14 Years After Returning Home: Finally Starting to Farm

I. Almost Leaving

Many years after returning to the village, there was a time when I considered leaving for good. A few years ago, the village fields began to be leased out to large-scale farmers. In our village—known in the Jiangnan region as a ‘home of chrysanthemums’—we were the only family still cultivating chrysanthemums and rice. There were a few more rearing silkworms; besides us, there were a handful of other households here and there.

My father asked hesitantly if we should lease out our land too.

Perhaps he felt a touch of guilt, as if we were getting in the way of the larger operations.

◉ Click the image to read the story of the author planting their final plot of Hangzhou white chrysanthemum in the village.

Since leaving Beijing to return home in 2011, we have remained in our home village, though we have weathered several changes along the way.

Initially, my motivations were simple: I wanted to return to my village and start a small organic farm. In my mind’s eye, the farm surrounded my family home, lush and teeming with life. Even then, I knew that eco-farming was hardly a lucrative venture (though they say it can put food on the table), but the chance to live in such an environment felt like a fair trade-off—which is exactly why I admire Tang Liang. However, for a penniless twenty-five-year-old second-generation farmer with virtually no agricultural or professional experience, failure was almost inevitable. I couldn’t even manage to rent a piece of land in my own village.

◉ Tang Liang (back row, far left), a young man who returned to Jintang, Sichuan, has put down roots on the land with his family. His success is a source of envy for many of his peers who returned home only to face hardship, and it has expanded the horizons of other young people imagining a different way of life. Click the image to read Tang Liang’s story. Photography: Tang Wei

After my dream of owning a farm collapsed, I first went to Huzhou, not far from home, where Old Shen was growing ecological rice. I arrived in early spring, and the fields were empty. The original workers had left, leaving only a man in his eighties to keep an eye on things. Old Shen’s funds were nearly exhausted; he was searching for workers and capital simultaneously. One villager, wanting to raise the land rent, came to argue with him constantly. Early spring in Jiangnan is truly damp and cold, especially in the mountains. Before long, I had chilblains on all ten fingers. Every night, I had to soak my feet for a long time before I dared go to bed. In the dead of night, Old Shen’s newborn son often cried. His farm, too, was precarious. A few months later, I left.

II. Finding a Village

It was a year later by the time I picked up the dream of returning home again. This time, it wasn’t about starting a farm, but returning to the sericulture traditions of Jiangnan, working with my family on the craft of making silk quilts. So, for many years, while most returning youth were farming the land, we were actually making quilts. After a few years of making silk quilts, we restored the ecological cultivation and traditional processing of Hangzhou white chrysanthemum on a single mu of land in the village.

During this time, as a ‘veteran’ returnee, I saw too many failed ecological farm startups. Moreover, we never viewed returning home as a business venture and had no desire to expand, so we never rented any land, using only our own ‘one mu and three fen’ (quite literally).

When others introduced the ‘Plum and Fish Farm’, I felt embarrassed because the area was so small; the name felt like a bit of a misnomer. The year before last, we simply changed the company suffix from ‘Family Farm’ to ‘Sericulture Culture’.

◉ In this 2023 podcast episode, Yu Jiangang shares a detailed account of his experience returning home to produce silk quilts and Hangzhou White Chrysanthemums. Click here to listen to the podcast.

We began searching for other villages in earnest, focusing on the northwest of the county town to ensure we remained close to home and could easily handle the school run. My thought was to leave my own village, but stay within the sericulture region—finding a place with a similar culture so I could carry on with my work.

To be honest, after so many years in my own village, the social drain of dealing with parents and relatives in a community where everyone knows everyone had become utterly exhausting. I felt it would be better to have some physical distance; out of sight, out of mind.

A calligraphy teacher recommended a village in Wuzhen, mentioning a house for rent situated right next to a vast mulberry grove—perfect for us, he said. Unfortunately, we were a step too late; by the time we arrived, it had already been rented out as a warehouse.

Then there was another village specifically planned some time ago to attract ‘city folk’ to start businesses, with most of the original villagers having already relocated. The company managing the village had been operating for a few years but had now reached a semi-stagnant state.

I also visited the village where a friend runs a teahouse. Most of the residents seemed completely detached, merely waiting for the expansion of the main road to the west so they could collect a long-awaited, substantial compensation payout.

My wife, Yuhui, found a house online, set some distance from the main road. In front of the property was a wooded area, and upon closer inspection, I saw rows of withered mulberry trees. As it turned out, the landlord had planted nursery stock after giving up sericulture. She told us that if we wanted to raise silkworms, we could use her silk trays. However, the house was being rented by construction workers at the time, and we would have to wait until the end of the year.

