If No One Keeps Growing Them, They Will Vanish from the World Forever

Foodthink Says

Vanishing Foods is a book that explores the global crisis of food diversity and serves as an important call to protect local germplasm resources and uphold cultural heritage.

On 9 July, Foodthink and Beiye Books jointly launched the online book-club series for Vanishing Foods, delving into the themes of food diversity and the protection of local varieties. Liu Yurong, a fellow farmer from Wangjingzhuang in Shexian, Hebei Province, shared the story of traditional bean conservation and seed saving in Wangjingzhuang, emphasising the connection between people and food and the importance of preserving local varieties. The discussion also covered topics such as seed banks, local culture, and dietary habits.

Thanks to The Paper’s “Book Flippers” reading group for compiling the transcript. Follow Foodthink’s WeChat Channels to watch the book-club recordings.

The Ark of Taste Programme and the Slow Food Movement

The Ark of Taste is an independent initiative launched on the Slow Food movement’s website. On the site, you can filter entries by country or by crop type. It has catalogued a total of 6,592 endangered crop varieties.

The Ark of Taste originated in the mid-1990s as part of the Slow Food movement, which was initiated by Italian journalist Carlo Petrini. A shared characteristic of the Slow Food movement is its desire to resist the ever-growing industrialisation and homogenisation of food. The very name “Slow Food” thus captures well the philosophy they advocate: the food we eat does not have to be fast food, nor does it have to be white-feathered broiler chicken rushed to maturity in barely over thirty days. We wish to pay attention to the place-based cultures surrounding plants.

Foodthink travelled to Chengdu in 2017 to report on a conference that the Slow Food movement held in China at the time. Dan Saladino, the author of Vanishing Foods, also came to China in 2017 following the Slow Food movement. The story of Chinese farmer Sun Wenxiang featured in the book came from that very year, when he travelled to Chengdu with the Slow Food movement and interviewed that farmer.

To protect these endangered crops, the first and most important step is to record them—to understand which crops are on the brink of disappearing. In Vanishing Foods, two lists are mentioned:

The first is the Ark of Taste, a list that records entirely through the lens of food and crops.

The second is the “IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”—the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. I recall that in the section on fisheries, there are references to many large catfish, crucian carp and the like; you will see numerous entries on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, used to record which fish species and marine animal resources are endangered.

This contrasts with Slow Food’s Ark of Taste programme: the IUCN primarily records wild animals, whereas Slow Food works entirely from the perspective of the loss of food diversity, recording those crops that are threatened with disappearance.

Starting with “Plant Blindness”

This reminds me of an article I recently came across on WeChat Moments, titled “Why Do We Always Fail to See Plants?” The article is based on a recent paper, “Exploring Typical Problems in Plant Science Education,” and uses the concept of “plant blindness” as a case study to make the research accessible to a general audience.

The article introduces a fascinating term: “plant blindness.” It gives an example that in Britain, eight-year-olds can recognise many different types of pets, yet cannot name the common flowers and plants growing in their own gardens. Forty-one per cent of British sixth-formers can identify just one type of wildflower.

This is evident not only at the level of public awareness but also at the level of conservation mechanisms. For example, the United States’ Lacey Act, when it was first enacted in 1900, protected only birds; it was not until 108 years later that plants were brought within its scope of protection, and the funding allocated to plant conservation remains dismally meagre.

If our attention to wild plants falls so far short of our concern for wild animals, then our attention to everyday food may fall even further short of our attention to wild plants. The crops we eat once boasted a rich and diverse range of varieties, yet we know very little about that heritage. In many cases, the diversity of our food has already been lost.

The Different Logic of Animal and Crop Conservation

The ways in which animals and crops disappear, and the methods used to protect them, are entirely different.

If you read the chapter on wild sturgeon, you will notice that the loss of many fishery resources is caused by overfishing. Traditional fishing gear could harvest only a tiny fraction of fish stocks, but once destructive modern fishing technologies emerged, the populations of some fish species fell off a cliff. The book’s English title is Eating to Extinction—literally, “eating these species to extinction.”

But when it comes to agricultural biodiversity, there is a saying in the industry: “If you want to protect me, then eat me.” This perfectly captures the predicament of many of the niche, endangered plants and crops discussed in the book. If you do not eat them—if they are not woven into local traditional food culture—no one may ever wish to grow that crop again, and it could vanish from the Earth forever.

