Food production, farmers, rural society, and agroecological practices.
Men leave for work; the women of Stone City stay to farm, tend old and young, and run guesthouses. He Xiuqin’s plot grows twenty to thirty crops across the seasons; Zhang Xiuyun keeps over a dozen heirloom maize varieties. This uncelebrated labour connects field to table.
In the Jinsha River valley at Stone City, Lijiang, villagers whistle to call the wind for winnowing wheat, wait for rain to plant maize. Old varieties like Tunmai and chicken bean live on the hillside from generation to generation, sustained by household seed saving and exchanges among neighbours.
Qin Xianrong, a 1990s-born returnee, has farmed 60 mu of sloping land in Dadu’gang, Xishuangbanna, for four years—growing pineapples, passion fruit and macadamia nuts almost wild, no chemical fertiliser, pesticide or watering. Amid rubber plantations and tea gardens, he explores a way of reconnecting with the land.
Four eco-farms—Lexiangu, Yuefengdao, Wuyuetian and Fukang Shengliang—span the region from Shanghai to Jiaxing; their losses ranged from minor damage to nearly a whole year’s work down the drain, with scale, infrastructure and farming methods the decisive variables.
Once young teachers who had both worked in nature education, Antian and Sanqi spent six months interning at Yinlin Village’s ecological farm in Guangdong – planting, organising events, running the café. Now they are determined to return to the countryside and build their own farm.
In 2006, on the banks of the Jinsha River, six ethnicities in Chezhu village celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival together. Their mooncakes had no filling; the wheat, rapeseed oil, eggs and maltose were all homegrown—”Everything but the iron pot is homegrown.”
An Anhui family travelled far into the Hunan countryside to open a mooncake factory. The child grew up beside the conveyor belt through summer holidays, until the factory shut, the fields all became sheds, and the bicycle on the river embankment rode ever further away.
Weekly supply at Xiaoliushu Farm, Shunyi, has dropped from 200 boxes to 40; at Kongkonggu Farm, Pinggu, aubergines and tomatoes were nearly all lost. Autumn sowing is delayed by almost a month, and national wholesale prices are up 40%.
Jinzi grows heirloom yellow garden peas using biodynamic farming on mountains above 3,000 metres in Xiaojin County, Aba Prefecture. Shipping lasts only about two weeks a year; this year, three jin of pods finally reached the dining buddies’ table.
Nichole, 55, spent a decade turning her Texas yards into a jungle of food and herbs without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. She and Yunnanese Zhang Yiqing — a cross-generational pair — bonded over refusing the American suburban lawn before Nichole moved to rural Pennsylvania to practise permaculture on larger land.