The thought of the immense effort required to clean, renovate, and organise the three-storey house and the mulberry grove was too much, so Yuhui eventually declined the offer.

After that, we returned to the ‘city folk’ entrepreneurial village a few more times, hoping to find a suitable property.

A struggling guesthouse came up for sale, and Yuhui arranged a viewing. ‘Are you planning to open a B&B?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘a guesthouse doesn’t need a full renovation; it can be used as a studio for the silk quilts right away.’

I then asked the management company if there was any land available. There was one plot, with an annual rent of 3,000 yuan per mu. When I asked why it was so expensive, they explained that the land was suitable for leisure facilities and ‘experience’ tourism. I told them I wasn’t interested in attractions—I just wanted to farm. In that case, there was nothing left; all the standard farmland had been leased by the company for tobacco cultivation.

I can’t recall if that was the last time we scouted for a village. Regardless, the desire to leave continued to grow.

◉ In a lengthy article about returning home to start a business with his wife, Mei Yuhui, Yu Jiangang describes the various models of rural development he has encountered. Click the image to find out more.

III. Familiar Strangers

It wasn’t until the autumn of 2024 that the village’s current crop of Osmanthus silkworms suffered sudden poisoning. The villagers were convinced this was directly linked to the use of drones for pesticide spraying on the paddy fields leased by the large-scale farmers. I simply couldn’t bear to see the few remaining silkworm-rearing households stop; this is a village tradition that has endured for centuries. After several rounds of negotiation with the farmers and the village head, we finally decided to transfer 14 mu of the paddy fields bordering the mulberry groves over to us for ecological farming.

The problem, however, was that I had very little experience in rice cultivation, let alone ecological farming.

Rice was, truly, a familiar stranger.

I remember being in the third year of primary school when my mother dragged me into the fields to transplant seedlings, sternly snapping, “You’re a farmer, yet you don’t even know how to farm. Who’s going to feed you in the future!” My mother could never have imagined that what eventually supported our family wasn’t farming, but her and my father taking jobs in a factory. Between that and my continued education, I never had another opportunity to master the art of transplanting.

◉ Though my mother disapproved, she continued to support my dream of returning home through her own hard work. Click the image to read the piece I wrote about her.

The last time I worked the land before leaving home was during the summer holiday after the Gaokao. I remember transplanting rice seedlings in the gathering twilight, all while my form tutor kept calling me to ask about my results.

After that, I left for university in Jilin and later worked in Beijing; I didn’t set foot in a field again for years. Following my resignation in 2011, I did rural charity work in Longzhou, Guangxi, where I collaborated with the villagers on a rice-duck farming project: monitoring apple snails, distributing ducklings, and occasionally checking that no one was secretly using pesticides. But it wasn’t truly farming.

◉ While in Longzhou, Guangxi, I herded cattle with the village’s old Party Secretary. Click the image to read about my return to Longzhou after more than a decade.

The few months I spent at Old Shen’s Eco Farm coincided with the winter fallow; the paddy fields were barren, and I didn’t spend any time in them. The only exception was after I had returned to Shanghai for work; unwilling to let it go, I spent every weekend returning to the village to farm. I planted one mu of ecological rice. Later, it was hit by sheath blight, and the harvest was dismal.

IV. The Maze of Farm Inputs

Planning the cultivation of 15 mu of ecological rice proved to be quite a challenge. The sheer variety of agricultural supplies alone was dizzying!

Compared to over a decade ago, there are now many more commercial organic fertilisers on the market. Granular organic fertilisers, when applied via drones, are far more efficient than traditional methods.

There is a local organic fertiliser manufacturer that promotes a type of “organic slow-release fertiliser“. Their introduction mentions “using agricultural waste such as straw to extract lignin, cellulose, alginic acid, and chitosan—natural macromolecular organic substances—for modification and activation”. However, upon further investigation, I discovered that its organic matter content was only 15% (whereas the standard requires over 30%). Looking closer at the implementation standard it cited, GB 15063-2020, it turned out to be a compound fertiliser!

Even among qualified organic fertilisers, there are numerous types. By shape, they come as powder, granules, or in ton bags. According to the implementation standards, there are general organic fertilisers (NY/T 525-2021) and biological organic fertilisers (NY 884-2012). The price difference can be tenfold—the cheap ones cost 400–500 yuan per tonne, while the expensive ones go for 4,000–5,000 yuan per tonne. The only constant is the opacity: it is impossible to know where the materials actually come from, and the ingredients are often vaguely described.

