Absurdity and Romance in Desolate Lands
In Part One of “Internship Notes from a Desert Oasis”, I attempted to revert to my instincts as a business journalist, examining the operational struggles faced by ecological farms. Yet, during my two-month internship at Zhiliangtian Farm in Alxa, being a barista was, in reality, my day-to-day routine at the farm.
Zhiliangtian’s coffee shop was one of the few places where I felt I could genuinely contribute. My days were spent selling soft drinks and snacks, making the occasional coffee, chatting away with guests of all ages, keeping the interior and exterior spotless, conducting regular stocktakes, and coordinating with colleagues on restocking and sourcing new items. It was precisely this coffee shop that, following my initial disappointment, gave me a sound reason to keep staying at the farm.
I grew fond of that spot. At first, it was simply because they served coffee and beer; these familiar comforts offered a sense of security amidst an unfamiliar life. Later, it was because this space allowed me to cross paths with all sorts of people—guests on educational tours, farm volunteers, the women bustling about in the kitchen, and the workers out in the fields. They were the very reason I found myself wanting to stay in Alxa.
I. Babysitting Guests’ Children in the Desert
The farm’s water is pumped from more than a hundred metres underground. It is hard and carries a faint saline taste, unfamiliar to those from outside the region. Visitors aren’t usually accustomed to it, and I wasn’t either at first. For the children, a trip to buy a fizzy drink is as much about satisfying a craving as it is about quenching their thirst.
This summer holiday, the farm welcomed more educational tour groups than last year. Each party numbers around twenty, comprising mostly older primary pupils and younger secondary school children. Initially, I assumed these nature-focused educational trips were little more than high-end tourist groups. Having spent time with them, however, I have come to realise that groups that genuinely focus on nature education bear little resemblance to conventional tourists. At the very least, both parents and children on these tours respect the farm’s environmental guidelines: they sort their waste properly, are mindful of water usage, do not make a fuss about the insects in the accommodation, and never shout at the volunteers.
I quite enjoy the ritual of selling soda to the children. There is a well-worn saying in retail: “Retail is detail.” Success hinges on the finer points. With some groups that lean more heavily into nature education, the lead teachers would rather the children skip the fizzy drinks. They believe that experiencing the desert’s water quality is itself part of the curriculum. I soon learned to be sharper about it, though. Before each new group arrives, I check with the leader to find out the daily ration of Dayao soda per child. Most often, it’s strictly one bottle a day, but as a reward upon returning from a desert trek, they’re permitted an extra one.
To a good many of the children, I suspect I come across as something of a short-tempered “attendant”. On one occasion, a boy tossed wet waste into the dry rubbish bin right in front of me. I called him over: “Listen here, lad, take out whatever you’ve just thrown in and put it in the food waste bin.” He tried to wriggle out of it for a good while until a parent, fed up with the back-and-forth, stepped in to help him sort the rubbish properly.
I was soon pressed into service as a teaching assistant for these groups. The only tour I stayed with for its entire duration came from “Wilderness School”, a nature education organisation in Guangdong. It was made up of children aged seven to fifteen. They spent six days in Alashan, with me looking after logistics day by day.
What remains most vivid in my memory is a seven-year-old boy from Guangdong, the youngest in the group, with a pair of large, luminous eyes. Every midday, when we’d sprawl out in the coffee house for a rest, he’d always pop in to see what was going on, blinking those curious, wide eyes as he watched me make coffee. One afternoon, the moment I took out a filter paper, he chimed in, “You’ve got to rinse it with hot water first.”
“Not bad for a kid. Might as well let him have a little taste.” I found a small cup and poured him a dash. Once he’d finished it, he handed me forty-five yuan and asked me to brew a pot for his mum when I found the time. The next morning, as I handed the coffee over to his mother, the other mums looked on with envy.
He was also the only young guest I’ve ever had who ordered coffee for a parent. Though he could be thoroughly reckless and deaf to advice when caught up in the thrill of play, the moment he calmed down, he’d invariably be pulled aside by his mum, sitting quietly while she imparted her share of adult wisdom. I suspect he’ll grow up to be a wonderfully warm-hearted young man.
While leading the group on a desert trek, I was provoked by the older twin’s rudeness. She had suddenly started her period, leaving her exceptionally irritable. Her grandmother, travelling with them, was deeply concerned. I brought the girl some sanitary pads and told her that if she felt unwell, she could ask the group leader to step aside. Instead, she snapped at me to stay away. “I’ve already told you not to meddle in my business. Can’t you understand?”
For a fleeting moment, anger flared. After all, I was an unpaid volunteer—why should I put up with this? But I bit my tongue.
That evening, the educational tour group set up camp in the desert. The twin girls were in a two-person tent, while their grandmother had been assigned to stay in our large yurt.
