Sweet Watermelons, Bitter Toil

From the outside, a farmer’s home is indistinguishable from a watermelon greenhouse: steel tubing for the frame and plastic film for the walls, yet it encompasses the entire daily life of a family. However, by early October, as the watermelon sales draw to a close, the farmers dismantle both their homes and their greenhouses. After returning to their ancestral homes in Zhejiang for a month’s rest, they return to Yannan Village to erect the greenhouses once again. Since the first farming family arrived from Zhejiang to settle in this southern Jiangsu village twenty years ago, this cycle of dismantling and rebuilding has played out every year.

China consumes more watermelons than any other country in the world. Over the last decade, China has produced over 60 million tonnes of watermelon annually—approximately 60% of the global total—while still importing large quantities from abroad. Such immense market demand, coupled with high profit margins, has attracted many “big players” into the industry, engaging in large-scale cultivation across hundreds or thousands of mu. In contrast, the farmers of Yannan Village are somewhat different; most operate as “husband-and-wife teams”, managing their own small businesses.

“Living on the Land”: Labour and Life Beneath the Greenhouses

When I first arrived in Yannan Village, I was struck by its beauty. A clear stream stretched from east to west, with neat Jiangnan-style dwellings lining both banks. Marble walls and metal fences enclosed spacious courtyards, within which stood two- or three-storey detached houses in primary tones of red, white, and grey. Some villagers planted trees and flowers in their yards, while others erected sculptures; it all looked elegant and imposing. This stood in stark contrast to the endless stretches of white plastic greenhouses nearby.

“The watermelon farmers watched me grow up.” Zhou Pan is nineteen, a daughter of Yannan Village born and bred. For as long as she can remember, people from Zhejiang have been in the village. They are hardworking, capable, and hospitable, always greeting her with a smile. In her memory, however, the farmers rarely crossed paths with the local villagers because they “lived on the land”.

This “living on the land” is a point where these watermelon farmers differ greatly from grain farmers, vegetable farmers, and most fruit farmers: they use the greenhouses as their homes.

From the exterior, the home looks no different from a cultivation greenhouse: steel pipes form the skeleton, supporting a rounded roof, with thick plastic film tightly bound around the frame. Inside, it is compact yet fully equipped, serving as a living room, bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and warehouse all in one. It takes only a dozen steps to get from the front door to the back, yet this limited space accommodates every aspect of a family’s daily existence.

Why do the farmers live in greenhouses instead of renting or buying houses locally?

Firstly, it relates to the nature of the watermelon. Watermelons are not suited for continuous cropping—that is, repeated planting on the same plot of land. Doing so leads to the accumulation of pathogens and the occurrence of pests and diseases that are difficult to eradicate. Furthermore, watermelons require vast amounts of irrigation, and the accumulation of sugar often comes at the expense of soil nutrients; years of watermelon farming cause soil fertility to drop rapidly, sometimes leading to sandy soil or compaction.

Added to this is the policy pressure to “maintain the 1.8 billion mu red line of arable land”, preventing the “non-agricultural conversion” of farmland and the “non-grain conversion” of crops. These directives, cascaded down to grassroots officials, have led many regions to introduce regulations banning greenhouse watermelons or requiring crop rotation to ensure each plot of land yields at least one harvest of grain per year. T City, where Yannan Village is located, is no exception. Brother Li, a watermelon trader of over ten years, told me that T City used to be “covered in greenhouses”, but because it was “no longer permitted by the state”, the area gradually shrank to the town where Yannan Village is situated.

Faced with the dual constraints of nature and policy, farmers typically adopt one of two strategies. One is grafting. Watermelons grown in fixed locations on a large scale often use this method—such as in some watermelon gardens in Panggezhuang, Daxing, Beijing—where watermelon seedlings are grafted onto pumpkin seedlings. This utilizes the latter’s vigorous root system to absorb nutrients while providing resistance to Fusarium wilt.

