Back to the Land: Crafting a Life of Independence | One Pot Shitai’s Little Dining Table
This is the fourth piece in the “One Pot Shitai’s Little Dining Table” series. It will explore Xia Lili’s culinary experiments, Hu Xuemei’s farming trials, and a teacher’s nature-based aesthetic education project. Facing circumstances beyond their control, these women centre themselves around naturally grown food, continuously crafting a kinder way of life and forging new relationships in pursuit of self-realisation. How exactly do they think and act?
I. A Surprise in the Vegetable Box
Perhaps because my door and radio are always left open, or maybe because it’s rare for someone living right next to the Yulin market to shop for groceries online, I don’t know why exactly, but after a couple of deliveries, the courier assigned to this route got to know me. He now makes sure to drop off the vegetables before nine on Monday mornings. He’s learned that if he’s any later, I’ll be locked into my usual writing routine and likely miss his call.
Hu Xuemei’s vegetable bundles are something of a “blind box”; the contents are randomly selected by her. For a cook like me, who has long prided herself on keeping everything under control, this presents a slight challenge. Yet I’m confident in my ability to handle everyday cooking with ease, and I wanted to seize this “unplanned” opportunity to stretch my capabilities. So, I eagerly anticipate every delivery—much like a student who believes they’ve mastered the syllabus and is just waiting for the exam, brimming with a certain naive confidence: whatever is sent, I can make it taste delicious.
Garlic sprouts? Perfect for a twice-cooked cured pork dish.
Chinese flowering cabbage stems? Half goes into a pan-fried egg soup, and the rest, once blanched, forms a bed under dumplings for my most popular “vegetable-loaded noodle bowl”.
Moso bamboo shoots? After peeling and cutting them into angled chunks, I’ll chuck them into a stew pot with a leftover Chuxiong ham hock from the New Year and some fresh pork ribs. It’s my own twist on the classic spring stew, *yanduxian*.
Ice plant? A bit unusual, but hardly a challenge. Give it a wash, drain it well, and toss it in a sauce for dipping or dress it with a sour and spicy vinaigrette—it becomes a lovely Chinese-style salad.
Garlic scapes? Far too precious to waste. A handful this small wouldn’t stretch for a proper stir-fry with shredded pork, so I had an idea. I headed to the market for hand-beaten Chaoshan beef balls and Xiaozhao Family’s rustic pork sausages, paired them with oyster mushrooms and chanterelles, and simmered it all together as a hearty medley. I’d toss in the chopped scapes right before serving.
But even for someone like me, who happily cooks with whatever arrives and adapts on the fly, these past few months haven’t been entirely without head-scratching moments. Once, I opened one of Hu Xuemei’s parcels to find she’d tucked in a large kohlrabi. I froze. Good heavens! It must have been at least thirty years since I’d last eaten kohlrabi.
II. Rewriting My Kohlrabi Memories
When I think back to the last time I ate kohlrabi, my mother, younger brother and I were still living in a gloomy, damp old flat in the staff quarters of the Qingcheng Paper Mill.
My father had only recently passed away, and my mother’s employment was still precarious. Paid at the modest rate reserved for dependents, her wages were so meagre that by spring, kohlrabi had become a regular feature on our table.
Kohlrabi has a thick skin and keeps well. Market traders often sold them in bulk, and at the end of the day, they’d be “da dui” (sold off cheaply by the pile) at an even steeper discount. My mother would invariably buy a whole pile at once.
What was more dreadful than kohlrabi appearing at every single meal was that it was always prepared in exactly the same way. It wasn’t until much later, when I read that kohlrabi is also known as “芜菁” (wújīng), that I realised I could never, for the life of me, associate the “菁” (essence) in the classical idiom “去芜存菁” (to weed out the dross and keep the essence) with the stir-fried kohlrabi slices my mother used to make.
“菁” denotes the very best of anything, yet at the mere thought of those stir-fried kohlrabi dishes, all that assails my senses is a nauseating stench of overcooked radish that makes my stomach turn.
Alas, that memory is truly not worth reliving.
Woe is me. Someone who hasn’t touched kohlrabi in thirty years somehow unearths the very vegetable I’ve long shied away from (or, rather, deliberately avoided all along) inside a premium, pre-ordered vegetable “blind box”. It feels rather like being struck by a boomerang. But what else is there to do?
Through years of living alone, I have quietly mastered a particular art: accepting whatever fate deems fit to place before me, whether obvious or subtle. Whatever comes my way, I simply face it first, and sort out the rest afterwards.
