When Lonely and Weary, I Think: There Is the Land Behind Me

I. I. Off to the Farm!

On the road from Chengdu back to Kunming, I passed through many long tunnels. My phone signal flickered in and out – now strong, now faint – like my state of mind. One moment I had been helping Liangliang Farm sell loofahs at the Chengdu Living Market; the next, I would be heading back to the city, once again far from the land.

I studied visual anthropology. In the southwest, I came to know many ethnic groups and filmed many different ways of life and work. My work regularly brings me into contact with villagers and the land, yet at times I always feel unequal to it.

To outsiders, I seem to understand the countryside, but that understanding is always vague. I want to identify a plant when I see one but dare not; only after scanning it with an app on my phone can I be sure. And what I film always feels as if something is missing.

I have always been drawn to the rural films of Abbas Kiarostami, Ogawa Shinsuke and Agnès Varda, especially Ogawa Shinsuke. In his memoir Harvesting Films, he writes about how, to make a more authentic documentary, he farmed and protested alongside the villagers, persisting for over a decade before the film was complete.

If we look at films from the past decade, The Biggest Little Farm – the one that inspired so many people to want to start a farm – is, after all, a documentary; and Little Forest, which conveys a profound philosophy of life through simple food, was also created by the original manga’s author through years of living in rural Japan.

Last year, when I saw Foodthink’s recruitment for ecological agriculture interns, the mere thought of having the chance to join in the work as a “local” dovetailed perfectly with what I had been thinking all along, so I signed up without a moment’s hesitation.

II. Family Farm, Each with Their Own Role

Liangliang Farm sits on the northeastern fringe of the Chengdu Plain, in a small village called Niujiao Village in Jintang County. The soil here is predominantly yellow clay, and the farm grows mainly rice, maize, sweet potatoes, oilseed rape, vegetables and other crops.

Most people ride their little three-wheeled vehicles through patches upon patches of maize fields – a journey of roughly ten minutes – to go to town for school, to buy the supplies they need, and to play cards. On even-numbered days of the month, there is a market where you can pick up all sorts of things not normally available.

I, too, arrived by riding one of these little three-wheeled vehicles, picked up by the farm’s owner, Tang Liang, who had carved out time from his busy farm work to collect me.

As soon as I arrived at the farm, Tang Liang began introducing his family. At present, the big family behind Liangliang Farm numbers eleven people; apart from three young children, each person shoulders important responsibilities.

Tang Liang oversees all external communication and farm operations; his father is mainly responsible for frontline field production; his mother assists her husband and provides the main logistical support for the farm’s three meals a day; his younger brother Tang Jin oversees production coordination; Tang Jin’s wife, Xiaoqiao, acts as his assistant and helps with shipping farm produce; Tang Liang’s partner, Lizi, is in charge of the farm’s education as well as its beautification and decoration; the elder and younger uncles are well on in years – they are essentially retired, enjoying life while lending a hand here and there.

Why did he want to start a farm? Tang Liang recounted his childhood: his parents, like other rural parents, had gone away to work and were away from home for most of the year; he and his younger brother became left-behind children, always looking forward to the days when the family would be reunited.

After graduating from university, Tang Liang discovered that running a farm could bring a family together. So, after interning at a farm in Beijing for two years, he took his savings – a mere 30,000 yuan – and resolutely returned to his hometown, embarking on his exploration of the family farm.

III. 10 Years at Liangliang Farm

It has been roughly 10 years since the farm was established. This big family was not together from the very beginning – rather, they returned one by one, drawn back by Tang Liang’s influence.

The elder uncle and the younger uncle, who had never married due to health issues, were the first to support him. They began their little experiment on their family’s few mu of land, planting all kinds of crops.

In the second year, his father – who had been working away from home – joined in, and his younger brother and his wife, who had been working in Guangdong, also came to the farm. The farm began to turn a profit.

In the third year, his mother closed down her mahjong parlour in town. The family, who had rarely seen one another, gradually reunited at the new farm, each contributing their own strength in an orderly division of labour.

A few years later, Tang Liang found love too – Lizi, who explores Waldorf education. Lizi’s arrival infused the farm with fresh vitality; from its beautification to parent-child education, Liangliang Farm took on ever greater meaning.

In China’s rapidly changing society, Liangliang Farm seems to open up the possibility of an entirely new way of living. There are frictions, of course, and new problems to contend with all the time, but the happiness of the whole family is palpable.