However, the farmers in Yannan Village hold a different view; they believe “grafted melons do not taste as good”. Instead, they choose seed propagation. Planting watermelons this way requires crop rotation, meaning a piece of land can only grow watermelons for one year before it must be switched to grain crops. Only after five to seven years can watermelons be planted there again, ensuring soil health and fruit quality. This tradition of cultivation is what forces the farmers to “live on the land” and shift between different plots of earth every year.

Living within the greenhouses was a decision driven by a need for efficiency and cost-saving. With the watermelon fields literally on their doorstep, the farmers’ lives and labour became seamlessly integrated. Take Wan Fang’s family, for example; a typical day in late July unfolded like this:

At 4:30 am, as the dim sky first showed signs of dawn, Wan Fang woke up. Careful not to disturb his sleeping youngest son, he stepped out of the corrugated iron bedroom and into the main living area built within the greenhouse structure. His mother had prepared a simple breakfast in the kitchen, while his wife, Zhang Jing, washed up in a grooming area partitioned off by curtains. His father and eldest son had already departed on an electric tricycle for the town’s agricultural market seven kilometres away to retail several baskets of watermelons harvested the previous night.

Before 5 am, Wan Fang joined Zhang Jing and his mother in the greenhouses to begin the day’s work. The harvesting process was often a silent one; the three of them moved in unspoken synchrony, bending low to the ground. Wan Fang led the way with shears, parting the vines to find ripe watermelons, clipping the stems, and placing the fruit along the narrow central path of the greenhouse. Zhang Jing and his mother followed behind, gathering the melons into baskets.

Those that were too small, shrivelled by the sun, or overripe and cracked were culled. Melons of similar size were grouped into the same baskets to meet the specific needs of different traders. Four holes were evenly spaced around the rim of each basket, through which two ropes were crossed and knotted for security. A carrying pole—made from a split piece of moso bamboo—was slid under the ropes. Two people would then shoulder the pole, one in front and one behind, working together to carry the watermelons to the roadside. A full basket weighed between 80 and 100 kilograms; within two hours, ten baskets—over a thousand kilograms of fruit—were lined up by the road.

For small-scale independent farmers, large supermarkets are not a viable partner. Some of the harvest is taken by middlemen (whom the farmers call “melon peddlers”) for downstream supply, while some goes directly to nearby small retailers. Wan Fang and Zhang Jing worked together to lift five baskets onto a trader’s truck, while the remaining five were loaded onto their own electric tricycle for the town market. There, several supermarket owners and fruit stallholders—long-term clients of Wan Fang—had already sent their requirements via WeChat the previous evening.

At the market, Wan Fang unloaded the melons along with the baskets, exchanged a few familiar words with the stallholders, and moved on to the next customer. Throughout the process, there was no discussion of price or weight. Once Wan Fang returned home and sent the bills, the money was transferred directly. “It’s been over a decade; this kind of trust only exists between us Zhejiang folk. It wouldn’t work elsewhere,” he noted. By the time he returned home to rest, the rest of the village was only just waking up, the air gradually filling with the noise of the day.

That day, many parts of the Yangtze River Delta were under a yellow high-temperature warning, with peak temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius; inside the greenhouses, it was roughly five degrees hotter. As I walked along the ridges, the greenhouses on either side felt like giant beasts opening their maws to exhale scorching heat. This is why Wan Fang’s family must finish harvesting by 7 am; any later, and the greenhouses become ovens. The hotter the weather, the earlier they rise; during the busiest periods, they are out in the fields at 2 am, navigating by headlamp. In the evening, once the temperature finally drops, they begin another round of harvesting.

Communities Across Borders: The Entrepreneurial History of Taizhou Watermelon Farmers

Twenty years ago, Wan Fang and his wife, Zhang Jing, were both migrant workers in their hometown of Taizhou, Zhejiang. Wan Fang worked as a repairman for injection moulding machines in a home appliance factory, while Zhang Jing used a hand-cranked knitting machine to make woollen sweaters in a garment factory. Wan Fang earned two to three thousand yuan a month—a respectable salary at the time—but the cost was a grueling schedule of twelve-hour shifts and enduring the whims of his boss.

