First they urged me to spray, then they voted with their mouths.
I’ve lived in Eren Valley for over two years now, and the annual cost of labour and farmyard manure for the fields is quite a substantial sum. The locals I hire often can’t resist doing the sums for me, pointing out that growing things this way is far more expensive than simply buying them. Exactly—that’s precisely why I can’t bring myself to buy them! Those giving the advice intended to persuade me to buy, to avoid the cost and toil of growing it myself. But as for the one listening, the more they say it, the more reluctant I become to buy. No matter how exhausting or costly it gets, I must rely on myself. Rather stubborn, I know!
Although I handled everything from planting to harvesting the rice alone this year, I still hired some help for weeding when the growth was at its most aggressive in late spring.
1. ‘A Big Deal’ vs ‘Not a Big Deal’
I have my own versions of “not a big deal”, too. The lady weeding said my beans weren’t beautiful. I’m not entering a beauty pageant; it’s not a big deal if they’re not beautiful, as long as they’re edible. It’s not a big deal if the yield is low, as long as there’s a harvest. Even if there’s no harvest at all, it’s not a big deal—I’ll just bury the pods back into the earth as green manure…
The lady spent four days weeding and collected five hundred yuan in wages, with various free lessons thrown in. Before she left, she didn’t forget to give me a friendly tip: “A bottle of herbicide only costs ten yuan, you’ll have it sorted in minutes, saving both money and effort…”
II. Tasty vs Inedible
Taro and taro stems are both Hakka delicacies. Once the outer skin of the stem is stripped and blanched, they are delicious whether stir-fried or stewed in a soup. For my ‘harvest dinner’, the evening accompaniment is a soup made from taro stems and home-grown tomato sauce; the resulting thick tomato soup is incomparably delicious.
With such a sudden reversal of events, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
III. To eat, or not to eat? That is the question
Travelling to town, you pass through vast taro fields. During harvest, those that meet the required standards are harvested, leaving the stems laid out in tidy rows across the land, while the small shoots standing beside them are left unwanted. Although there are tubers beneath these stems, they aren’t ‘up to grade’—outside buyers find them too small, and locals avoid them for fear of pesticides. I have to admit, their taro looks the part: uniform and beautiful, two or three times larger than mine, and untouched by pests.
Every taro harvest season, the roadsides are lined with massive lorries, all laden with taro. To the left is a giant articulated trailer with a red Shandong number plate; further ahead are several more of these behemoths, all from the north—Hebei and Henan. When taking the photo, I made a point of capturing the load capacity on the door: 40 tonnes. A single load of 35 to 40 tonnes destined for tens of thousands of households in the north, including my own once. I just didn’t know then that the people who grow taro don’t actually eat it.
Taro is fed on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, sprayed every few days. I have witnessed the spraying from a distance and avoided it at all costs; they used to use large sprayers, but have now upgraded to drones. The farmers know exactly how toxic it is, so of course, they don’t eat it.
It isn’t just taro that the locals avoid. A local Qingming custom is to eat rice-skin buns stuffed with spring bamboo shoots and dried tofu; the rice flour is mixed with the juice of Monascus grass, giving them a vibrant green hue and a faint, grassy aroma. Some of the local women come specifically to my field to forage for this grass. Despite it being plentiful by the roadsides, they say: “We can’t eat those; they’ve been treated with herbicides.” It’s not that they are unaware of the dangers of pesticides and herbicides… which makes the situation all the more absurd.
IV. A Loss or a Gain?
This is why I am so wary of store-bought produce in my diet. It is not the variety or origin of an apple that concerns me, but the fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides behind it—and the question of why those who grow it refuse to eat it.
Others pity the money I “waste”, but I fear the chemicals they spray. I preach my “gospel” of pesticide-free farming wherever I go, but it often falls on deaf ears. In over two years, not a single local has been willing to listen, save for Old Fan in the neighbouring village. I know I lack the power to solve the greater problem by changing others, but I keep trying—tackling my own small issues within the confines of my own “Valley of Villains”.
I accept the cost of making choices based on the issues I care about.
I know my refusal to use chemical fertilisers and pesticides is a laughing stock, and that the reality is more complex than mere ridicule. Whether it is my taro stems or Monascus grass, the locals feel that getting to eat it is a win; I feel I have won too. Ultimately, they are voting for me with the very mouths that mock me.