Vavilov and the Centres of Crop Origin Theory

Let me now share some specific examples.

The book frequently mentions a Russian plant scientist and geneticist named Nikolai Vavilov. Vavilov realised early on that the crop varieties we cultivate were disappearing. With remarkable foresight, he spent 25 years travelling the globe, completing more than 180 expeditions, collecting over 150,000 seed samples, and establishing the world’s first seed collection in Russia.

Vavilov’s other great achievement was proposing the “Centres of Origin” theory. When we interviewed Saladino at the time, he too mentioned something that thrilled him enormously—one of the most important stories in human history: more than ten thousand years ago, we domesticated wild plants and transitioned from a hunter-gatherer way of life to sustaining ourselves by cultivating crops.

This “Centres of Origin” theory essentially describes how our crops—wheat, maize, rice, and so on—were first domesticated by local communities in particular regions and then spread from there to the rest of the world. When he put forward this theory in 1935, he identified eight major centres of origin. East Asia was also an extremely important centre of origin. Rice and millet (millet itself is divided into different varieties, such as broomcorn millet and foxtail millet) both originated in northern China. Soybean is another extremely important crop that originated in China.

Ex Situ Conservation: Seed Banks Around the World

What is “ex situ conservation”? This conservation approach involves collecting crop samples and carefully preserving them in seed banks. Within our field, we call this ex situ conservation—the internationally used term is also ex situ conservation.

The book mentions several very important seed banks:

The Vavilov Institute Seed Bank: The seed samples collected by Vavilov over a hundred years ago are now housed at the Vavilov Institute in St Petersburg, Russia.

The Millennium Seed Bank at Kew: Located in Sussex in southern England, it is one of the largest seed banks in the world, holding perhaps as many as a hundred million seed samples.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault: Situated on the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, it is also known as the “Doomsday Vault”.

The National Crop Germplasm Resource Bank: Located at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.

All these important seed banks store large quantities of seed samples collected from around the world. Their function is to serve as backup resources for crops: if certain crops disappear in the field or in cultivation, we can apply to these formal seed banks to restore the relevant varieties.

For example, the book mentions that farmers in the Swabian Alb region of Germany were particularly keen to revive local lentil cultivation. They went to the Vavilov Institute in Russia to search for relevant seeds and eventually succeeded in re-establishing this crop locally.

In the chapter on sweet foods, the book mentions a local delicacy called sweet cheese rolls, which uses a special local wheat variety. Because years of conflict in Syria damaged the local seed bank, they obtained the relevant variety from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, enabling them to resume production.

What is it like inside a seed bank? Last year, when we visited Europe, we toured many institutions and research organisations involved in seed conservation. This photo shows the small seed bank of the German seed conservation organisation VERN, which houses several thousand varieties. Once you step inside, you can see all manner of bottles and jars.

The most immediate sensation is just how cold it is, because seeds need to be stored at low temperatures. At VERN, the seed bank is kept at roughly refrigerator-chiller temperature. But at the vault in Norway or at other large seed banks, temperatures can drop to as low as −98 degrees Celsius, or even below −200 degrees Celsius. At those extremes, ordinary refrigeration is no longer sufficient—liquid nitrogen is needed to preserve some seed samples, bringing their metabolic processes virtually to a standstill.

In Situ Conservation: Dynamic Participatory Conservation

One thing I particularly appreciate about this book is that, alongside ex situ conservation, it also introduces many examples of in situ conservation.

Ex situ conservation is quite straightforward: seeds are collected from sites of origin or from seed farms and then sent to cold stores for preservation. It is a static model of conservation. In practice, this work is carried out more often by public breeding programmes or even some private seed companies.

In situ conservation works differently. For instance, suppose there is an old local variety, and people in our village have been growing it year after year. If I do not plant it this year but my neighbour does, the variety is passed on within the community from one year to the next. At the same time, the crops are interacting with and responding to the surrounding ecological environment and farmland ecosystem.

Another distinguishing feature of in situ conservation is that it safeguards the evolutionary and ecological processes themselves. Compared with the static preservation in seed banks, this is a dynamic, participatory form of conservation—one that involves the active engagement of farmers and communities, not merely scientists and public research institutions.

