Northeasterners Living Purely Day by Day: No Scheming, Only Green Beans

This episode is a Northeasterner’s homecoming jottings.

During the National Day holiday, the two of us – working folk based in Beijing – took advantage of the autumn to head back home to Heilongjiang. We browsed morning markets, husked corn, went to bed at eight and rose at six, enjoying, for the first time in ages, a few days without chasing the clock. It turns out you don’t have to keep up with the world’s every change at all times, or rush to put yourself out there. Simply farming properly, shopping for groceries properly, eating properly – that alone fills a day to the brim.

Drying the autumn grain, stockpiling autumn vegetables, pickling cabbage, making dou bao (steamed stuffed buns) – these ordinary foods set the rhythm of a Northeasterner’s life, stitching together family labour and neighbourly ties. Why do Northeasterners still keep the habit of stockpiling autumn vegetables? How did people eat fresh fruit in winter decades ago? Why have canned yellow peaches become a childhood memory for generations of us? Through the shifting plates on a Northeastern family’s table, we can also trace decades of change in agricultural production, food supply and distribution.

At a Northeastern morning market, there is another curious observation. From home-garden vegetables to home-saved seeds to why the veg from your own plot tastes best – Northeasterners always seem to have a way of dragging grand topics back down to the everyday. Geopolitics, agricultural policy, whatever it is – it all ends up as “what’s for lunch?” You don’t need to elevate life into some philosophy. Shopping for groceries properly, eating properly – that in itself contains a judgement about food, soil and living. This quiet dissolution of seriousness may well be how ordinary people engage with public issues.

Back home again, we also glimpsed another side of rural life in the Northeast. In the past, after the autumn harvest came the long wintering indoors: stockpiling autumn vegetables, preparing New Year provisions, the whole village making dou bao together, lending a hand, busting with warmth to get ready for the cold months. Now, most of those left in the village are the elderly, and even the few able-bodied souls left must seize the farming off-season to head into town for work – clearing snow, driving for ride-hailing apps, delivering food. They become the city’s casual labourers, present everywhere you look. The winter once spent resting and recuperating has become yet another stretch of time spent earning a living, and the village has grown quiet. From wintering indoors to seasonal migrant work, the rhythm of life and livelihood in the rural Northeast is shifting.

When we were children, we were certain that leaving the Northeast meant a better life. Grown up, we find ourselves longing for the very days we once took for granted. After leaving the Northeast, how do we come to understand home afresh? Can those who left ever go back? And for the rest of us who cannot, how do we go on living well?

Stop orbiting, start spinning on your own axis. Isn’t buying groceries properly and eating properly just another way of saying: live life properly?

Host(s) of This Episode

Li Ye | Devoted fanatic of Northeastern morning markets – when you’re in the Northeast, you absolutely must find this person and share a meal. “Hoping that over the far horizon fate might change.”

Yu Yang | Loves sneaking bites of dou bao filling frozen rock-hard; however many, never a touch of heartburn

Timeline

02:13 Back to the village for a wedding and husking corn: the elders, living purely day by day

05:19 How to do home-making full-time on planet Earth?

08:35 Forty roosters crowing in unison before dawn – but the moment I woke up, I’d already won

09:40 The time difference between the Northeast and Beijing: time in the Amur River Basin seems to flow just a little slower…

11:38 AI, BI, low GI: If you’ll excuse me, Mr Fan – I must go and get styled

12:28 Autumn in the Northeast: no scheming here, only green beans, autumn glances and crab apples

15:00 The “Extreme Cold Apocalypse” simulator: 300 cabbages, 300 kg of potatoes – seal up the root cellar for winter

17:22 From spring onions to canned yellow peaches: how has the Northeastern winter food supply changed?

20:53 Flavours of the black soil on the tongue: vegetable sashimi and home-garden vegetables

28:01 “The vegetables grow freely, and so do I”

29:05 The warmth of everyday life? It’s actually just steam! A North-Pointing Guide to Northeast morning market food

32:17 Does instant friendliness come in doneness levels? How Northeasterners befriend strangers

33:53 “Geopolitics, agricultural policy – it all comes down to what’s on the table today”

37:40 The old days of wintering indoors: sealing window gaps, bundling stalks, and a village-wide dou bao tour

43:10 Villages growing quieter each winter – where have all the young people gone?

44:34 Processing corn at the factory in summer, clearing snow in town in winter: the seasonal odd jobs of Northeastern farmers

48:02 Is leaving the Northeast a kind of success?

🎵 This Episode’s Music

“Yilan Love Story” by Xiao Shenyang; “Homeland” by Liu Huan & Song Zuying

During the autumn harvest in the rural Northeast, every household would level a patch of bare earth at the edge of the field for piling, drying and shelling corn.