Overnight, the wind picked up and howled through the desert. Across from me, the grandmother tossed and turned, occasionally sitting up with a sigh. I worried she might be unwell. Instead, she asked, “Is it dangerous outside? I must go back for them.” To ease her mind, I promised to go out and bring the twins back inside.
The moment I stepped out of the yurt, her grandmother followed close behind. She grasped my arm, urging me to walk faster toward the tent area, muttering, “It was my idea to bring them here. If anything happens to them, I’ll never be able to face their parents.” I only found out later that the grandmother worked at the farm that served as the main base for the Wilderness School—an ecological community in Guangdong—during the busy season, and took on housekeeping jobs at the lead teacher’s home in the off-season. To get the twin girls to look up from their phones, the grandmother had spent a full year’s wages to bring them all the way to Alxa.
The grandmother was only a year younger than my own mother. Whenever the older twin was rude to her, I had an overwhelming urge to scold her: “If I had a child, I would never tolerate them treating my mother this way.”
Once the desert leg of the journey concluded, the group leader asked everyone to write down their reflections on the trek. When I read the older sister’s essay, a flicker of relief washed over me—I was genuinely glad I had kept my temper and not retaliated against her harsh words.
While the other children documented the desert landscape and the Helan Mountains, the older sister’s essay consisted entirely of quiet moments shared with her grandmother. She wrote about pitching their tent together in the sand, and about how she had finally felt her grandmother’s worry during that howling windstorm. She even included the impromptu story her grandmother had woven on the spot when they came across a dead goat on the slopes of Helan Mountain.
It seems young people’s outward expressions can be so fragmented: pushing away every gesture of kindness while quietly holding on to every bit of goodness they receive. At the closing ceremony, we were meant to select three winning essays. I gave one of those prizes to the older twin, as a belated form of recognition.
Part Two: The Farm’s Volunteers — Its Biggest Beer Customers
After brushing off my initial frustration, I found life here genuinely joyful. Most of the happiness came from my fellow volunteers; amidst the farm’s chaotic routine, we kept each other’s spirits up.
Xiao Zhu and Xiao Zhou, two young guys from Beijing born in the 2000s, quickly became my main source of happiness shortly after I arrived. Every day, they started early for livestreams, then followed us out to do fieldwork. They’d constantly moan about being tired and try to slack off, yet clearly loved every minute of it.
Xiao Zhu is exactly twelve years younger than me; I first noticed him during an initial sales meeting. During the Q&A with the livestream e-commerce boss, his questions hit the mark every time—far more incisive than any third-rate journalist I’ve encountered. As we grew closer, I learned he’d spent a lot of time watching his mother navigate the business world.
His mother had introduced him to the farm. To persuade her son to come and get some real-world experience, she offered a substantial allowance as an incentive. Xiao Zhou, on the other hand, came simply because Xiao Zhu was going. For him, the work itself was irrelevant; being with his mate was what mattered.
The pair were inseparable on the farm and soon found themselves helping out at the café. Whenever I went out on group tours, they’d hole up inside to mind the shop. Each day we’d clear rubbish from outside the café together, and at night we’d do stocktakes and tidy up the spreadsheets. Once the day’s work was done, we’d each collapse into a corner, scrolling through phones or tapping away on laptops until midnight, when we’d finally head back.
One night at midnight, as we stepped out of the café, Xiao Zhu popped open his parasol. Puzzled, I asked, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I’m worried the moonlight is too bright and will burn you.” I shot back, “It’s a new moon tonight. There’s no moonlight.” With that, the three of us laughed heartily and made our way back to our rooms.
They walked in precisely when the farm was thinnest on staff, and bit the bullet to lead the next two or three groups. During those weeks, I joined them for a drink every evening. Occasionally, parents fresh from a shower would pass our table and ask, with genuine concern, “Why aren’t you in bed yet?” I wondered if, beneath their concern, they were really thinking along the lines of, “How can you possibly run the children’s activities tomorrow if you’re not asleep right now?”
To which we’d always reply, quite untroubled, “We’re heading off soon enough.”
The more we talked, the clearer it became what the farm’s volunteer recruitment was up against: people arrived for all manner of reasons—curiosity, a need for a quiet retreat, a genuine interest in agroecology—only to walk straight into Zhiliangtian’s peak season. Suddenly, they found themselves roped into tasks that hadn’t been properly discussed beforehand, or work they had never really signed up for in the first place.
Take Huasheng, for instance. She was a secondary school PE teacher who’d come to Zhiliangtian hoping to learn how the farm was run. Back home, she owned a plot of land she intended to cultivate, and over the past couple of years she’d been spending her school holidays travelling across the country to study the business models and operations of various organic farms. Yet once she arrived in Alxa, she found herself doing precisely what she’d left behind in the classroom. After guiding just two groups, she called it quits, thoroughly drained.