I have just attended an Eastern Network Exchange Meeting in Hefei, Anhui, hosted by our partner organisation, the Farmers’ Seed Network. At the meeting, they organised a seed-exchange session, which is a wonderful example of in situ conservation. For instance, in neighbouring provinces such as Anhui or Zhejiang, where the climate and local growing conditions are similar, we can swap seeds with one another. This way, the seeds are not only preserved on my own farm but can also be protected in neighbouring provinces.

Why Are Farmers Willing to Protect Endangered Varieties?

There is a particularly interesting passage on page 324 of Chapter 7 in the book. Although Saladino discusses at length the importance of formal seed banks, he also recognises that static conservation is far from perfect. He says that diversity needs to be preserved in many different parts of the world. Take these cheese varieties, for instance: they are not merely food. Their production helps to protect and sustain a way of life, forming a particular ecosystem in its own right.

The book presents examples of these endangered crops, and in many cases it is frontline farmers, chefs, and workers who produce cheese or dried fish who are carrying out conservation of their own accord. I would like to try to summarise why these people are willing to protect these endangered varieties despite having very limited resources:

1. Flavour and food culture. The most immediate motivation is simply that they taste good. For example, Danyue, an ecological smallholder from Xiangshan, Zhejiang, grows old varieties of Allium chinense on his own farm. He explained why he saves his own seed for this Allium chinense: commercial breeding companies do not develop this variety. You probably cannot even buy Allium chinense seeds on the market, because it is simply not a crop they are interested in. Yet local people enjoy eating it so much that the variety has naturally been kept alive.

2. Climate resilience. As products of in situ conservation, these old varieties have co-adapted with and interacted in the local ecosystem for thousands of years, making them more resilient to changing climates and extreme weather. For example, the Turkish Kavaklı wheat mentioned at the start of the book has an extremely hard husk, which gives it effective resistance to Fusarium head blight and wheat rust.

3. Cultural identity and heritage. Still other varieties are closely tied to local cultural identity and heritage, such as the Syrian sweet cheese rolls or the “Geechee Red Cow Pea” mentioned in the chapter on vegetables. This pea was originally brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans transported during the slave trade. In recent decades, the descendants of those enslaved people—the African American community—have worked to preserve this pea variety that was on the verge of disappearing.

The book also mentions many other conservation actors. For instance, restaurants and chefs: a restaurant in the Faroe Islands specialises in fermented foods from Faroese culture and has preserved many local fermented products. Or a craftsperson in Ireland dedicated to smoked salmon. And in Japan, a master skipjack-tuna pickle maker who, it is said, is the only person left in the entire country still using this traditional method of curing.

A cheese shop in London has preserved a great many regional cheese varieties. In the interview, Saladino mentioned that Britain experienced a revival of cheese varieties in the 1970s. Many farmhouse cheese varieties have been revived since then, and there are now over a thousand.

At the Farmers’ Seed Network Eastern Exchange Meeting I just attended, there were many participants—not only farmers, but also friends from botanical gardens and other backgrounds. Everyone shares an interest in seeds, and this network is a space where people can swap seeds and exchange insights and techniques on breeding and seed saving.

We can see that nutritional value, food security, and adaptability to local climates are all important motivations for driving the preservation of agricultural biodiversity and food diversity. I think I have largely summarised the content of the book at this point. Next, I am delighted to welcome Liu Yurong, a fellow farmer I have known for many years. She is a farmer from Wangjingzhuang in Shexian, Hebei Province.

For those interested in the story of Wangjingzhuang, you can also search for the article “Sow a Hundred Kinds and Trust Not the Sky” on Foodthink’s WeChat official account. That piece focuses on how the conservation of old varieties in Wangjingzhuang has helped promote better climate adaptation locally.

Liu Yurong: Hello, everyone joining us online. Today I will be sharing on the topic of in situ conservation of crop biodiversity in Wangjingzhuang. First, let me introduce Wangjingzhuang’s geographical location and natural environment. These two photographs show the village in spring and in summer.

Wangjingzhuang is located in Shexian County, Handan City, Hebei Province, on the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains, at the junction of the three provinces of Henan, Hebei, and Shanxi. Because the dryland terraced fields of Wangjingzhuang are the most neatly laid out and grandest in scale, the village is the core conservation zone of the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System.

On the western edge of the village stands the Huanglong Temple. An inscribed stele at the temple records that Wangjingzhuang was founded in 1230 during the Yuan Dynasty, giving the village a history of more than 790 years. It is now a large natural village comprising five administrative villages. More than 4,600 people currently reside here, with a permanent population of around 3,000, and it remains a vibrant community.