Now that the kohlrabi has arrived, I shall treat it as an opportunity—a chance to finally rewrite the memories tied to it in my life.
I pick out the largest kohlrabi, wash it clean, and quietly squat by the kitchen bin to peel it. I slice it into fine strips, toss them with salt, and set them aside. The pork strips, already marinated, hit a hot wok and are stir-fried until they lose their moisture. Just before taking it off the heat, I fold in the kohlrabi strips, thoroughly drained. Finally, with a touch of creativity, I finely chop the garlic sprouts delivered in the same parcel, using them as both seasoning and garnish to lift the dish with fragrance and colour.
It was unexpectedly crisp and utterly delicious! In that instant, I saw this little round bulb in a completely new light.
When I received kohlrabi from Hu Xuemei for the second time, I felt a genuine thrill of anticipation. I halved it on the chopping board. One half I sliced thinly, dressing it with a pinch of salt, sesame oil, and crushed garlic for a cold salad. The other half I cut into chunks and poached in lightly salted water. Both preparations turned out wonderfully tasty.
At that point, I was entirely won over by whoever first named it *wujing*. It truly embodies the ‘jing’ (essence) in the phrase ‘discard the weeds and keep the essence’ — that was my greatest discovery this kohlrabi season.
III. The Proactive Hu Xuemei
After the Grain Buds solar term, the spring harvest begins, and the vegetable supply finally passes through the lean season between crops. Following Grain in Ear, the variety grows even richer: cucumber, loofah, muskmelon, Erjingtiao peppers, spiral peppers, eggplant, sweetcorn, tomatoes, water spinach, red amaranth…
Browsing her WeChat Moments, the plump, dewy vegetables and fruits from her fields often look as though they might spill right off the screen. Each one practically shouts, “Come and see how brilliantly Hu Xuemei has grown them!” As one of her customers, I naturally find myself looking forward to receiving my favourites from her harvest.
“Growing the land well” and “managing the land well” are the two fundamental requirements that CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) places on its partner farmers.
Compared with “managing the land”, “growing it well” is the easier task. Our farming partners bring rich agricultural experience to the table. Bolstered by the internet and the rise of various agriculture-focused social organisations, they have embraced new concepts of ecological civilisation and gained insight into the direction of social development. With more opportunities to learn agricultural techniques and exchange planting methods, they study and practise side by side. As the soil improves and the ecosystem matures, the quality of the crops naturally rises.
“Managing the land well”, however, faces many fresh challenges. For instance, how can farmers use the internet to interact and communicate with consumers? Tending to their precious crops in the fields from dawn till dusk, farmers find it nearly impossible to free up their hands for “online marketing”.
On this front, Hu Xuemei keeps pace with the times. She is diligent and often finds spare moments to post updates on WeChat Moments, keeping her customers informed about the state of the fields. She is also adept at seeking help, understanding that she cannot handle sales alone. She partnered with Tian’an Life, leveraging its sales network to distribute her vegetables. Naturally, she is also deeply committed to community development. She actively participates in the Chengdu Living Market and other on-the-ground outreach events, meeting customers face to face and using these opportunities to build her customer base.
She sends whatever the fields yield, I cook whatever she sends, and my dining companions eat whatever I prepare. Does this rhythm of life tilt a little too far into passivity?
The farm does not take custom orders, leaving me, the cook, in a “reactive” position; yet once the ingredients arrive, shaping them in the kitchen is my “proactive” act.
I do not let my dining companions order their meals, which feels passive to them; but their choice to dine with me and learn, thereby enriching their own understanding of food, is an exercise in agency.
Confronted with the vast external landscape shaped by natural, political, and economic forces, farmers are often left to merely accept and adapt; yet choosing to study and practise ecological farming methods—forgoing synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, crafting compost and improving the soil to suit local conditions, employing diversified cropping and meticulous management, forging wide-ranging connections with the wider community, and taking responsibility for oneself, others, and the environment—represents a deliberate, proactive choice available to farmers.
So, regarding Hu Xuemei: was her step onto the path of ecological farming a matter of circumstance, or a conscious choice?
IV. Turning Farmland into a Sanctuary of Self-Determined Living
On another occasion, when I co-hosted a “I Want to Know My Food” book club session with Tian’an Living—our chosen text was *The Omnivore’s Dilemma*—she made the journey from Pidu, over an hour by subway, to join us. During the sharing segment, she spoke with remarkable sincerity to the group, explaining that her concern for soil and food, and her commitment to ecological farming, stemmed from a simple belief: that this approach was not only better for her own health and family, but for the health and families of her customers too.
