Down in the Fields: Why I Grew to Love ‘Repetitive Labour’

Back then, wherever I looked, nature surrounded me. Yet when passing by fields, most of the time I could only remain a bystander, appreciating how beautiful it all looked from the outside.

For the local farmers, cultivation is a means of making a living. But how do they work in tandem with the land and nature to make farming a seamless part of their daily lives? As for this kind of practical wisdom, what is fading from the past into the present, and what endures? It is a world of lived experience inaccessible to me as an onlooker. It resists easy description in words, existing solely within the rhythm of daily labour.

But I did not want to stay merely a spectator. I wanted to step into agricultural production myself and see what that world truly entailed. So, this spring, I signed up for Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme and headed to Xiqing Farm in Zhangziying Town, Daxing District, Beijing.

If I were to sum up all the work I have done in the fields over these past three months, I would say it has been about “learning the land” through hands-on labour.To outsiders, this work might seem repetitive and monotonous. Yet without it, one can never truly feel the profound bond between the soil, the weeds, the insects, and the crops that sustain us.

II. Weeds Are More Than Just Weeds

In truth, every weed has its own name. As ‘permanent residents’, they are among the living creatures that know this land best—through them, we can read vital local cues. With a thorough understanding of their growth habits, they can even become crucial allies in boosting agricultural productivity at pivotal moments.

When I first arrived, the plot at the far end of the polytunnel had lain seemingly fallow through the winter. To call it barren would be inaccurate, however, for a carpet of golden-hued chickweed was thriving. Not long after spring arrived, we raised beds on the same plot and transplanted sweet pepper seedlings. We only cleared a small ring of bare soil around each planting hole, leaving the rest of the ground largely undisturbed. The chickweed would continue to grow dense here, not only helping the soil retain moisture but also suppressing the spread of other weeds.

During my routine walks through the fields, I noticed in the maize field that the soil at the edge of one bed had turned pale and parched, while the earth right beside it remained damp. The bleached ground was bare of weeds, but near the moist soil grew knee-high redroot pigweed, its oval leaves unfurling in overlapping layers to shelter a small patch of cool shade below.

Sow-thistle and hairy hawkweed are also common field weeds. At the end of March, I first spotted a thick carpet of aphids on a sow-thistle stem; a month later, within the very same clump, I was delighted to find seven-spot ladybird larvae beginning to emerge. By favouring sow-thistle and hawkweed, the aphids are drawn away from the crops; meanwhile, their natural predators, the seven-spot ladybirds, have found a suitable habitat right here.

If memory serves, there were only three showers in Beijing during May. While weeding the parched sweet potato plots, the goosegrass had curled its leaves and crept flat along the ground, yielding entire clumps to the lightest tug. As members of the grass family, they have a high thirst for moisture and struggle to anchor without it. When a shower finally fell at the month’s end, I returned to the same patch the following day and found that even the tender goosegrass shoots would no longer pull free. In just a single day, they had driven their roots down with remarkable speed. It seems the secrets of the soil and the weather are quietly held within the weeds themselves.

III. Working with Insects

Days with little human company are far from lonely, given the sheer number of insect companions surrounding me. Though calling them friends is perhaps overstating it—when it comes to protecting the crops, we sometimes have to take decisive action.

On March nights, slugs feast heartily in the young brassica beds. There’s no need to hunt them down deliberately; a casual turn of a couple of leaves is enough to uncover a whole cluster. They tend to emerge on cool, damp evenings, greedily devouring the endosperm of corn seeds. If left unchecked, the seed trays will soon be stripped bare, leaving nothing but a thin layer of empty seed coats.

Throughout April, mole crickets make frequent appearances, drawn to the tender roots and shoots of young seedlings. Over several consecutive nights, the tomato seedlings came under attack, collapsing one by one. With the pests operating beneath the soil, we found ourselves at a loss. It was a fortunate stroke of luck, entirely by chance, that watering the beds would sometimes collapse their underground burrows, allowing us to follow the water flow and catch them.