Wangjingzhuang is a typical deep mountain area, experiencing drought year-round with very little rainfall—the average annual precipitation is approximately 500 millimetres. Spring is particularly arid, and rain is concentrated mainly during the July and August monsoon season, which also brings the risk of natural disasters. There is an old saying here: “Nine droughts in ten years, plus a flood as well.” Because of its deep mountain location, Wangjingzhuang has preserved traditional farming methods to this day, and the donkey remains the primary tool for both agricultural production and transport. In addition, some of the older houses in the village are still stone-built, retaining the architectural style of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was not until 1976 that a tunnel was opened in Wangjingzhuang, providing the first road access and allowing better contact with the outside world. For this reason, the village’s traditional culture and farming practices have been preserved particularly well.

In 2012, Wangjingzhuang was recognised as a Traditional Chinese Village. In 2014, the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System, with Wangjingzhuang at its core, was designated an Important Agricultural Heritage of China. In 2021, for its work in biodiversity conservation and utilisation, Wangjingzhuang was selected as a global case study in the “Biodiversity 100+” initiative. In May 2022, our Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System was inscribed as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System.

Biodiversity Characteristics of Wangjingzhuang

A striking feature of Wangjingzhuang is its remarkably rich biodiversity. Yet because the village sits in steep mountain terrain where arable land is scarce and water resources extremely limited, villagers must cultivate a wide range of crops on the hillsides.

Along the stone terrace walls, villagers typically plant drought- and cold-resistant Sichuan pepper trees as their primary cash crop. Before the year 2000, selling Sichuan pepper sustained villagers’ children’s education, house-building, and daily living costs. The pepper trees also help stabilise the stone terrace walls and prevent soil erosion. Within the terraces themselves, large quantities of high-yielding, drought-tolerant crops are grown, such as beans, maize, and foxtail millet. At the foot of the terrace walls, vegetables that require trellising—such as pole beans and pumpkin—are planted. Pole beans can also be intercropped with maize. Additionally, black jujube and persimmon trees are planted at the base of the terrace walls, forming a mixed, multi-layered planting structure that makes the fullest use of the terraced fields.

During the 2020 survey, we discovered that Wangjingzhuang holds seeds of 171 old varieties, and more than 400 species of wild medicinal herbs grow on the surrounding mountains. Of these, over 200 have already been incorporated into everyday traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions. All of this is a testament to Wangjingzhuang’s rich agricultural biodiversity.

The Establishment of the Farmers’ Seed Bank: My Journey of Growth

Even to this day, villagers still grow old varieties every year, and almost every household cultivates between twenty and thirty-odd old-variety crops. The custom of seed saving is still alive: each year, before the harvest, people climb the hills to the terraced fields to select seed, setting aside special plants to preserve the varieties—year after year, without fail.

To better protect the terraced fields and broaden their value, the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field Conservation and Utilisation Association was established in Wangjingzhuang in 2017. In 2019, under the guidance of China Agricultural University, the Farmers’ Seed Network, and the Shexian Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and with the support of Oxfam Hong Kong, the Association organised its members to visit over a thousand households throughout the village, collecting old varieties. They gathered a great many seeds of foxtail millet, maize, beans, sorghum, pole beans and the like, meticulously documenting each variety’s growth characteristics, planting schedule, and the cultural stories behind it.

In November 2019, the Farmers’ Seed Bank was established in Wangjingzhuang; that same December, the seventh annual meeting of the Farmers’ Seed Network was held there. At the time I had not yet joined the Association, but the meeting took place right next door to my home. It was very lively, so I went along to sit in. I was particularly fascinated when Dr Bai Keyu from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences spoke on the genetics of foxtail millet, and another speaker discussed how to shoot content for Douyin.

That experience set my mind on joining the Association. Because my family was poor, although I passed the entrance exams after finishing junior high and was admitted to senior high, I could not go on to study. So the chance to reconnect with experts and professors and to learn was, for me, an opportunity to make up for a lost education and to spur myself forward. I joined the Association in 2020.

In April 2020, I took part in surveys of the terraced fields, the crops, and village culture, which gave me a far deeper understanding of our village. In June 2020, I had the great honour of meeting Professor Sun Qingzhong from China Agricultural University and Song Yiqing from the Farmers’ Seed Network, who had come to Wangjingzhuang. Professor Sun called out my name at first sight, which thrilled me enormously. After listening to the talks, my passion for learning was rekindled, and I felt that I too could contribute something to my hometown. Inspired, I enrolled at TV University to study Chinese, hoping that one day I could write and speak more effectively and express myself better.