Maizi’s stay proved longer. She’d recently left a role at an alternative education company and came to the farm hoping for a bit of downtime, never expecting to be handed a group of children to supervise. Frustrated, Maizi would often slip away for hours, only to reappear in the dead of night. When she put a drink in front of me, I’d usually stay until we’d had our fill before heading back. I can hardly recall most of what we discussed now, but our conversations invariably circled back to the grind of daily work, our personal histories, and where we hoped to take our careers next.
On the evening before I walked Maizi out of the farm in early September, she slurred her thanks for my company and the emotional support I’d offered. It struck me then, quite suddenly, that it was the feeling of being needed by others that had cast such a rose-tinted glow over my time at the farm.
Three: The Kitchen Hand Who Drinks Coffee
The day I departed in early September, shortly after the White Dew solar term, an uncharacteristically heavy fog rolled over Alxa Left Banner. Normally arid, the mist drifted west from the Helan Mountains, shrouding the entire farm. Just before getting into the car, I spotted Sister Bai herding sheep in the distance. We stopped to bid her farewell, and she told us to always “keep it in mind to return”.
Sister Bai hails from Gansu province and has made her home in Alxa over the past few years. During the summer, she works on the farm as both a field labourer and a kitchen hand. Come autumn, she takes on the role of a sheepherder, looking after flocks for local pastoralists. Her hometown, Minqin in Gansu, is renowned for its muskmelons, but there, labour is considered a cheap commodity. That is not the case in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, where daily wages can reach 200 yuan.
Sister Wang, Sister Bai’s kitchen partner, is the most warmly welcoming towards me of all the staff. A local woman, she has a remarkable knack for Northwest cuisine; whenever she is on cooking duty, I find myself thoroughly satisfied after every meal. I make sure to heap plenty of praise on her every time I step into the kitchen.
On a late afternoon in early August, I was sitting outside the coffee house with a beer when Sister Wang passed by to say goodbye. Without thinking, I replied, “I won’t be around tomorrow.” She paused, asking why. I quickly explained that I was joining a guided tour into the desert the following day and wouldn’t return until the day after. She let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good, then, see you the day after. But when you do leave, you must say, ‘I like you so much!’” With that, Sister Wang drove off home in her white car.
Outside of romance, I rarely receive such unambiguous affection from adults. The evening after Sister Wang drove off, the sunset painted the sky in beautifully soft hues.
Sister Wang and Sister Bai typically need to prepare meals for thirty or forty people in the kitchen. Whenever Sister Wang glanced at the menu and saw the sheer volume of work ahead, she would invariably put in an order for two coffees with me. This little ritual actually began on my account. One day, I suddenly realised that “coffee for the workers” felt incomplete without the workers themselves, so I brewed a pot for them. To my surprise, the two women, experiencing coffee for the very first time, thoroughly enjoyed it. “This stuff is a proper boost,” they said. “After drinking it, I don’t feel sleepy even when working through the afternoon.” From then on, they became regulars at the coffee station, right alongside the volunteers.
At times, we would vent our frustrations about the work inside the kitchen. Sister Wang would always offer the same earnest advice: “In the future, don’t bother with foolish volunteer schemes like this. Go back, find a proper job, and put your heart into it. Don’t end up like us, stuck in the countryside doing backbreaking field labour. We never had the chance to get an education, so we have no choice.”
They often repeated similar advice, sometimes even telling me never to come back once I had left. Yet, just before my departure, when I bid Sister Wang farewell, she gently reminded me to look her up next time I visited Alxa.
Mai Zi and I were both on the receiving end of Sister Wang’s counsel. On occasion, over late-night drinks with Mai Zi, we would joke about never doing another unpaid stint. Yet after leaving Alxa, Mai Zi went on to volunteer at a progressive school in Beijing. In November, she made two trips back to the farm, telling me that Alxa was a place that truly held her heart.
I cannot quite recall which educational tour prompted it, but one guest approached Teacher Ma to say that Zhiliangtian was wonderful, almost like a utopia. Teacher Ma was quick to dismiss the comparison.
Zhiliangtian is certainly not a utopia. Utopias do not feature toilets that need mopping repeatedly each day, nor the constant need to remind guests about recycling and waste sorting. They do not serve up large-batch meals prepared in sweltering kitchens, nor do they house the very real anxieties of making a living.
This desert oasis is a vessel for countless imaginings, yet it is also grounded in the rich, authentic relationships woven together by the people who live and work here. Much like the deserts of Alxa, it may appear barren at first glance, but it possesses a life and vigour all its own.
About the Ecological Agriculture Intern Programme
To date, two recruitment cycles have been completed, placing over 40 participants across more than ten ecological farms nationwide for internships ranging from two months to one year. The second cohort will “graduate” by the end of 2023, and open recruitment for the third cohort will launch in January 2024! We invite you to keep following Foodthink’s “Ecological Agriculture Intern” programme.
Editor: Xiong Yi