Leaving the City for the Farm: “Escaping Is Shameful but Useful”?
Foodthink Says
We hope those selected for the second cohort will set out again carrying these questions with them, make thorough preparations, and take the first step home at their internship farms!
What Has Been the Most Immediate Change Farm Work Has Brought You?
Cui Jingwen
March–June 2022, Intern at Yinlin Farm
Now a new “villager” of Yinlin Village
Looking back now, taking part in the internship programme was truly a great leap in restarting my life.
I grew up in the city from a young age. Although I had some experience of rural work, I had spent very little time actually living in the countryside — I had never worked a field, couldn’t tell one crop from another, and knew absolutely nothing about ecological agriculture. But since coming to the farm, I have been completely “hooked”. I started paying attention to food, to life itself, and life became far more tangible as a result. My body now recognises the difference in food quality — if I eat out in the city, my stomach is bound to suffer.
During my internship, I found myself thinking a great deal about ecological agriculture, cultivation, and food: what we should be eating at each time of year, what stage the crops are at during a given season. The greatest illusion of city life is the feeling that everything can be bought with money. But when you truly work with the land, you realise how challenging it is to tend the soil and the crops. When unusual weather means certain foods simply aren’t available, you begin to treasure them.
When I first arrived at the farm last year, it happened to be tomato harvest season. By the time the tomatoes ran out in April, I thought: brilliant, I’ve eaten my fill and never want to see another one. Yet when December finally rolled around and I got to eat tomatoes again, a surge of pure joy washed over me — something you simply cannot experience working in the city.
The farm also connects you with many remarkable, extraordinary people. Take our farm owner, Guo Rui, for example — he was willing to return to the countryside and build a farm devoted to ecological agriculture at a time when everyone else was choosing the city. In the broader context, it remains a very unconventional choice. I found myself thinking: so there really is another way to live; you don’t have to chase money every single day and still live a fulfilling life. It opened a whole new direction for me.
Past Articles ▼
Is the Farm Internship Exhausting? How Does It Differ from the 996 Grind of City Youth?
Zhang Bin
February–August 2022, Intern at Zhiliangtian Ecological Farm
Previously studied at the Guangzhou Shiwu Xuetang; now a young entrepreneur who has returned to their hometown.
I spent about six months at the farm, taking part in sowing, weeding and watering muskmelons, millet, maize, potatoes and pumpkins. The person in charge of farm production, “Captain Zhao”, was my mentor. He is an exceptionally good person, and I learned perseverance and resilience from him. “Captain” also taught me so many things: driving a tractor, operating a front-end loader, fixing plumbing, repairing electrics, cooking… When he wasn’t around, I was the one doing all of these jobs.
Working on the farm was certainly exhausting. I went out to the fields every day alongside the farm workers — most of them in their fifties or sixties, but they had been farming for half their lives and worked incredibly fast. Sometimes I couldn’t even keep up with them. Although I have never worked in a city office, I think that in terms of sheer physical effort alone, it is harder than the 996 grind, because the crops in the field don’t give us holidays. Rain or shine, day or night, they need tending every single day.
Personally speaking, it was exhausting, but I was genuinely happy. During my time in Alxa, the weather was sunny most days. The sky was very blue every day, and the view stretched out endlessly. In the evenings, I could see the setting sun right at the edge of the desert. I barely felt any anxiety on the farm — my days were simply spent tending the plants I had grown, watching muskmelons sprout, grow, flower and bear fruit. In my spare time I read books, and sometimes played cards with the elderly women who worked there.
I previously studied at the Guangzhou Shiwu Xuetang, and my goal at the time was to go home and work in agriculture, but I had no real understanding of what farming was actually like. After the internship, my understanding of agriculture deepened considerably. I used to think that in our pastoral area, cattle manure was only good for fueling a fire — I had no idea it worked far better as a soil amendment than chemical fertiliser. I also compared the traditional farming of my hometown with ecological agriculture, hoping to keep the good parts of traditional farming while transforming what doesn’t work.