Since early spring, the ants have been relentlessly busy. They are occupied with building their nests each time the skies clear after a rain; coming to blows with rival colonies over territory; and tending to aphid eggs, climbing up and down the sweet pepper plants in search of the most hospitable spots for settlement. The ants shield the aphids from their natural predators, the seven-spot ladybirds; in return, the sweet honeydew excreted by the aphids as they feed on plant sap serves as a favourite food source for the ants.

In May, the cabbage white butterfly enters its hatching period, bringing forth countless cabbage caterpillars on the leaves of brassicas such as cauliflower and cabbage. They chew through the foliage and excrete bright green droppings. More precisely, they feed only on the tender, succulent leaf flesh; the veins, with their tough fibres, prove too difficult to bite through, leaving them as the sole surviving parts of the leaf. The larvae are a translucent yellow-green. As they grow, their bodies darken, blending ever more closely with the leaves, eventually even mimicking the semi-transparent white texture of the waxy cuticle that coats the foliage. These little creatures are adept at the art of survival.

More often than not, you will not see the creatures themselves: earthworms leave small soil mounds capped with oval castings; bees resting on leaves trace golden pollen trails; mole crickets tunnel through the topsoil, leaving winding fragments of cracked earth on the surface; leaf miners scrawl across the foliage, leaving an insect script yet to be deciphered… Simply tracking the signs of where they have been is fascination enough.

IV. The Wisdom of Crop Life

In my daily work, I am often struck by the crops’ relentless will and wisdom to sustain their lives. Beneath their seemingly still and unassuming exterior surges an infinite yearning for survival.

After pinching the side shoots off a few robust tomato seedlings and sticking them into the soil, I give them a handful of water each morning, waiting for them to take root and thrive. For the first few days, the cuttings lay slanted across the earth, their leaves gradually wilting and drooping, looking all but doomed. A few days on, however, while the upper halves of the leaves began to curl and dry out, fresh, vibrant green started to emerge from the lower sections of the very same foliage. Each leaf seemed to whisper a quiet tale of death and new life intertwining.

A stunted bell pepper seedling with yellowing leaves was the first to open a flower. Compared with the other seedlings yet to bloom, its growing conditions were quite harsh—situated on the edge of the greenhouse, it endured intense sunlight and rapidly drying soil. This frequent water deficit was the primary reason for its poor development. The plant seemingly sensed this early on and made a deliberate choice: rather than directing nutrients to stem and leaf growth, it channelled them into reproduction, allocating its limited reserves to flower and set seed ahead of the others.

The flavour of strawberries changes dramatically with the seasons: in winter, they store sugar to survive the cold, yielding a rich sweetness; come summer, their tangier profile is a conscious adaptation, boosting antioxidants to cope with the heat. Clever birds and insects are drawn only to fully ripe berries, serving as seed dispersers. A ripe strawberry knows exactly when to ‘speak’—releasing a sweet, inviting fragrance to signal to the outside world: you may eat me now!

V. Witnessing the Full Journey of Food

During my time at the farm, I always found the right vegetables and fruits in season, and could experience the beauty of food’s journey from soil to table every single day. I began to spend more time observing the newly picked produce—its shape and colour—bringing it close, breaking it apart, crushing it to inhale its fragrance, savouring how its taste and aroma blended and shifted in my mouth, and trying to grasp the intricate connections between these forms, scents and flavours, and our everyday farming routines.

To a great extent, this was also thanks to the farm owner, Wang Xin, whose unwavering commitment to ecological growing—founded on the “restoration of local biodiversity”—gave me the chance to connect closely with the food and accompany it through its growth.