Over this period, I gradually developed a deep interest in biodiversity and traditional old varieties. I began going deeper into the village, asking around and unearthing those endangered old varieties, photographing and recording every growth stage in detail.

The Rich Bean Varieties of Wangjingzhuang

These are some of the photographs I took of bean varieties in Wangjingzhuang—and they represent just a tiny fraction. The village boasts a remarkably rich range of beans, including soybeans, adzuki beans, red beans, common beans, and hyacinth beans—over forty varieties in all. I selected some of the most vividly coloured ones to photograph.

For example, the soybean group comprises yellow, green, and black soybeans, each subdivided by grain size into large, medium, and small—large yellow soybean, medium yellow soybean, small yellow soybean, and likewise large, medium, and small green soybeans. This size-based classification exists because the varieties designated “large” and “medium” exhibit an upright, multi-branched growth habit.

The small yellow, small black, and small green soybeans, by contrast, tend towards a climbing growth habit. In terms of flavour, although these smaller soybeans yield less than the large yellow and large green varieties, they taste superior. Wangjingzhuang’s adzuki beans come in an even richer palette of colours—white, red, green, black, and variegated adzuki beans—and each possesses distinct medicinal properties. The common bean varieties are equally diverse: green-flowered pole beans, purple pole beans, Red Stringless, Black Stringless, and the Little White common bean, among others. The hyacinth bean group includes the white-flowered green hyacinth bean, the purple-flowered green hyacinth bean, the Purple-and-Gold hyacinth bean, the purple hyacinth bean, and the white hyacinth bean, of which the white variety has medicinal value.

In 2023, I carried out a growing-season tracking record of the traditional old-variety beans, planting multiple collected varieties together in a single field to compare their growth periods, flowering times, maturation, and plant forms. For instance, the small yellow soybean is of the upright, multi-branched type, while the Little White common bean is of the twining type.

The data show that these old varieties in Wangjingzhuang generally grow quite tall, with a wealth of variation in flower colour, leaf shape, and seed-coat colour. You can see from the photographs how striking the colours of these beans are.

Yields of these old-variety beans in Wangjingzhuang are generally low. Adzuki beans, for example, average only around 600 kg per hectare; in a poor year, the yield can fall below 450 kg per hectare. The larger soybean varieties do somewhat better, yielding roughly 1,500 kg per hectare.

Wangjingzhuang’s wealth of bean varieties is largely a product of its location in the deep mountain terrain of the Taihang Mountains, at altitudes ranging from 678 to 1,030 metres. The distinctive local mountain microclimate means that rainfall and conditions vary markedly from one ravine to the next.

The village’s geography takes the form of two mountains flanking a single valley. The low-lying valley floor has relatively fertile soil and is classified as first-grade land at a lower elevation. Beyond that lies the mid-slope zone, between the valley floor and the half-hillside—here the air circulates more freely, but the soil is poorer, so it is classified as second-grade land. Further up are the ridge-adjacent plots, which are relatively barren; along with some uncultivated stretches, these are classified as third-grade land.

Soybeans, for instance, require ample moisture and fertile soil, so the bulk of them are planted on the valley floor. Adzuki beans such as the red and green varieties tolerate poor soil well and suit mid-slope or ridge-adjacent plots. Common beans and hyacinth beans need support structures, so they are generally grown in mixed cropping with maize, or planted along the stone terrace walls to climb, which allows them to grow perfectly well.

Planting Schedules and the Wisdom of Cultivation

Wangjingzhuang’s climate is arid with very little rainfall, so the planting schedule must be timed to perfection. Once we have sown maize or foxtail millet, if the soil moisture status is poor, waiting any longer to plant would be too late—so we switch to soybeans instead. Soybeans make an excellent catch crop; they are shade-tolerant, and even growing beneath the canopy of maize, they thrive.

The growth cycles of the old-variety beans vary. Hyacinth beans, for instance, have a longer growing season and must be sown in April. Soybeans are planted in May, while the timing for adzuki beans is more flexible—May or June will do.