Finally, to the next cohort of interns: Farming is genuinely hard work, but if it were all too easy, there would be no challenge at all. So if you love it, just go for it!
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Is a Farm Internship a Kind of “Escaping Is Shameful but Useful”? What Is Real Agriculture Actually Like?
Li Yu
February–June 2022, Intern at Letian Bay Farm
Currently exploring a new way of life
I grew up in the village, so farm work held no particular novelty for me. Before, I had only helped my grandparents with simple farm chores, but once I truly engaged with agriculture, I discovered how much there is to learn — what to plant in which season, how to plant it, how to plan it all. It was far more complex than I had imagined.
Why did I want to join the farm internship in the first place? To be honest, it was because I kept reflecting on the future of my life in my old job and wanted to try a different way of living. It just so happened that I came across organic agriculture. I feel that culture, or values, act like a filter over reality — shaping a brief hypnosis that breeds all sorts of illusions.
But when those illusions truly land, reality itself leaves you feeling torn. Many people probably came to the internship for the same reason I did — wanting to change careers, or to try a different way of living. But I would say: try not to overthink it at first. My farm mentor, Teacher Yuan, told me the same thing. Once you start engaging with agriculture, your thinking and understanding may well shift.
The longer you spend with agriculture, the longer you stay in the countryside, the more you head back to the city, the more you might feel a sense of urgency. The countryside, though, feels expansive — you can immerse yourself completely in your work and daily life. That said, when it comes to certain choices later on in life, we all have to face them; there is no way to avoid them. Coming to the farm for an internship is simply changing your environment in order to choose a different life direction — it cannot resolve the life questions you will ultimately have to confront.
Read Related Articles ▼
What Preparation Is Most Essential Before Heading to the Farm?
Li Chenzhao
June–December 2022, Intern at Yuefeng Island Organic Farm
Hoping to become someone who understands agriculture, loves farmers, and loves the countryside.
My internship farm, Yuefeng Island Organic Farm, does a great deal of heirloom seed conservation work. My main exposure and understanding has been in the area of crop cultivation. From a learning perspective, agriculture is a highly complete technical system involving many stages and knowledge across a wide range of fields — it requires both a grasp of the details and a holistic view of the entire system.
The teachers at the farm often told me that what you learn at any one farm applies only to that farm’s particular natural and geographical environment, its current scale of production, and its existing level of technology. The technical methods a farm adopts are all site-specific, and none of what we learn can simply be copied over wholesale.
After half a year’s internship, my reflection is that everyone arrives at the farm carrying their own existing knowledge structure and personality — we are all already mature, whole people. Once at the farm, you need to be able to proactively design your own learning process and set a clear goal that belongs to you. Otherwise, if you simply follow along, doing things step by step, it may not truly suit you. Weeding is weeding, but a farmer weeding and a biologist weeding will see different things. What you want to see depends on you, not on the farm you have chosen.
Moreover, a farm mentor is someone who passes on wisdom, imparts skills, and resolves doubts — the last especially. Only by practising yourself, forming your own thoughts, learning more, and generating your own questions can you gain more from your exchanges with your mentor, engage with them as relative equals, and truly learn and grow together. If you know nothing, you learn nothing.
These months of internship at the farm have been a deeply precious stretch of my life — treasure every hour you put in. I hope everyone can learn well and grow!
Agriculture is no romanticised pastoral idyll, and ecological agriculture is not simply a return to tradition. For agroecological practitioners and young people who have returned to their hometowns, “working the land” is an exploration of sustainable ecology and living, a curiosity about the unknown, a reverence for life and nature, and a sense of responsibility to family and community.
We look forward to the young people selected for the second cohort of the internship programme injecting fresh energy into the farms, while also gaining invaluable experience from their mentors in farm management, production techniques, sales and marketing — reducing the learning curve and cost of trial and error when they return home to start their own ventures, inspiring one another within a shared learning network of fellow interns, and growing together.
Please stay tuned to Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme!
Text compiled by: Yan’ou
Editor: Ze’en