In the countryside, don't talk about dreams or feelings, just be a "living person"

At the end of June, my three-month internship on the farm ended.

For me, who has studied anthropology for five years, farm internships are neither employment-related nor academic research. It was originally just a life choice for me to change somewhere to lie down before preparing for my PhD application.

But unexpectedly, this choice completely changed my life. Now, I have become a "new villager" in Yinlin Village, Taiping Town, Conghua District, Guangzhou, and a "lifer" on a farm.

Frankly, living on a farm is not easy. If you want to eat, you have to make your own food, there is no takeaway; you can eat whatever is available on the farm, and if it is not available, you have to wait for delivery; there is no shopping mall in the village; there is no air conditioning in the accommodation; there are mosquitoes everywhere, and you are bitten every day More than a dozen bags...

No wonder when I decided to live in the village for a long time, my colleague’s sister asked me why I chose to stay?

I don't seem to have an answer, I just do it intuitively.

She asked again, if she couldn't make money here, would she leave?

I thought about it and at least I am sure that making money is not my main purpose of staying here.

She finally asked me, what is my dream?

"Wow, bigger question..." I didn't give her an answer in the end. Because after coming to the farm, my life took a completely "unexpected" track.

1. "Encountering an accident"

"Accident" is not a positive word in everyday speech. Encountering an "accident" always seems to mean misfortune.

However, in the field of anthropology, encountering "accidents" (Encountering Contingency) points to letting go of oneself and accepting and understanding the chaotic reality that is inherently intertwined and interfering with each other.

I have a long history of “accidents”. After graduating with a bachelor's and master's degree in anthropology, I was frightened by an article "I do not recommend studying for a PhD in anthropology." Global inflation of liberal arts doctoral degrees, anxiety about employment age, and the plight of domestic young teachers emerged. Fortunately, nothing is difficult in this world, as long as you are willing to give up. I decided to return to my hometown to work, but unexpectedly I encountered obstacles at every turn.

After resigning at the end of last year, my life seemed to have reached a freezing point with the winter. The dead branches and leaves are broken, and the whole body is pure, but it is difficult to imagine a spring. I struggled to find the context of my life, and all I wanted to do was hide in the ivory tower and apply for a doctorate again.

It was then that Food News News informed me that I had been selected for the farm intern program. In my opinion, cultivating land and growing vegetables and staying away from the world is a shameful but useful way to escape from a "normal" life again.

It was the first online gathering of interns, and everyone’s excited faces were crowded into the small boxes of Tencent’s conference. They care about food, organic farming, and understand planting and breeding. But the biggest common denominator between me and everyone seems to be only a dream of a farm.

2. In the countryside, don’t talk about dreams or feelings.

Strangely enough, there are always four or five people out of the ten people around me who have farm dreams. I don’t know whether it’s because anthropology students are tired of modern society, or more and more people are beginning to yearn for places beyond the city.

In fact, as early as my undergraduate period, I visited the famous Kadoorie Farm in Hong Kong. However, at that time, the compost and biological insect control methods introduced by the farmers went in and out of my left ear and right ear. I only concentrated on applying grass ointment to the mosquito bag.

In the ten years that I have passed away from organic farming, I have never thought about the connection between the words "farm", "organic" and "ecological". What captures my heart is Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring and Mr. Wuliu's life imagination, as well as the alternative life possibilities outlined by marginal anthropologists traveling to the edge of the world.

After graduation, I entered the public welfare field focusing on rural development. From Tibetan villages, Hani villages to Bulang villages, my colleagues and I often talk about rural cultural confidence with the villagers. We have a good time drinking and raising glasses to talk about the local complex that Fei Xiaotong said is "like half of the body inserted into the soil."

But cultural self-confidence failed to prevent villagers from leaving their homeland one after another.

There are few people in the village who are willing to stay and have never been swayed by the city's feasting and entertainment, but most people are forced to leave their hometowns due to the fragility of their livelihood and the promise of a better life. Life cannot be just about money, but life cannot be without money.

Probably because of this tension, I did not hesitate to apply for the farm intern program of Food News Agency.

This time when I went to the countryside, I didn’t talk about dreams, changes, or feelings. Instead, I freed my body from the shackles of my brain, freed myself from floating theories and chaotic reality, and went to farm and work. Fill yourself with real life and let the real soil support your body.

3. Busy but not involutionary farm life

After arriving at Yinlin Ecological Farm, I found that everything was different from what I imagined.

There are no endless festivals in the southwest villages, no eating meat, drinking, singing and dancing, instead, people have fun at sunrise and rest at sunset. Plant vegetables, sell vegetables, plant vegetables, sell vegetables... There is no endless work in the fields, and not every day can produce new flowers.

In the repetition and rhythm, I seem to realize some of the feelings of Yu Gong moving mountains and Kua Fu chasing each day. To tame inner boredom, mania, and melancholy, it’s probably not about looking for novelty and excitement, but learning to live with the common and real boredom.

In the first month after I came to the farm, I insisted on reading, writing and studying in my spare time, which naturally reduced the time I spent surfing the Internet. During the epidemic in Guangzhou in April, various nervous voices came from social media. Some people in the city even wanted to come to the farm to take shelter. However, I worked, ate, studied, and slept on the farm as usual.

I suddenly realized that although I was in a rural area only ten minutes' drive from the subway station, I was living almost isolated from the world. The big world is noisy and chaotic, but it does not hinder the small world of one field, three meals, heaven and earth, all things, and farmers.