Over the farm’s ten years, every year has brought new changes. Tang Liang has built a new house, the uncles have been trial-planting new crops, Lizi is refreshing the landscaping, Tang Jin has bought a tractor and built a new cold store, and the aunties and uncles have started learning new things again…

A tiny family farm sustains the lives of eleven people, gradually exploring how to educate the children, care for the elderly, and provide continuing education for the young adults, while beginning to foster a greater sense of cohesion in the village. Every day on the farm, new vitality radiates from both the things and the people.

IV. Those Who Left, Those Who Stayed

During my time at the farm, the two I interacted with most every day were Xiaoqiao and Lizi.

I weeded alongside Xiaoqiao almost every day. Summer in Chengdu is intensely hot – the midday sun can melt you – so we could only work in the early mornings and evenings. If you slack off for a single day, the weeds may grow like mad by the next.

Summers bring heavy rain, and the family’s own workforce simply isn’t enough; we had to hire villagers on a temporary basis to help out. Otherwise, the weeds would outpace the crops and jeopardise the harvest.

Over the course of one month, we weeded the ginger fields three times over – a repetitive task that demands diligence, and a vital part of ecological farming. At last, I understood why Little Forest: Summer/Autumn has so many scenes of weeding. The consolation, though, is that for those who live by the land, no drop of sweat shed upon it ever goes to waste.

It has been many days since I left the farm. I often see them posting on WeChat Moments, sharing their beautiful lives, and suddenly it all feels very far from me. I don’t know whether they will still think of me – this “family member” – now and then. Then one morning, Lizi sent me a message: “Xiaofang, Youyou says: ‘Auntie Xiaofang still hasn’t come back.'” He still remembers me.

Unlike the other interns, I was there for less than a month, and I always carried a great deal of guilt and a sense of incompleteness. Then one day, I was passing by the courtyard of a farmhouse and, among all the various crops, my eye immediately caught the familiar shape of ginger leaves. Hesitantly, I went over to ask – it was indeed that familiar smell. I shared the news confidently with a friend: those plants are no longer strangers to me.

I suppose these memories will always live in my mind, and they should never be deleted.

V. V. Being a Friend to Farmers

After graduation I started working with virtually no savings. Amid the pandemic, I wanted to do so much, yet I kept being troubled by the whole business of “making money.” All I could do was stoop for a handful of rice – so for now, let me be a friend to farmers.

Back in Yunnan, I found a new circle of farmers and took the first step in my “healthy living” journey. I never expected that to be far from simple either. The very first head of organic cauliflower I bought had two enormous caterpillars crawling on it the next day, and they gave me quite a start.

Although I had spent many a round battling all kinds of tiny bugs on the farm, facing them in a different setting meant steeling myself all over again – shattering assumptions I had taken for granted.

Anyone who can access the deeper stories behind their food will surely change their view of producers, just as I have. If you understand their worldview, you approach them with understanding and respect. In turn, producers’ social standing rises, their incomes grow, and more young people will naturally be willing to enter the trade.

The fact that we are not on the front line of production does not mean we are entirely unconnected to it. In truth, we too have indirectly helped create the agriculture we have today. On a livestream on a certain platform, for instance, you can snap up three chickens for 59.90 yuan, and everyone rushes in to buy. Yet the farmers who practise ecological farming have never once been so eagerly sought after.

Since coming to Liangliang Farm, I have come to feel more and more that farming is no simple thing. If you cannot open a farm of your own just yet, then take Lizi’s advice: first, be a friend to farmers.

Whenever I walk through the bustling crowds, lonely and weary, I think to myself: there is the land behind me.

About the Ecological Farm Internship Programme

In November 2021, Foodthink launched the “Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme” – another step in our efforts to empower the sector. After multiple rounds of communication and selection, we ultimately matched 18 interns to 11 farms across eight provinces and cities, with internship periods ranging from two months to one year.

We hope that ecological farms will compile and share their invaluable experience in farm management, production techniques, and sales and marketing, so that young people who wish to return to their hometowns to pursue ecological agriculture can learn from it. At the same time, interns from diverse backgrounds can contribute their strengths, inject vitality into the farms, and reduce the learning and trial-and-error costs of starting their own ventures when they return home in the future.

In 2023, Foodthink will launch the second phase of the Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme – please stay tuned!

Unless otherwise stated, all images in this article were taken by the author.

Editor: Ze’en