When Zhang Jing became pregnant with their first child, the financial pressure on the family mounted. Around the same time, Wan Fang’s sister and her family had followed fellow villagers to Jiangsu to grow watermelons. Upon her return, she told Wan Fang that it was impossible to save money working in a factory, but if one was hardworking on the land, they could save thirty to fifty thousand yuan a year, all while living together and supporting one another.

Intrigued, Wan Fang decided to try his hand at farming for three to five years; if it failed, he would return to factory work. After their son’s first month, Wan Fang quit his job and joined his father in Yannan Village. An experienced farmer first allocated them a greenhouse and taught them the ropes of watermelon cultivation from scratch. Once they had mastered the craft, they “struck out on their own,” leasing their own land and starting their own business. Later, Zhang Jing moved to Yannan Village with their child and mother-in-law, reuniting the family of five.

Wan Fang’s story is not an isolated case; the entrepreneurial history of these farmers dates back to the 1980s. The Reform and Opening-up policy loosened the traditional peasant attachment to their ancestral lands, leading more people to seek livelihoods elsewhere. According to research by scholar Feng Ting, in 1983, five farmers from Maoshe Township in the Huangyan District of Taizhou, experienced in melon farming, went to a military farm in Shanghai to grow open-field watermelons. Their economic success paved the way for Taizhou locals to lease land and grow watermelons far from home. Today, there are 43,000 such migrant farmers from the Huangyan District alone, let alone the entirety of Taizhou.

“Yunnan, Hainan, Guangdong, Shandong, Jiangxi, Henan… across the whole country, wherever there is land, you’ll find Taizhou people growing watermelons,” says farmer Jiang Fu with a sense of pride. Now nearly sixty, Jiang Fu and his wife have grown watermelons in Shanghai, Wuxi, Zhoushan, and beyond. It wasn’t until they arrived at Yannan Village in 2005 that they bid farewell to their nomadic life; they have remained there for twenty years.

Currently, there are around twenty Taizhou farming households settled in Yannan Village. They differ from hired hands employed by large agricultural estates, and they are distinct from migrant workers who have moved into secondary or tertiary industries. Instead, they resemble the entrepreneurial “micro-bosses” described by anthropologist Xiang Biao in his study of “Zhejiang Villages”—individuals who proactively expand outward in search of a better living. Unique business wisdom is passed down through these networks of fellow villagers year after year.

As outsiders who must rotate their crops annually, “finding land” is the critical challenge. However, the cost of finding land individually is high and fraught with uncertainty. Consequently, experienced leaders have emerged among the farmers to negotiate lease prices, scale, and site selection with village committees on behalf of the group. These leaders then allocate the plots and coordinate essentials like water, electricity, and housing, allowing the farmers to settle into their greenhouse homes.

Despite this mutual aid, the farmers maintain a tacit boundary, managing their own separate businesses. Stealing clients is a cardinal sin. Once, a farmer stopped a passing trader to try and sell his watermelons at a low price, unaware that the trader was a long-term client of another farmer. When word spread, the offending farmer was severely condemned by his fellow villagers.

It is not just people who migrate, but also the resources of their homeland. For instance, I noticed that the baskets used for the watermelons are remarkably similar: made of imitation leather, shaped by crossed thick iron wires, and finished with coloured edging. Wan Fang told me these baskets were brought from their hometown; if cared for, “they can last ten years without a problem.”

Moso bamboo, abundant in Zhejiang, also crosses geographical borders alongside the people. Split in half, it is used to make carrying poles that are both elastic and resilient. The curved side rests against the shoulder, and the hollow side faces upwards, capable of supporting a hundred kilograms of watermelons.

Each farming household leases between ten and thirty acres of land. While this is far smaller than the holdings of large-scale agriculturalists who lease hundreds or thousands of acres, the workload is immense for these farmers, most of whom operate as husband-and-wife teams in their fifties or sixties. To survive, they often push their time and energy to the absolute limit.

