After 14 Years Back Home, Finally Farming
I. Almost Left
My father asked hesitantly: should we lease out our land too?
He probably felt a touch of guilt for standing in the way of the larger farms.
Since leaving Beijing to return home in 2011, we have been living in our home village ever since. Along the way, we have navigated our fair share of changes.
Initially, the motivation was straightforward: I simply wanted to return to my village and set up a small ecological farm. I pictured it nestled around our home, verdant and thriving. Even then, I knew ecological farming was hardly lucrative (though it was said to be enough to sustain a family), but simply living in such surroundings felt like reward enough in itself (which is precisely why I admired Tang Liang). Of course, for a penniless 25-year-old second-generation farmer with virtually no agricultural or social experience, defeat was a foregone conclusion—I couldn’t even manage to rent a plot in my own village.
II. Finding a Village
During this period, as a “veteran” young returnee, I witnessed too many failed ventures of ecological farms. Coupled with the fact that we never viewed returning home as starting a business, nor did we have ambitions to scale up, we never went looking to rent land. We stuck to our own small plot (literally speaking).
When people introduced “Mei and Fish Farm”, I felt rather embarrassed given its diminutive size; the name felt somewhat misleading. The year before last, we simply changed the company’s suffix from “Family Farm” to “Silkworm and Mulberry Culture”.
We truly began looking at other villages. We focused on the northwest outskirts of the county town, as it would be closer to our current home and make it easier to get the children to and from school. The idea was to leave our own village without stepping outside the sericulture region. We wanted to find a place with a similar cultural fabric so we could continue with our work.
Truth be told, after all these years in our own village, the constant drain of navigating a close-knit community—dealing with parents and relatives alike—has been utterly exhausting. It seemed better to put some physical distance between us and it all. Out of sight, out of mind.
A calligraphy teacher recommended a village near Wuzhen, mentioning a house for rent right next to a large mulberry grove that would be perfect for us. Alas, we were a step too late; by the time we visited, it had already been leased out as a storage warehouse.
Then there was another village, planned some time ago specifically to attract ‘city-dwellers’ to set up enterprises. Most of the original villagers had already relocated, and the company tasked with managing the village had ground to a near standstill after a few years of operation.
We also visited a village where a friend runs a teahouse. The locals there seemed preoccupied, waiting with bated breath for a major road expansion to the west that would finally bring the long-awaited windfall of demolition compensation.
My wife, Yuhui, found a house online that sat a fair way from the main road. A woodland stretched out in front of it. On closer inspection, the undergrowth was actually a patch of neglected mulberry trees. It turned out the landlord had planted ornamental saplings after giving up on sericulture. She mentioned that if we did decide to raise silkworms, she would lend us her old reeling trays. However, the house was currently let to a group of construction workers, so we’d have to wait until the end of the year.
The very thought of the monumental effort required to clean, renovate and bring order to that three-storey house—and the mulberry grove to match—was too much. In the end, Yuhui politely declined the landlord’s offer.
After that, we made several sporadic trips back to the ‘city-dwellers’ entrepreneurship village to see if anything suitable had come up.
An underperforming rural guesthouse came up for sale, and Yuhui arranged a viewing. I asked her, “Are you thinking of running a guesthouse?” She replied, “No. It wouldn’t need any major renovation, so we could simply convert it into a workshop for making silk quilts.”
We asked the operating company whether they had any agricultural land available. They did have a plot, but the rent was 3,000 yuan per mu a year. “Why so pricey?” I asked. “That piece is zoned for recreational facilities and experiential tourism,” they explained. “I have no interest in amusements,” I said. “I just want to farm.” “Then we have nothing left,” they replied. “All the proper agricultural land has been leased out to the company for tobacco cultivation.”
I can’t recall whether that was our final village visit. Regardless, the urge to leave only grew stronger.
III. The Familiar Stranger
The problem was that I had little experience growing rice, let alone ecological farming.
Rice truly was a familiar stranger.
It brought back memories of Year Three, when my mother dragged me out to the fields to transplant seedlings, sternly declaring, “You’re a farmer; if you can’t even work the land, who will look after you later on?” Ironically, my mother never expected that farming would not be what kept us fed; it would be factory work taken on by both her and my father. Coupled with years of continuous education thereafter, I never had the chance to properly master the technique of rice transplanting.
My last stint farming before leaving home took place over the summer break after my university entrance exams. I was transplanting rice seedlings in the gathering dusk, all while my class teacher kept ringing to ask about my grades.
After that day of transplanting, I headed to Jilin for university, then moved to Beijing for work, and never set foot in a paddy again. After resigning in 2011, I worked in rural community outreach in Longzhou, Guangxi. I did collaborate with locals on a rice-and-duck farming project: we’d head to the paddies to monitor invasive golden apple snails, distribute ducklings to villagers, and occasionally check whether anyone was secretly using farm chemicals. But I never actually worked the fields myself.
IV. The World of Agricultural Inputs
Compared to over a decade ago, the market now offers a vast array of commercial organic fertilisers. Applying granular organic fertiliser via drone significantly boosts efficiency compared to traditional methods.
A local organic fertiliser manufacturer heavily promotes a “organic slow-release fertiliser”. The product description claims it “uses agricultural waste such as straw, extracting natural macromolecular organic compounds like lignin, cellulose, alginic acid, and chitin for modification and activation”. However, on closer inspection, its organic matter content is only 15% (the standard requires over 30%). Checking the referenced standard, GB 15063-2020, it turns out to be a compound fertiliser!
