I. Farm Machinery Memories of the Post-00s As far back as I can remember, my family has worked the land, growing mainly wheat and rice. During school holidays, I would follow behind the combine harvester with my friends, gathering loose ears of grain. Machines were scarce back then; usually only…

I grew up wandering through wet markets. Day to day, I’m just another office worker confined to a cubicle, but come the Lunar New Year, I step into the role of ‘second-in-command’ at a wet market grocery stall. So, what is a wet market? For ordinary people living by the…

Around 7 am, 65-year-old Zhen arrived at her sugarcane field. She wedged her scratched-screen phone between the stalks, connected to a neighbour’s Wi-Fi, and opened TikTok. She whispered to herself: “Tap the plus sign, swipe left, start livestream.” The camera pointed forward, framing two pieces of cardboard hanging from the…

In 1972, British scientist John Yudkin published a book titled Pure, White and Deadly. The protagonist of that book was sugar—pure, white sugar. The protagonist of this short piece is also sugar—sweet sugar. When I refer to “sugar” here, I mean sugar, confectionery, and added sugars in food. In the…

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…

I. Drying White, Hanging Gold; Brewing Spirits and Curling Smoke From the Start of Winter, nestled among the mountains of south-west Zhejiang and across the Songgu Plain, the people of Songyang begin preparing for the New Year’s Eve dinner. In the streamside and hillside villages, set against rivers and mountains,…

“Cutting grass” (dǎ cǎo) refers to the harvesting of forage. This is a term used exclusively within herding regions. In early August 2025, I returned to a traditional Kazakh herding village in south-eastern Altay, just in time for the grass harvest. Since the TV series My Altay became a sensation…

Looking back at 2025, the year began with loss as I said goodbye to my mother. Returning to Evil Valley, I welcomed the various harvests; starting in spring, I gathered forty or fifty catties of rapeseed, providing me with more oil than I could possibly use in a year. This…

Three months ago, a young couple farming in Gansu welcomed a baby boy and named him Maizi, meaning ‘Wheat’. His mother, Shitou, wrote on her social media: “I hope that young Maizi Yin, born from Shitou’s land, grows as resiliently as our stony land Hongguangtou wheat. May he walk the…

As long as people are alive, they cannot do without the basics of daily life—the simple necessities of fire, rice, oil, and salt. Whether in China or abroad, the terms ‘rice’, ‘flour’, and ‘oil’ are ancient, with at least a thousand years of history. Once humanity entered the agricultural era,…