Hi everyone, a friend just passed this link on. It’s great, especially if you are interested in dung.

Julia writes: The film is called Yak Dung (牛粪), and is about the manifold uses of yak dung by Qinghai pastoralists on the Tibetan plateau. It's short (just 49 minutes) and definitely worth taking the time to watch. 

Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfpTHOhExGI

And a blurb:

With temperatures falling as low as -40º C on the plateau, yak dung is a valuable source of warmth for herdsmen. A non-polluting fuel, it is used to burn offerings to the gods and light oil lamps. Dung can be used to build houses and walls. It is the natural fertilizer of the grasslands, and it can be used as medicine and for washing clothes. Children can even make toys out of it, while artists sometimes sculpt figurines of the Buddha out of the material. The quality of the dung is an indicator of the environmental health of the plateau and the yaks that roam it. In short, for those of us who live on the plateau, dung is something we cannot live without. But the day we will have to live without it is getting nearer and nearer, and that day we will no longer be ourselves. Filmmaker Lanzhe is a Tibetan herdsman from Qinghai Province. This is his first documentary; Yak Dung has screened at festivals across China and in Sydney, New York, and Toronto.

Naomi

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Naomi F. Miller, Consulting Scholar
University of Pennsylvania Museum
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