In ordinary markets, fruit and vegetables come in only two states: ripe or underripe. The secrets of their life cycles seem as legendary as the tale of the Stone Monkey. I never thought I’d see the day when I could look upon a whole family of cucumbers, from tiny to mature, lined up along a single vine; spot watermelon babies the size of jujube seeds wrapped in a fuzz of fine hairs; watch unripe tomatoes with slender calyxes reaching steadfastly towards the sky, their taut skins dusted with a fine down that gleams in the sunlight; see maize stalks sprouting aerial roots like little feet, pushing powerfully into the earth to draw nourishment and feed the foliage above; or see the tips of young maize cobs pushing out delicate pink silks that sway in the breeze…

In an interview, writer Shinobu Yoshii recalled her time on the farm: “It was exhausting there, but I truly felt I was living earnestly. There was something rather special about feeling life and death so intimately bound to myself.”

Only after having the chance to witness a crop’s complete life cycle did I fully resonate with those words.

Three months felt like an age, yet also as though it had passed in a single breath. I still remember the day of sowing; once those tiny seeds slipped from my palm, they quietly took root and grew in every unseen moment:

The seed settles into the soil, and a force gathering in the darkness pushes it upward. The earth’s surface cracks and loosens, and the shoot emerges with its folded cotyledons, still clinging to its seed coat and a small clod of dirt;

If fortune favours them, they continue to thrive. Their stems grow taller, their foliage denser, shifting from vegetative to reproductive growth. They flower, undergo pollination through various means, and begin to set fruit. The little fruits swell, until one day you look up to find the branches heavy with full, ripe produce.

Yet the journey has not always been smooth—sometimes native seeds carry viruses that stunt development, or crops face unpredictable climate shifts or pest infestations during growth. Any of these can leave them damaged at a certain stage, or even cause them to wither and die prematurely.

Along the way, my feelings oscillated between elation and sorrow, yet what predominated was a profound sense of being moved. I found that whenever I took the time to draw close, I could always witness a transcendent strength residing within their resilient lives.

VI. The “Joy” of Repetitive Labour

When the fields were still barren in early spring, I used to picture the summer harvest. At the time, I viewed diligent labour merely as a means to serve our final yield.

Looking back now at the past few months—tilling the soil, pulling weeds, raising seedlings, watering, and catching insects by hand—I replay in my mind the scenes of swinging a scythe to cut down last year’s maize stalks, dragging a level harrow to smooth out the uneven earth, and scattering fertiliser across freshly turned ground with a shovel… I have come to realise that the long, repetitive labour itself is more precious than the harvest. Day in, day out, in those rhythms of work, I felt my body and my heart, at certain fleeting moments, connect with the land—honestly, tangibly, and with full attention. In those very moments, I experienced a sense of detached peace and quiet joy.

Such moments are exceedingly rare. More often, I am surrounded by monotony, exhaustion, and dishevelment, with the thought “I’ve had enough, I’ll just stop” rising countless times. Yet it is precisely because of these less than “comfortable” feelings that I can so clearly cherish the arrival of every tranquil, joyful moment. I know those moments existed, and I know—and anticipate—that they will appear again at some turning point in life.

Finally, I would like to quote a line from the *Huainanzi* (Chapter on Cultivation and Endeavour), which mirrors the role I have gradually come to understand myself to play in agricultural production over these past few months:

“Crops sprout in spring, but human effort must be applied; thus the five grains thrive.”

Crops in nature grow in harmony with the seasons. Farmers, acting as collaborators, stimulate their vitality through sowing, fertilising, and tilling. The grains grow freely and vigorously, and people are thus rewarded with a bountiful harvest.When we meet nature with sufficient reverence and respect, there is no exploitation, no conquest—nature’s gifts simply unfold as they ought.

Foodthink Contributor

Tianyi

This person is trying to live more tangibly.

 

 

 

Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme

Lianhe Programme “Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme” was launched by Foodthink in 2021. It aims to support young people keen on pursuing ecological farming alongside established ecological farms. The initiative enables young participants to acquire practical farming knowledge and skills through hands-on experience, while also documenting and passing on the expertise of seasoned farmers. At the same time, it supplies farms with highly skilled talent and injects fresh vitality into rural communities.

To date, four recruitment cycles have been completed, supporting over 80 participants across more than ten ecological farms nationwide for internship periods ranging from three months to a year.

All images in this article were taken by the author.

Editor: Zheng Yuyang