For example, in early May, when the first harvest hits the market, demand spikes suddenly. They will work over fourteen hours a day, from dawn until dusk, with almost no respite other than a hurried meal. On such days, they can harvest seven to eight thousand kilograms of watermelons, filling two entire lorry beds.

Because both their labour and their daily lives “revolve around the watermelons,” their connection to the city is almost entirely limited to the land. Gathering with fellow villagers to play mahjong, or occasionally visiting a nearby town for a stroll or a meal, constitute their few leisure activities. Even during the Lunar New Year, they spend the holiday “right there in the fields.”

From early October to mid-November is the farmers’ brief holiday. In early October, as sales wind down, they dismantle the greenhouses one by one; the last to go is their home. Silver steel pipes and black water hoses are bundled together and stacked by the roadside. Valuable electronics are left in the care of trusted villagers, while other household items are dismantled and stored on vacant land, covered with waterproof plastic sheeting. The process is conducted at a frantic pace to clear the land for the sowing of winter wheat in Yannan Village. By mid-November, as the farmers return, they drive steel pipes back into the ground where the late rice has been harvested, beginning the cycle once more.

A Summer of Unease: Typhoons, Heatwaves, and Volatile Prices

Within the year-on-year cycle, subtle changes have begun to take hold.

“There have been so many oddities this year.” In late September 2024, Wan Fang noticed something was missing. In his twenty years in Yannan Village, the fragrance of osmanthus usually filled the air by the eighth lunar month, but this year, the flowers were slow to bloom.

The watermelon market was equally erratic. Throughout May and June, the farmers were gripped by anxiety. Their primary crop, the “8424” variety, was a market favourite; however, as the first batch hit the market just before the May Day holiday, wholesale prices plummeted from an initial four yuan per jin to a mere sixty pence.

“In the morning it was selling for three yuan eighty, and by the afternoon the wholesalers would say three fifty. I didn’t want to sell, but two or three days later it would drop straight to two yuan. At that point, you have no choice,” Wan Fang said helplessly. Jiang Fu began to worry whether he should continue with this line of work next year. Whenever he opened TikTok, he would come across short videos of farmers who had taken out loans to rent thousands of mu of land, only to commit suicide by drinking pesticide after being unable to bear the price crash.

Under normal circumstances, watermelons from different regions hit the market at different times, creating a diverse and overlapping supply: in February, watermelons from low-latitude provinces such as Hainan and Yunnan ripen first; these are followed by early-maturing varieties from North China greenhouses in March and April. Around May Day, the first greenhouse crop from the Yangtze River Delta arrives, and by May and June, open-field watermelons from various regions enter the market. From June onwards, watermelons from the northwest, including Gansu, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, begin to appear.

However, unusually low temperatures last February delayed the flowering and fruit-setting period for early-maturing watermelons, pushing their market entry back to late April or even May. By May, an early heatwave in North China caused open-field watermelons to ripen prematurely, leading them to flood the market at the same time as the Yangtze River Delta’s greenhouse crop. This sudden oversupply caused prices to crash across multiple regions; in Shandong, Henan, and northern Jiangsu, wholesale prices once dropped as low as two or three mao per jin.

What Wan Fang did not anticipate was a dramatic turn in the market during July and August, with prices suddenly soaring to double those of the same period in previous years. He speculated that while many newcomers had entered the watermelon business in recent years, the price crash in May and June had deterred many of them, some of whom chose to pull up their vines to cut their losses. Meanwhile, the prolonged heatwave left people desperate for the cooling relief of watermelon. The farmers of Yannan Village, who operated on a small but stable scale, happened to fill this market gap.

Extreme heat brought the farmers a mixture of joy and sorrow; while watermelons sold better, working in the greenhouses became an ordeal. Excessive exposure to the sun could ruin the fruit, so some farmers applied more fertiliser to make the vines more lush, using the leaves as a natural sunshield for the watermelons. The trade-off was that the rinds became paler and the sugar content suffered. Faced with the unpredictability of nature, they could only cautiously seek a balance, knowing they could never cover every base.