This straightforward understanding has sustained her hands-on work in Pidu, where she tends a modest patch of land with both precision and diversity. It is a dedication I deeply admire and respect.
The more often I met Hu Xuemei, the more I realised how closely her upbringing mirrored that of my female cousins back home: born into a rural family, she left school after junior high, headed out to work with relatives or fellow villagers at a young age, and married when the time came. From then on, her life centred entirely on running the household and raising children, with her toil and devotion never ceasing.
This was how life went until her children started high school.
That year, the River Research Society chose Linshi Village to pilot a ‘resource-saving, closed-loop ecological rural homestead system’ for western Sichuan. Now cheerful and talkative, with some free time on her hands, she joined a water protection team alongside several neighbours, volunteering to help safeguard the water source.
Through her work protecting the water source, Hu Xuemei began to learn about ecological agriculture from the instructors. Encouraged by the River Research Society, she turned her own fields into a trial plot for ecological farming, teaching herself to make compost, brew enzyme fertiliser, and master every other agricultural skill necessary…
Just as the vision for Hu Xuemei’s family farm was beginning to take shape, the ‘I Want to Know My Food’ book club started holding sessions at her home.
I remember that particular session focused on *Last Child in the Woods*. Richard Louv’s central message is that ‘professionals across all fields can weave their work into helping more people reconnect with nature’. So what truly matters is taking action.
An art teacher, who had been on my WeChat for quite a while, brought her child to this session. As luck would have it, her family home was nearby, and she too wanted to foster a deeper connection between her children and the land. During the sharing circle, I suggested she draw on her expertise in art education to partner with Hu Xuemei and run farming-themed creative activities. It would fulfil her own aspirations while supporting other families with similar needs.
‘Louv, as a journalist, takes action through writing books; I, as a researcher and educator, take action through diverse nature education practices and studies; Hu Xuemei, as a land steward and food producer, takes action by farming and managing her land according to her own understanding of sustainable development.’ After the sharing circle, I turned to the art teacher and asked: ‘As an art teacher, if you see the growing disconnect between people and nature as a problem, and if you hope your children won’t suffer from “nature deficit disorder”, then what is your action?’
The conversation struck a deep chord with the art teacher, prompting her to reflect on her child’s upbringing. She wasted no time testing the waters. Soon, she gathered a handful of families who shared her desire to bring their children closer to nature on weekends, and together with Hu Xuemei, launched a year-long series of farming activities.
The children spent their weekends on Hu Xuemei’s land as ‘Field Children’ (a name the art teacher chose for her organisation as a tribute to *Last Child in the Woods*). Hu Xuemei guided them through sowing seeds, tilling the soil, applying fertiliser, and harvesting. After a full year of hands-on work and observation, the feedback from parents was overwhelmingly positive. Convinced that blending art education with farming offered tremendous potential for nature-based learning, the art teacher rented an old courtyard nearby. The two families officially became business partners and weekend neighbours.
Beyond regularly hosting nature education sessions with her weekend neighbour, Hu Xuemei actively partnered with several nature education organisations. Groups frequently brought participants to visit and experience life at her family farm. To manage the workload, she hired relatives to help with cooking during busy periods.
By pursuing multiple avenues, Hu Xuemei attracted more people keen on her farming lifestyle and generated additional non-agricultural income. This further proved her knack for management, earning her a place as a Green Sprout partner funded by the Guangdong Green Sprout Foundation.
As her connections with the wider world grew, Hu Xuemei expanded her home, adding a multi-purpose classroom and a youth hostel with en-suite bathrooms to accommodate visitors and host camp programmes run by external organisations.
As her life grew richer and more fulfilling, her standing within the family rose accordingly. Her husband, Brother Li, happily adapted to a new role, joking that his greatest contribution was ‘doing the odd jobs in the fields and keeping the farm’s logistics running smoothly’.
Last winter, a group of friends from northwestern China who practise ecological farming travelled to Chengdu to visit ecological farms. I acted as their guide and recommended Hu Xuemei’s place, keen to show them how a small household with minimal labour can successfully run an ecological farm. After visiting, everyone was deeply moved: ‘It’s truly no easy feat!’
During the group photo, standing beneath the freshly painted farm sign, Hu Xuemei beamed with pride. Later that evening, as we gathered round the bonfire after dinner, I heard that her son had just received his first wages and immediately bought his mother a massage chair. I was so moved I nearly brought a tear to my eye: Sister Xuemei has finally reaped the rewards of all her years of toil.
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Editor: Xu Youyou