Hand-Built ‘Valley of Outlaws’: How Farming and Homebuilding Can Unlock a Life of Freedom | Food Talk Vol. 28
In this episode, Foodthink finally had the chance to visit Evil Valley, share meals and living quarters with Kouzi, and personally experience the lifestyle she has cultivated over the past few years—what she describes as ‘shutting the door to the world and living simply under the open sky’. We cooked alongside her in a four-sided open-air kitchen, harvested ingredients straight from the neighbouring plot whenever we fancied them, and sampled her homemade fermented dishes while sitting beside a warming kang (heated brick bed).
Over the past two years, Evil Valley has seen its fair share of changes: two new structures have been added to the farm, and Kouzi, a farmer turned to agriculture mid-career, has steadily improved her cultivation skills. Beyond these physical changes, she has shared the philosophy driving them: by minimising the use of concrete and bricks, she constructed the first dwelling in the valley, designed to leave the softest possible footprint on the land. Through continuous refinement, she has now built three structures that offer a comfortable living space—warm in winter, cool in summer, suitable for both quiet solitude and hosting guests, and even practical for drying crops. As an adherent of ‘lazy farming’ (natural no-till agriculture), Kouzi favours perennial crops and aims to harvest rice twice a year. Her stated ideal? ‘Plant once, harvest for life.’ With poultry rearing and fruit growing added to the mix, she is steadily drawing closer to her vision of true self-sufficiency.
For Kouzi, this way of life fulfils her vision of freedom and self-determination for modern living. Yet when confronted with such a grand question, she chooses to focus on the infinitesimally small. Since relocating to the countryside, she has shaken off her previous semi-healthy state—once reliant on a daily handful of supplements—and is now in robust health. While this personal shift may not solve broader societal issues, she hopes her lived example will show others that autonomy is within everyone’s reach. It proves we can meet our own needs while leaving a lighter footprint on the natural world.
From urban dweller to someone who lives entirely in rhythm with the land, Kouzi’s story might just prompt us to rethink our modern way of life. Press play to join us as we explore her unique existence in Evil Valley.
Epi/sode/Guest
Kouzi
Resilient farmer and village distiller. Full-time food lover, part-time tiller, amateur writer.
Epi/sode/Host
Wang Hao
Foodthink editor. The highlight of any business trip? Swimming with Grandma Kouzi.
Epi/sode/Timeline
00:32 What’s it like to build your own home and live self-sufficiently in ‘Evil Valley’?
01:18 What is the true relationship between people and the land? How can we build homes that meet human needs while minimising our impact on the soil?
07:42 How much land does one person need? A modest personal plot. How big a house? 32 square metres. Using nine steel pillars and a lightweight steel frame, Kouzi built the largest dwelling in all of Evil Valley.
09:25 Drinking tea in Kouzi’s tea room with your feet resting in the paddy fields: look up to see a canopy of stars, lean forward to see the rice, listen to the chorus of frogs, and catch glimpses of fireflies.
11:02 In the city, we are surrounded by concrete walls, with our boundaries to the world entirely boxed in by cement. Is that why we feel we need sprawling living rooms, balconies, and houses grand enough to ‘match our status’?
15:35 Can a farmer who started mid-career, beginning with clearing barren land, achieve near-total self-sufficiency? Apart from some fruit, sugar, and salt, Kouzi hardly needs to buy anything anymore.
19:42 ‘Shut the door, live life open to the sky, and ask no favours of the soil’—a life experiment shunning profit, exploring how deeply modern people can carve out their own autonomy and freedom. Reflecting on urban life, it may not just be courier workers who feel caged by the system.
24:38 Low-input farming: aiming for ‘plant once, harvest for life’—as long as you’re not overly greedy at harvest and leave some seeds in the soil, the crops will keep growing. Kouzi’s goal is to make her little patch of land no-till within two years. The ideal of “autonomy over one’s life”: when faced with enormous social problems, people often say, “It’s a fine ideal, but I simply can’t achieve it.” Kouzi decided to adopt a mindset and approach that focuses on the infinitely small, beginning by building a house in the countryside and cultivating a plot of land, with the aim of at least lessening modern life’s encroachment on the individual.
30:41 Is non-profit “lifestyle agriculture” actually expensive?
33:20 Building your own home, constructing a rocket stove, working out farming techniques: in the internet age, we may easily “acquire knowledge”, yet we still need to “dialogue with it” through hands-on practice.
47:41 Could you go back to the city? You could, but there’s no need. Once you’ve grown accustomed to life beneath the clear mountain moon, you feel you have everything.
50:25 What does one eat in Wicked Valley every day? No need to keep asking this “ultimate question of life.” You simply eat whatever ripens in the fields. The harvest is plentiful, the cooking simple, and the food delicious.
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Production Team for This Episode
Producer: Xiaojing
Coordinator: Wang Hao
Cover Art: Wan Lin
Music: Banong
Editor: Wang Hao
Contact Email: xiaojing@foodthink.cn