As for pole beans, villagers begin “sowing melons and planting beans” around the Qingming Festival in April. Pole beans sown at this time can yield a first harvest in June or July, and a second sowing allows a second crop in the same year. By July, villagers are enjoying green pole beans; by August, purple pole beans are ready; and by September, the old varieties Red Stringless and Black Stringless can be eaten. In October, there are still some Red Stringless and early-maturing hyacinth bean pods to harvest.

Different varieties are selected according to the specific location and environment. As a local Wangjingzhuang saying goes, “Sow a Hundred Kinds and Trust Not the Sky”—no matter how the year’s prospects turn out, if you plant enough varieties, there will always be a harvest. This is Wangjingzhuang’s wisdom for protecting biodiversity and safeguarding food security, forged through years of preserving old varieties and learning by doing.

Reviving the Little White Common Bean

To give a personal example: because I have a particular fondness for old varieties, I keep growing them every year, constantly asking around and seeking out more beautiful seeds to try growing. In 2019, during a survey, I discovered that the Little White Common Bean was still being grown in the village—it had been around for many years. This bean is milky white in colour, and at first we classified it as a soybean. We tried growing it in 2020 and 2021, but without success. Then, in 2022, I went to visit a neighbour’s home. Because of my love for old varieties, I am very sensitive to seeds, and I spotted some Little White Common Bean seeds on their windowsill that had been sitting there for eight or nine years. I wanted to grow them. I originally meant to give the neighbour two yuan, but they refused, so in the end I gave one yuan, and they handed over the seeds.

On 13 April, I began my first attempt at growing it. Because so long had passed since the seeds were last viable, I started by raising seedlings in paper cups, but that failed too. On 17 May, I planted a few more in the field behind my house. In the end only three tiny seedlings emerged, and then the birds ate them, and slowly they all withered and died.

Just as I was losing all hope, around 18 June, an official from our county Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs suggested I try once more, this time sowing directly into the field. I checked the weather forecast in advance, packed water, and went straight to the field to sow. This time over forty seedlings came up—I was overjoyed! To keep birds from eating the tender shoots, I cut Sprite and cola bottles in half and stuck them in the soil. When sparrows or other birds came to peck, sometimes their bellies would get a nick from the cut edges, and they would not return. This proved a very effective way to protect the Little White Common Bean.

From then on, I went to check on them every few days and took photographs. At the time we believed it was a soybean, but as it grew, it began to look unlike one. I posted the photos on WeChat Moments, saying my soybeans had “grown all wrong.” A lecturer from Yunnan Agricultural University told me that soybeans can indeed have a climbing habit, but it was not until the plant produced its white, butterfly-shaped common bean flowers that I was certain this was absolutely not a soybean. And when it set pods, I confirmed that this variety is a dry-seed-type common bean: the seeds inside are edible, but the pod skins are not.

By carefully documenting the process once more, I was also able to correct the error in our earlier records. Once I had confirmed it was a common bean, I redid the documentation from scratch. Every time I revive one of these endangered varieties, I feel enormously happy and proud—I feel I have given these old varieties a second life, and that is deeply worthwhile. The more I do, the more I want to keep going. I hope that in the future I can contribute even more to the conservation of biodiversity.

Bean Culture and Traditional Customs

Because of my interest in seeds, by 2023 very few people in the village were still growing the white hyacinth bean. I asked around privately and continued cultivating it myself to keep it alive. Some of our old foxtail millet varieties, such as Pima Qing, have a darker colour and are rich in anthocyanins; the green millet porridge made from them is especially good for people with liver trouble.

Wangjingzhuang used to be a place cut off from the world, much like the Peach Blossom Spring of legend. Families were universally poor and life was extremely hard. At that time there were no roads into the village, and the only link to the outside world was a camel caravan that could carry a little grain in from beyond the mountains. Even so, food was desperately scarce. To stay alive, people had to walk to Anyang in Henan to buy foxtail millet hulls—the oily bran left over after milling. To survive, they ate almost entirely vegetarian food, going without meat the whole year round except for a small taste of oil and animal fat at the Spring Festival. Life was so difficult that villagers simply could not afford meat, so they relied on all manner of beans to supply the protein and amino acids their bodies needed. On ordinary days, they also grew and ate crops with medicinal value to look after their health. Villagers planted different kinds of beans according to the needs of themselves or their family members. If someone felt they had excess internal heat, they would drink mung bean soup; if hair loss meant the kidneys needed nourishing, they would eat black beans; if the body needed to reduce swelling, they would drink small red bean soup—adjusting to one’s needs in this way.

