon because it's worried about possible contamination from floodwaters. Still, Yin says as a former refugee from Cambodia, he's been through a lot of challenges.

YIN: Too much. Too much, you know.

WANG: Everywhere, he says, you have to fight for a piece of life. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, Rosharon, Texas.

1 spinach   

n.菠菜

参考例句：

• Eating spinach is supposed to make you strong.据说吃菠菜能使人强壮。
• You should eat such vegetables as carrot,celery and spinach.你应该吃胡萝卜、芹菜和菠菜这类的蔬菜。

2 staple   

n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类

参考例句：

• Tea is the staple crop here.本地产品以茶叶为大宗。
• Potatoes are the staple of their diet.土豆是他们的主要食品。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 gravel   

n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石

参考例句：

• We bought six bags of gravel for the garden path.我们购买了六袋碎石用来铺花园的小路。
• More gravel is needed to fill the hollow in the drive.需要更多的砾石来填平车道上的坑洼。

5 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

6 cleaver   

n.切肉刀

参考例句：

• In fact,a cleaver is a class of ax.实际上，切肉刀也是斧子的一种。
• The cleaver is ground to a very sharp edge.刀磨得飞快。

7 sprouting   

v.发芽( sprout的现在分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出

参考例句：

• new leaves sprouting from the trees 树上长出的新叶
• They were putting fresh earth around sprouting potato stalks. 他们在往绽出新芽的土豆秧周围培新土。 来自名作英译部分

8 whacks   

n.重击声( whack的名词复数 )；不正常；有毛病v.重击，使劲打( whack的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Lizzie Borden took an axe, Hit her father forty whacks. 丽兹玻顿拿起斧头，砍了爸爸四十下。 来自互联网
• Grizzly bear paw whacks camera out of position and jettisons it downstream. 大灰熊的爪子把摄像机移出了固定的位置并且把它扔到了下游。 来自互联网

9 bouquet   

n.花束，酒香

参考例句：

• This wine has a rich bouquet.这种葡萄酒有浓郁的香气。
• Her wedding bouquet consisted of roses and ivy.她的婚礼花篮包括玫瑰和长春藤。

10 receded   

v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题

参考例句：

• The floodwaters have now receded. 洪水现已消退。
• The sound of the truck receded into the distance. 卡车的声音渐渐在远处消失了。

11 moldy   

adj.发霉的

参考例句：

• She chucked the moldy potatoes in the dustbin.她把发霉的土豆扔进垃圾箱。
• Oranges can be kept for a long time without going moldy.橙子可以存放很长时间而不腐烂。