Even among qualified organic fertilisers, there are numerous types. By form: powder, granules, and tonne bags; by standard: general organic fertiliser (NY/T 525-2021) and bio-organic fertiliser (NY 884-2012); prices can vary tenfold—from 400–500 yuan per tonne on the cheap end to 4,000–5,000 yuan per tonne at the high end. The one constant: you cannot find out where the materials actually come from, and even the ingredient lists are vaguely stated.
To qualify for government subsidies, you must purchase fertilisers from manufacturers on the government’s approved list.
After careful deliberation, we ultimately chose the “old-fashioned” rapeseed cake. The ingredients are transparent, it’s sourced locally, and it saves long-distance transport. Of course, this means it’s difficult to spread mechanically and ineligible for subsidies.
The most exasperating issue turned out to be the seedling trays. We entrusted an organic farm in Suzhou with raising the seedlings. It wasn’t until the day before transplanting that we discovered Suzhou uses 9-inch trays, whereas our local standard is 7 inches. The size mismatch meant the rice transplanter couldn’t be used!
V. Weed and Pest Control Strategy
The large-scale grain grower who previously farmed my plot had planted wheat. Harvest usually took place around 20 May. That left only a month until transplanting in mid-to-late June—insufficient time for weeds to grow.
As if fate knew I was planning to farm, wheat harvest was pushed back by a full week compared to previous years! Once the wheat was cleared, I hurriedly contacted a tractor driver I knew to rotary-till the field. It turned out he was already busy harvesting wheat and tilling for a 2,000-mu operation. Apparently, every tractor driver in the town was tied up working for large-scale farms!
After making countless calls, the field was finally tilled by 31 May, the Dragon Boat Festival!
VI. Hand-weeding the Paddies
Traditional Chinese agriculture places immense emphasis on levelling the land. In my father’s words, the surface should be “like a mirror”. Only a perfectly level paddy allows for weed control through flooding, giving the rice a proper head start.
Yet large-scale conventional rice cultivation, which relies heavily on herbicides, no longer places much value on careful levelling. Tractor operators tend to prioritise speed, meaning the skill and quality of the levelling leave much to be desired.
The consequence of this eroding expertise is that we ended up bending over to weed the fields by hand four times in total, and five times in certain plots. In farming terminology, the character ‘耘’ (yún) refers precisely to pulling out weeds and trampling them back into the soil.
As a farmer who actually cares about his yield, I cannot and will not lightly utter some perfunctory platitude about ‘coexisting with weeds’.
For much of the time I spent bent double under 38°C heat, I utterly despised them. It wasn’t until a certain moment—perhaps the day I weeded myself into absolute despair—that I suddenly felt compelled to look up what they were actually called. That simple act genuinely shifted my perspective on them.
Every weed has a name: red leea, primrose-willow, water ammannia, round-leaf knotgrass, nutgrass, and dall-wheat. Furthermore, these weeds double as traditional Chinese medicines. Take primrose-willow, for example: it is prized for clearing heat and toxins, promoting diuresis, resolving blood stasis, and staunching bleeding. It can be used to treat conditions ranging from dysentery, infectious hepatitis, and nephritic oedema to cystitis, carbuncles, and snake or insect bites.
I intend to study these paddy weeds in much greater detail going forward.
VII. Insects and Silkworms Intertwined
What was I to do?
I began by hanging blue and yellow sticky traps, but the results were decidedly average.
I noticed an ecological farming colleague had eventually turned to biological microbial agents, which are permitted in organic farming. I decided to keep some on hand, ready to use if things got desperate (first-year spider populations are usually insufficient).
But while reading through the specifications, I was startled to discover that the agent specifically targets Lepidoptera—silkworms are Lepidoptera!
On reflection, that makes perfect sense. I had even kept two diamondback moth and Chinese rice stem borer larvae just to observe their habits. Once they pupated and emerged, they transformed into moths with vivid, lifelike eyes. Aren’t wild moths and silkworm moths essentially the same kind of creature?
And so, we decided to forgo the biological agents altogether—going entirely chemical-free.
Even under this approach, the rice paddies thrived, carrying us through to a successful harvest at the Start of Winter.
I would say the foundation of our success can be distilled into three field practices, captured in six characters: patrolling, sun-drying, and cultivating.
Checking the paddies means ensuring you take a circuit around the fields before sunrise each morning. The primary focus is on the water levels. Loaches, crayfish, and swamp eels in the paddies tend to burrow at night. Once they breach the bunds, the water drains away completely, and as soon as the sun comes up, weed seeds will begin to germinate. Checking the paddies is simply about spotting these leaks promptly, patching them up, and reflooding the fields.
Sun-drying the paddies usually takes place in early August, just before the rice enters the jointing stage. The opposite of topping up water, this process involves completely draining the fields and leaving them to bake under the sun until cracks form. This encourages the rice root systems to delve deeper, making them less prone to lodging and resulting in healthier plants.
Field hoeing differs from simple weeding in what happens to the removed growth. Basic weeding just clears the weeds away, whereas field hoeing requires trampling them back into the mud. In this way, the weeds effectively become fertiliser for the rice crop, achieving two aims with a single effort.
VIII. The Dream of Returning Home Realised
Fourteen years after returning home, I once stood on the verge of leaving again. In the end, not only did I stay, but for the first time ever, I went ahead and rented out extra land. Added to the single mu we already owned, this meant “unprecedentedly” coming into possession of a 15-mu ecological rice paddy farm—and right outside our front window!
Is this not the simple, hazy yet beautiful dream we harboured fourteen years ago when we first decided to return home?
Thank you, silkworms!
Drafted on 9 February 2026 (22nd day of the 12th lunar month, Year of the Snake)
Revised on 23 February 2026 (7th day of the 1st lunar month, Year of the Horse)
Unless otherwise noted, images are provided by the author
Editor: Tianle