To receive government subsidies, one must purchase from organic fertiliser manufacturers on the government’s approved list.

After much comparison, we ultimately chose the “ancient” method: rapeseed cake. The raw materials are transparent and sourced locally, saving on long-distance transport. Of course, this means it is difficult to apply mechanically and we cannot claim any subsidies.

The most absurd part was the seedling trays. We commissioned an organic farm in Suzhou to help with the seedlings, only to discover the day before transplanting that Suzhou uses 9-inch trays, while our local area uses 7-inch trays. Because the sizes differed, the transplanter could not be used!

◉After comparing the options, I gave up on using any commercial fertilisers and chose traditional rapeseed cake, which must be applied by hand.

V. Weed and Pest Control Strategies

From the beginning of February to mid-June, I spent my time drafting and revising the cultivation plan. I travelled to several places—Zhenjiang, Wuzhong, Yichang, Ningbo, and Kunshan—to seek advice on farming from rice experts, returnee youth, and ecological teachers. First, I established a basic approach to weed control:

1 Before planting, flood the fields to create an ideal hydrothermal environment for weeds; wait for one or two waves of growth before tilling and planting;

2 Use transplanting instead of direct seeding;

3 Ensure the fields are perfectly levelled so that after transplanting and flooding, weeds are less likely to grow.

I also settled on a strategy for pest control:

1 Plant sparsely to ensure good ventilation;

2 Plant flower strips along the edges of the fields to attract natural predators;

3 Accept a higher number of pests in the first year; once the spiders arrive in the second year, things will improve;

4 As a last resort, use biological agents or bio-pesticides.

However, I had forgotten that the essence of agriculture is uncertainty… The first rule of weed control—letting weeds grow before transplanting—works best when the land is fallow in the second half of the year.

The large-scale grain farmer who previously used my fields had grown wheat, which is usually harvested around May 20th. This left only one month before transplanting in mid-to-late June—not nearly enough time for the weeds to grow.

As if the universe knew I was trying to farm, the wheat harvest this year was delayed by a week! Once the wheat was finally harvested, I hurried to contact a tractor driver I knew for rotary tilling, only to find he was busy harvesting and tilling for a large-scale farmer with 2,000 mu. As it turned out, every tractor driver in town was working for the big farmers!

By the time all the calls were made and the fields were tilled, it was already May 31st—the Dragon Boat Festival!

◉The sustained high temperatures of the summer of 2025 made this year’s life as a rice farmer even more difficult. On this day, the temperature peaked at 38 degrees; we had to be in the fields working before the sun even rose.

◉ We work until the sun sets, calling it a day only when darkness falls.

VI. Cultivating the Fields

Whether it is ecological or conventional farming, tractors are indispensable. Modern tractors can easily cost hundreds of thousands of yuan; small farms and households like ours can only rely on agricultural machinery co-operatives. Since I began farming, I have realised that the operational methods for this machinery have been profoundly influenced by large-scale conventional agriculture. The most prominent example is land levelling.

Traditional Chinese agriculture places immense importance on levelling the fields. In my father’s words, they must be “like a mirror”. Only in perfectly level paddy fields can weeds be controlled through irrigation, giving the rice a head start.

However, large-scale conventional rice cultivation, which depends on the heavy use of herbicides, no longer emphasises the levelling process. The tractor operators prioritise efficiency, leaving the technique and quality of the levelling merely passable.

As a consequence of this erosion of skill, we had to bend our backs to weed the fields four times, and some plots five. The “yun” (耘) in the word for cultivation refers specifically to the act of weeding and treading the weeds back into the soil.

◉Cultivating the field in this manner, I went over the 15 mu of land four or five times.

◉A comparison between the cultivated and uncultivated fields.

As a farmer focused on the harvest, I neither want to nor can afford to casually say things like ‘coexisting with weeds’—it is far too flippant a sentiment.

For most of the time I spent bent double in the 38-degree heat, I loathed the weeds. Until one moment—perhaps on a day when the weeding felt truly hopeless—I was suddenly struck by the urge to look up their names. That was when my attitude towards them truly began to shift.

Every weed has a name: *Leersia*, *Persicaria lilacina*, water amaranth, round-leaf sedge, three-cornered rush, and arrowhead. Moreover, these weeds are also used in traditional Chinese medicine. *Persicaria lilacina*, for instance, is used to clear heat and detoxify, act as a diuretic, and resolve blood stasis to stop bleeding; it can treat symptoms such as dysentery, infectious hepatitis, nephritis oedema, cystitis, boils and carbuncles, and snake or insect bites.