With so many different crops under cultivation, Wangjingzhuang has not only adapted to its local geography and formed a distinctive ecosystem, but its agriculture also remains deeply intertwined with everyday life. Let me illustrate this with our bean culture. Take the wedding customs here, for instance. When the bride arrives at the groom’s home—stepping down from the sedan chair or getting out of the vehicle—someone from the groom’s family waits at the door holding a vessel called a sheng. In Wangjingzhuang this is a square, wooden measuring vessel, made to the old standard of ten sheng to the dou. The sheng is filled with the five grains—which for us in Wangjingzhuang are foxtail millet, proso millet, beans, hemp seed, and wheat—and these are scattered over the bride’s head and shoulders, foretelling that her life will rise step by step and be filled with happiness.

Then there are the funeral customs. In Wangjingzhuang, when a person dies and is to be laid in a coffin, foxtail millet stalks are spread on the ground and the five grains scattered over them, a gesture of thanks to one’s parents and to the five grains for nourishing us. On the day of burial, an ever-burning lamp is lit beside the coffin. Once the lid is sealed, earth is thrown in—first across, then lengthwise. When the mound has been shaped into a smooth round, the five grains are scattered over it. This ritual is called “the Filial Son Scatters Abundance.”

I have felt this very personally. In April of this year, after my maternal uncle’s wife passed away, the funeral master said that as his own closest niece, I should take the five grains and scatter them over her grave. As I did so, I silently prayed for rain to come soon, hoping the grains would sprout on the mound so that her family would never go without food or clothing and her descendants would grow ever more prosperous. I also hoped that once the five grains grew tall, she would be sheltered from the blazing sun—that those grains might stand guard over her, shielding her from wind and rain.

We also have a custom of splitting the household. In Wangjingzhuang, once a son has set up his own family, he and his wife typically live apart from his parents. When the new household is established, the bride’s parents bring well-grown mung bean sprouts and some grain to her new home. The sprouts carry a wish: that, like the beans taking root and sending out lush, flourishing growth, the young woman will thrive in her husband’s home and their life will grow better with each passing year.

Every year, the Laba Festival marks the birthday of sparrows in Wangjingzhuang. Villagers make bean rice using a mixture of small beans and foxtail millet. Most people here follow the Taoist faith, so the first thing we do is offer the millet-and-bean rice to the deities. After the offering is made, we ladle a bowl of the bean rice onto the rooftop for the sparrows to eat. This is to give thanks for the sparrows’ kindness—for legend has it that Wangjingzhuang once had no foxtail millet at all, and it was the sparrows who carried the seeds back from distant places. It is a fitting expression of the Wangjingzhuang people’s belief in honouring nature and living in harmony with it.

Challenges Faced

Now, although Wangjingzhuang still grows many old varieties, biodiversity is facing significant challenges.

First, a defining characteristic of the village’s traditional old varieties is their long growth cycle and very low yields. For instance, the old-variety Golden Queen maize produces only 250 kg per hectare, whereas the same crop can yield over 500 kg per hectare on the plains. Traditional adzuki bean yields are also very low—the black and red varieties produce only around 50 kg per hectare, and some red bean varieties yield as little as 30 to 40 kg per hectare, which is extremely low.

Second, seed resources are being lost. New varieties are being vigorously promoted because they yield more, sell better, and generate higher economic returns, and as a result the planting area of many traditional old varieties is shrinking or they are on the verge of disappearing.

Third, ours is a mountainous area, and we still rely on traditional farming methods. Wangjingzhuang’s terrain is steep, and large agricultural machinery cannot be used, so labour costs are exceptionally high. For example, when villagers plough with a donkey, they can turn over at most one to one and a half mu of land a day. After the foxtail millet and maize seedlings emerge, they need to be replanted by hand, and the fields must be weeded three times. There is a local saying in Wangjingzhuang: “Only millet that has been hoed three times makes porridge that truly tastes rich and flavoursome.” So the villagers tend their fields with great care, which drives up labour costs enormously.

Fourth, large tracts of terraced fields are being abandoned. As urbanisation progresses, young farmers leave for work elsewhere; for their children’s schooling and better healthcare, they choose to buy homes in town. The village has lost its young workforce, vast stretches of terraced fields are left untilled, and the income the terraces generate is very modest. With the older generation passing away one by one, traditional farming skills are not being passed on properly. On top of that, the back-breaking nature of farm labour deters the young from taking it up.

