Life Is but a Leap of Abandon — and the Rice Paddies Caught You? | Food Talk Vol.70

In 2019, Chen Xi visited Qiandongnan, Guizhou, for the first time and was captivated by the paddy fields and rice of Yangdong Village. She had just returned home after eleven years living in the United States and was working in a Beijing office in a job with nothing to do with farming. Seven years on, she has built a wooden house and made a home in this Dong village, growing and selling rice, while the library she once built for the village children is undergoing renovation.

Chen Xi has “terrifying” drive. She has never studied design but dared to draw up plans herself and built the mountain cabin of her dreams. Wanting the village children to spend less time on short videos, she spent the earnings from 5,000 jin of purple rice to build the village’s very first library. When mentors warned her that “ecological agriculture simply won’t survive in the primary sector,” she refused to believe it. “If it can move me, why can’t it move anyone else?” These days, Zhaoxi She has largely become self-sufficient.

Chen Xi is, of course, brave. But bravery alone is not enough — she also needed patience, and that is something the land taught her.

Guizhou grows a single rice crop each year. Sowing in spring, heading in summer, threshing in autumn, flooding the fields in winter. Farming demands time, so she decided to give herself time.

The first three years ran at a loss. She worked the paddies running experiments on heritage rice varieties from Liping County and the surrounding area. The first harvest came to barely a few dozen jin, sold at 30 yuan per jin — all told, just two thousand yuan.

Never mind — consider it tuition. Switch to another field, plant more.

Now they have nine heritage rice varieties in stable cultivation, yielding over 300 jin per mu.

Seven years in, for Chen Xi and Zhaoxi She, they are only now entering a summer that is truly their own.

The Dong have a saying — Angl xeenp weex xuh nyenc weex egs (the mountains and rivers are the host; we are but guests) — humans are not the centre of this land, merely temporary guests staying for a while. “When the ecosystem is in good balance, you don’t need to intervene heavily by hand. You simply keep an eye on things and that’s enough.”

Chen Xi says she has been this kind of person since childhood. “For a while, my status line read, ‘Forever living on the mountain top’ — meaning I was always ready to jump off.” Since she has already come this far, she might as well take the leap wholeheartedly.

Welcome to the first episode of the series “She and the Land”. Perhaps Chen Xi’s choices and outlook can offer you a little inspiration.

(This conversation was recorded in April of this year. The wooden cabin in the mountains was being renovated, and Chen Xi had returned to Beijing for an International Year of Women Farmers event. She was full of an urgent need to race back to the mountains — “If I don’t get back soon, the bamboo shoots will be tough by the time I arrive!”)

P.S. The “Zhao” in Zhaoxi She is a generation-name character from the local Dong naming system.

01:35 From Beijing to Qiandongnan — deconstructing a family farm in one go

04:00 First impressions of Yangdong Village: absolutely dazzled the moment I saw you

06:20 The spark for becoming a full-time villager in the mountains: two spring bamboo shoots from my former contractor, now my husband

08:53 How much does it cost to build a wooden house in the village?

10:00 Can you build a house without studying architecture? The master builder’s quiet mastery

18:20 What do you do when it rains? Thunder like the world’s ending, power cuts and leaking roofs — the price of a life lived elsewhere

22:00 Want to build a library for left-behind children? First, let’s sell 5,000 jin of purple rice!

27:47 How Zhaoxi She operates and farms: “When the ecosystem is in balance, you don’t need to intervene heavily by hand.”

30:49 Locals are starting to grow hybrid rice too, and fertiliser shops have made their way into the mountains

32:00 “The mountains and rivers are the host; we are but guests” — Dong, Han, foreigner — all of us are guests on this land

32:33 How Dong people celebrate International Women’s Day: want to pass through? Leave a toll!

34:36 The Dong view on festivals: celebrating life itself — if there’s a festival, of course you mark it! “When you come to my home, that itself is a festival.”

36:00 The classic East Asian family question: quitting your Beijing job, marrying into the Guizhou mountains to farm — what do your parents think?

38:00 Mentors said growing rice through ecological agriculture simply can’t make money. “If it can move me, why can’t it move anyone else?”

41:50 Who says our varieties are old? These varieties are perfectly good!

44:58 The world is my oyster, and I pry it open with courage and drive

46:00 The greatest challenge in farming is time: a whole year of tending the fields for a harvest worth two thousand — who wouldn’t lose their mind?

48:33 Farming is all about making wishes to nature — beg for sunshine in summer, and pray no rain falls at harvest

51:14 “I’d rather keep on my Odyssey — I don’t want the final destination to find me”

▼