The “oddities” also included a powerful typhoon, the likes of which had not been seen in seventy years. Typhoon Bebinca made landfall in Shanghai the morning before the Mid-Autumn Festival before sweeping through southern Jiangsu. The farmers huddled in their homes, listening to the raging wind and rain for seven or eight hours before it finally subsided in the evening. Many greenhouse films were torn away, steel pipes were bent, and watermelons were left strewn about in ruins.

No one could have predicted that they would encounter the strongest typhoon to hit Shanghai since 1949. Taizhou is mountainous with little flat land and is prone to typhoons; one of the reasons the farmers settled in Yannan Village was for its stable climate and level ground. Because of this, when the village committee promoted commercial insurance to them a few months prior, some farmers felt it wasn’t worth buying, despite government subsidies covering up to 90%. Those who had taken out insurance breathed a sigh of relief, eventually receiving payouts ranging from a few hundred to two thousand yuan per mu, depending on the damage.

How great were the losses caused by this typhoon? Wan Fang broke down the figures for me: each mu of land requires about ninety pairs of steel pipes at twenty yuan a pair, plus about a thousand yuan for the film and other fittings like connectors. The total cost for one mu of greenhouse is three thousand yuan. For a farmer with an average of twenty mu, the loss on the greenhouses alone could reach sixty thousand yuan, and since market prices and yields are unstable, the total loss is difficult to estimate.

Certain pieces of age-old wisdom have been passed down. A section of hollow steel pipe, slightly thicker than the greenhouse pipes, is fixed to the railing of an electric tricycle’s rear bed with wire. By gripping one end and applying force, Wan Fang can bend the typhoon-warped pipes back into shape. He smiled and said, “If I don’t do this, I can only sell them as scrap for seventy mao a jin. Every little bit helps.”

What Lies Ahead: After the Farmers Grow Old

“I have three homes,” Zhang Jing told me, sitting by the small window of the bedroom.

“Which one do you prefer?”

She thought for a moment. “The house in the countryside is spacious, and the flat in the city is comfortable. But in this home, the whole family can be together.”

The bedroom where we sat was actually a container-style iron hut. Inside were a dismantleable wooden bed and wardrobe, a fan, an air conditioner, and a single small window. It usually served as Wan Fang’s bedroom, but during the winter and summer holidays, Zhang Jing would move in with her two children.

Home is split into two parts. The bedroom is usually separate from the poly-tunnel that serves as the main house, providing a space for more private living. The poly-tunnel itself is relatively public, partitioned into different zones: upon entering through the front door is the living room, where watermelons, farm tools, and fertilisers are kept, and where business deals and guests are usually received. Further in, to the left, is the bedroom for Wan Fang’s parents, accessed by its own door and containing a bed, a cupboard, and a small television. Beyond that are the dining area and kitchen, with a gas stove and an induction cooker resting on a hearth raised with bricks.

Zhang Jing yearns for a higher quality of life. It was her idea to use curtains to carve out a dedicated washing area in the right-hand corner of the living room, and whenever she cannot bear the sight of the dirty plastic sheeting on the roof, she lays down a new layer. Yet, because the home is dismantled and rebuilt every year, everything feels temporary. “If I buy nice things online to spruce it up, we’ll just have to move again in a year; what’s the point? If we could stay for five or six years, I could make it proper. But moving once a year… in the blink of an eye, another year is gone.”

Wan Fang still remembers the great snow of 2008, which fell incessantly for three days and nights, collapsing all the poly-tunnels. Even in the face of such despair, the family gritted their teeth and persevered. In recent years, however, he has felt increasingly lost, unsure whether to continue after each single year of toil.

One early morning five years ago, he woke suddenly to find that every part of his body, save for his hands and head, was paralysed. After being rushed to the hospital, the doctor urged him to work less. He found this laughable: “What are ordinary folk supposed to do if they don’t work?” Having spent a lifetime labouring in a stooped or squatting position, he notes that “not a single watermelon farmer has a good back.”