Fifth, extreme weather is making farming ever riskier. Wangjingzhuang suffers “nine droughts in ten years, plus a flood as well.” In recent years the drought has been severe and temperatures have been lower than usual, resulting in poor seedling emergence rates or drastic crop losses. In 2019, a severe drought cut yields by around 70 per cent; in 2021 there were devastating floods; and in 2022 a serious cold spell struck—a late-spring cold snap followed by persistently low temperatures throughout the summer, so that the bean crops either failed to flower or set pods so thin and flat that the seeds inside were shrivelled. This year has also brought a severe drought. At this point in the season the foxtail millet should be in its heading stage, but this year people are only just replanting, and some are still waiting for seeds to germinate. Extreme weather has become one of the most destabilising factors in food production.

Yet we also have opportunities ahead. The first is growing market demand. More and more people are paying attention to healthful eating and prefer wholesome, ecologically grown produce; they especially seek out old varieties. Wangjingzhuang boasts a great many old varieties and rich biodiversity, so there are more avenues for selling. People come specifically to enquire about and buy the old varieties or local products they want, and villagers who grow these traditional crops now have a much wider market for their harvest.

Second, Wangjingzhuang has been inscribed as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. We have established the Farmers’ Seed Bank, with an exhibition hall and the Handan City Seed Museum, and seed culture is being continuously shared and promoted. CCTV and Xinhua News Agency have both come to Wangjingzhuang to film several times. Businesses are also investing in brand-building. Farmers can continue growing these varieties on their own—so long as the land is not abandoned, the biodiversity of the old seeds can be protected.

Wangjingzhuang has now submitted 60 samples of old seeds to the Hebei Provincial Seed Resource Bank. Some varieties, such as the foxtail millet from Laiwu County, have already been sent for space breeding, contributing further to the conservation of biodiversity.

Third, building on our earlier surveys—including the crop, animal and plant surveys and the village culture survey—three gazetteers were published under the editorship of Professor Sun Qingzhong of China Agricultural University: A Cultural Gazetteer of Place Names in the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System — Historical Landscapes, A Cultural Gazetteer of Crops in the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System — Ingredients Born of Nature, and A Cultural Gazetteer of Villages in the Shexian Dryland Terraced Field System — Stone Streets and Neighbours. Together these volumes cover Wangjingzhuang’s terraced fields, its crops, and its village culture. The volume Historical Landscapes was co-written by twenty members of the Terraced Fields Association. These books have introduced a wider public to Wangjingzhuang’s crop culture, village culture, and terraced-field culture.

In addition, we hold a rural children’s summer camp every year. In my role as a guide, I introduce the children to the traditional old varieties and the stories behind them, so that the children of Wangjingzhuang grow up knowing their hometown, loving it, and cherishing its old varieties, building a deep emotional bond with the place from a young age. When they grow up, they can play an even greater part in sustaining Wangjingzhuang’s biodiversity.

I have finished reading Eating to Extinction, and I had some very immediate feelings about it. On page 64, for instance, the book describes farmers being told to tear out certain plants that may have been growing in that spot for thousands of years, only to see them vanish in an instant. We have reached the last moment before the point of no return—the more severely diversity is lost, the greater the risk we all face. I resonated deeply with this passage. Wangjingzhuang has some truly outstanding old varieties, and if no one continues to grow them and pass them down from one generation to the next, they will lose their vitality and disappear from the world forever. We need more people to protect them, racing against time.

On page 86 I found a passage that also struck me: “Crops that have been cultivated for millennia have become landrace varieties. Over hundreds, even thousands of years, crops such as rice, maize, and other cultivated grains have continued to evolve in different places, adapting to local conditions and becoming intimately bound up with the ecosystem, the people, and the culture.” This could not be more fitting for Wangjingzhuang. Since the Yuan Dynasty, when there were only 500 souls in the village, the population has grown to over 4,600. Biodiversity has sustained that growth, feeding more and more people. The distinctive cultures here—the ways of growing Sichuan pepper, foxtail millet, maize, and the many bean crops—are woven into the ecosystem and into the lives of the community. This moved me greatly. Culturally, Wangjingzhuang marks different seasons and festivals with different foods: we eat bean-and-millet rice at the Laba Festival, dumplings at the Winter Solstice, and steamed wheat-flour buns at ancestral rites. These crops are inseparable from the rhythms of daily life.