I intend to study and learn more about these paddy field weeds in the future.

◉Clockwise from top left: crabgrass, barnyard grass, pulled and bundled weeds, and water amaranth.

VII. Integrated Pests and Silkworms

The most dramatic turn of events involved the pests. As the weeding progressed, leaf folders and striped stem borers were the first to appear, followed by sheath blight and brown planthoppers; the leaf folders and striped stem borers continued to cycle through successive generations.

What was to be done?

I first used blue and yellow sticky insect traps, but the results were mediocre.

◉ I started by placing blue and yellow sticky traps in the fields, but the results were modest.

I noticed a fellow eco-farmer using biological agents, which are permitted in organic farming. I thought I’d keep some on hand, just in case (the spiders probably weren’t enough in that first year).

However, while reading the fine print, it hit me: these biological agents specifically target Lepidoptera—and silkworms are Lepidoptera!

It made sense. I had actually raised a couple of leaf folders and striped rice borers myself, simply to observe their habits. Once they pupated and emerged, they became moths with vivid, glistening eyes. After all, moths and silkworm moths are essentially the same kind of creature!

◉ The moths in the fields are very similar to silkworm moths, yet human perception of the two is worlds apart.

And so, we decided to scrap the biological agents as well—going completely natural.

Even after ‘going natural’, the rice flourished, eventually leading to a harvest at the start of winter (Li Dong).

I believe the foundation of this success can be summed up in ‘three tasks, six words’: inspecting, drying, and weeding.

◉ Washing my feet in the stream after the daily field inspection.

Making the field rounds means ensuring a circuit of the paddies is completed every morning before sunrise. The main priority is checking the water levels. Loaches, crawfish, and eels burrow during the night; if they break through the bunds, the water leaks out, and the moment the sun rises, the weed seeds begin to germinate. The purpose of these rounds is to spot leaks promptly, patch them, and refill the fields.

‘Field baking’ takes place around early August, before the rice enters the jointing stage. In contrast to the refilling done during rounds, field baking requires draining the water completely and leaving the paddy to bake under the sun until the earth cracks. This forces the rice roots to strike deeper, resulting in healthier plants that are less prone to lodging.

The difference between cultivating and weeding is that weeding simply removes the grass, whereas cultivating involves treading the removed weeds back into the soil. This turns the weeds into fertiliser for the rice—killing two birds with one stone.

VIII. A Homecoming Dream Realised

Looking back on this year’s farming experience—from raising seedlings on 10 May to transplanting on 20 June, through four rounds of manual weeding and battling weeds, pests, typhoons, scorching heat, fungi, and drought—the harvest finally took place on 5 November, completing the rice’s life cycle of nearly 180 days. Although we humans put in considerable labour, it was often nature itself—the sunlight, dew, warm breezes, soil, and wildlife—that crafted the bountiful harvest. I cannot help but marvel at the power of nature! The main variety, *Xian Daogu*, yielded around 1,000 jin per mu. The grain is soft, sticky, and sweet; I am quite satisfied with this result and feel a sense of pride.

◉ Enjoying rice grown with my own hands.

Fourteen years since returning home, there was a time when I was on the verge of leaving again. In the end, not only did I stay, but for the first time, I did something “unprecedented”: I leased additional land. Combined with my original one mu, I now possess—unprecedently—a 15-mu ecological rice farm, right outside my window!

Is this not the simple, vague, and beautiful dream of returning home that I had fourteen years ago?

My gratitude to the silkworms!

◉ I shall continue to cultivate these 15 mu of rice outside my door this year.

First draft: 9 February 2026, the 22nd day of the 12th lunar month in the Year of the Snake

Revised: 23 February 2026, the 7th day of the 1st lunar month in the Year of the Horse

Foodthink Author

Yu Jiangang

Born and raised in Zhenghebang, a silk village in Jiangnan, he graduated from university in 2008 and worked in brand consultancy in Beijing. Driven by a concern for rural issues, he resigned in 2011 to become an intern at the Small Donkey Farm. He subsequently volunteered in rural development within Zhuang villages on the border between Guangxi and Vietnam. Upon returning home, he and his wife, Mei Yuhui, founded “Mei and Yu“, specialising in the production and heritage of fine handcrafted silk quilts. Their goal is to revitalise China’s intangible cultural heritage of sericulture and create new traditions. WeChat Official Account: Mei and Yu; Podcast: Tuanli Structure

All images provided by the author unless otherwise noted

Editor: Tianle