In this busy little world, what I enjoy most is pulling weeds with my aunts.

Pulling weeds sounds simple, but it is actually a technical job. The aunts had one foot in the stalk, one foot in the ditch, one hand on the knees, and the other hand on the grass. But my core strength is poor, my waist and legs are not good, so I can only spread my apron on the ground and kneel down in the field to make grass. Naturally, I can't match my aunt's speed.

Once, when we were about to get off work, my aunt and I had not yet finished clearing the weeds in a shed. I panicked a little and thought to myself, because I was too slow, I might have to work overtime. But my aunt told me: "If you work hard, you can get off work after enough time. If you don't finish it, come back tomorrow. How can you never finish the work in the field?"

Being so diligent and relaxed opened the shackles in my heart. I am used to squeezing myself, and I am also used to being squeezed, and I will even subconsciously squish others - the endless cycle that cannot be changed no matter how much I read Marx seems to be starting to loosen.

4. The significance of ecological planting

I like to be with the weeds in the fields more and more. Gradually, I can recognize that this is the revolutionary grass (water peanut) that will grow wildly if it has roots. It is the delicious wild amaranth, which is the seed left over from last year's tomato. It is the cold and bitter potpourri (Solanum nigrum). ), this is the smelly Agolithistle, and that is the clinging Styrofoam. There are also ants of all sizes, groups of snails after the rain, grasshoppers jumping around...

How do their stories unfold? Do they also rejoice in the abundance of the fields?

I think of the book "Matsutake of Doom": In forests that humans have destroyed and discarded with capitalist tools, trees, insects, fungi, and bacteria freely continue their history on the land riddled with holes. No one knows where they are. They are like actors on a stage. They touch, separate, pull, and cooperate. Everything is an accidental collision.

Then the matsutake mushroom appeared, a food that is highly valued in the human world, and brought a new actor to the forest stage. But no matter whether people come or go, whether people live or die, the history of other living and non-living things continues, and the story of the earth is far from over.

Shitongsha once held a reading club for "Matsutake Mushrooms at the End of the World" and invited fellow mushroom harvesters to give their own opinions.

Suddenly, I understood the meaning of ecological planting. Improving the soil through composting, weed retention and conservation tillage both produces healthy and delicious vegetables and creates a more vibrant stage for other organisms.

Here, vegetables can become vegetables, insects can become insects, and people can gradually become complete people.

5. Stay and become a "living person"

You work on the farm and you eat on the farm. Everyone knows where their food comes from, and even grows the food with their own hands, which is practical and happy.

I used to pride myself on having a strong stomach, but in recent years I have developed a weak spleen and stomach due to fatigue and overeating. After eating and drinking on the farm for more than a month, I feel that my body has improved significantly, and my stomach and intestines have become dependent on the farm.

Halfway through my internship, I saw the lifeless fields sprayed with herbicides by the villagers next door, and I realized that I might never eat food from unknown sources as my daily staple food again.

At first, I was planning to rent a house in Guangzhou city so that I could go to the village to buy food and apply for the Expo. The new villager friends around me laughed at the idea.

In recent years, more than a dozen new households have arrived in Yinlin Village. They live in the village, eat breakfast at the entrance of the village, buy vegetables from the farm, help each other raise children, and play together, just like the residents of Peach Blossom Land. Most of them work online as their main occupation, and some come to the village to set up farms, open B&Bs and bakery workshops. No matter what they do for a living, they tell me with their actions that life is their main business in Yinlin Village.

Living with these living people day and night, my heart was touched, but I dared not make a decision.

Then came the turning point. Yinlin Ecological Farm plans to open a cafe in the large classroom of the farm and let a few of us young people who have just come to the farm run and manage it.

This invitation is too tempting - let's work together to reshape this glass room that no one visits on weekdays, think about how to use farm ingredients to create unique drinks, and how to implement more interesting ideas here.

So, after my internship expired in June, I didn’t want to leave Yinlin anymore. Instead, I turned around and rented an apartment and stayed and became a life-saver.

Ecological ingredients in the village are easily available for the operation of the cafe and for our daily meals. The old and new villagers of Yinlin Village also support and encourage each other. They study together today, dance impromptu by the pool tomorrow evening, and try new food methods together the day after tomorrow...

If you come to Yinlin, ride a bike to see the stretching lychee forest here, blow the wind here, care about what vegetables are grown in the fields, what insects grow, sit under the shade of the trees and relax, and do whatever fun things you think of and realize them, maybe you will Will stay here and live seriously like us.

About the "Ecological Agriculture Intern Program"

The " Ecological Agriculture Intern Program " launched in November 2021 is another exploration of Food News Agency to empower the industry. After multiple rounds of communication and selection, we finally matched 18 interns and went to 11 farms in 8 provinces and cities for internship periods ranging from 2 months to 1 year.

On July 24, Food News News visited Yinlin Ecological Farm and recorded two podcasts with the author (first from right) and Guo Rui from Yinlin Ecological Farm (third from right), so stay tuned.

Food News Society is a knowledge, information and writing community on sustainable food and agriculture. It is jointly initiated and managed by a group of partners who have long been engaged in agricultural and food practices and research. We believe that only by allowing consumers to understand the origin of food and creating a fair and just market and social environment for ecological agriculture practitioners can our food system be healthy, delicious and sustainable.

Weibo/Douban/Zhihu: Food News Agency

WeChat public account: foodthinkchina WeChat account: foodthinkcn

Official website: www.foodthink.cn