To cope, they have invented ways to alleviate the strain on their backs and legs. For instance, there are small stools that can be “worn” on the legs; made of polystyrene, they are incredibly lightweight, allowing the farmer to sit down wherever they are while working in the fields.

Since their social security is tied to their hometown, they endure minor ailments as best they can; for serious illnesses, they drive back to the hospitals in Taizhou. Wan Fang’s father suffers from a severe cough every winter, a lingering effect of the pneumoconiosis he contracted while working in the mines in his youth. Zhang Jing buys medicine from the hospital back home and posts it to Yannan Village. This is not unique to Wan Fang’s family; compared to the broader migrant worker population who have left both their land and their villages, the healthcare and pension struggles of these migrant cultivators (referred to by scholars as “surrogate farmers” or “farmer-farmers”) are even less visible.

Despite having spent twenty years in Yannan Village, Wan Fang and Zhang Jing have no intention of staying to become “New Jiangsu residents”. To ensure their children can attend better schools, they bought a house in the Taizhou county town, meaning Zhang Jing must constantly commute between three homes: the ancestral village, the new town house, and Yannan Village.

Wan Fang often says his parents are getting older and their health is declining, suggesting they might return home after another two years of farming. Yet, he cannot say what he would do if he stopped growing watermelons. The techniques he was once proud of have long since been superseded, and the hand-operated looms that Zhang Jing can master are no longer used by any garment factories.

Would they want their children to take over the business? To this question, both Wan Fang and Zhang Jing shake their heads firmly. Growing watermelons is too bitter, too exhausting. They save every penny they can, not just for their current life, but to prepare for their children’s future: the bride price in their hometown has soared to 250,000 yuan—meaning 500,000 for two sons—not to mention cars and houses. They hope their eldest son can find a job after graduating from vocational school; farming is the absolute last resort, only if there is truly no other way.

In early October, I visited Wan Fang and Zhang Jing’s ancestral home in the countryside of Taizhou. The village is encircled by hills; looking out from the south-facing window of Zhang Jing’s house, a narrow stream cuts through the village from east to west, with dots of white scattered among the green grass on the opposite bank—the neighbours’ sheep. Zhang Jing led me up the hill to the north of the village, where some citrus trees are planted, though much of the land is now covered in tall weeds.

Zhang Jing told me that there is very little arable land in the village; each person is allocated only one or two mu, enough only for a small amount of rice and maize. Terraced fields were once carved into the hills for vegetables and tea, rising in neat, beautiful tiers, but they have gradually fallen into disuse. Nowadays, few people remain in the village to farm; they either work in factories, start small businesses, or, like Wan Fang and Zhang Jing, seek land elsewhere.

Over the years of growing watermelons, Wan Fang’s family has used every bit of savings to renovate their house; the original two-storey cottage has been transformed into a spacious, bright four-storey building. Yet, they only live in this house for a short period of a month and a half, starting from early October each year. Whether it is New Year’s Eve, the Lantern Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, or the Mid-Autumn Festival—dates of profound significance to the Chinese people—they can only spend them on foreign soil.

On the eve of the National Day holiday in Yannan Village, the news broadcast from a radio echoed through the poly-tunnel: “As National Day approaches, the Five-star Red Flag flutters in the breeze along the streets, and cities across the country are adorned with lanterns and streamers, hosting a variety of celebrations…” The holiday travel had nothing to do with them; this was precisely when they were busy moving. Accompanying the voice of the broadcast, under a dim yellow light, Wan Fang’s mother was cooking. Strips of pork rind fell into the hot oil with a loud sizzle, and pungent smoke quickly filled the tunnel. His father sat before the stove, adding firewood and waiting for the water to boil. The glow of the fire reflected on the door, bathing the ‘Fu’ character in a deep red.

References

Feng Ting, ” ‘Social Market’ + Digitalisation: A Path to Common Prosperity—An Investigation based on the Practice of ‘Watermelon Farmers’ World’ in Huangyan”, *Zhejiang Social Sciences*, Issue 5, 2022.

Huang Zhihui, *Formless Domination: Surrogate Farmers and Their Underclass World*, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2013.