Grains taking root and sprouting in my ear canal

“It’ll rain tomorrow, so we can’t spray today.” She would then change the plan to weeding, cutting back the wild grass along the ridges and clearing the irrigation channels. “If the water can’t drain, the ground gets too wet, and the tobacco will fall ill.”

I picked up a few of the basics from her. If black clouds appeared a few hills away, it didn’t necessarily mean rain; the secret lay in the sky directly overhead. If the sky above was bright and the clouds were sparse, the rain would likely pass us by. But if thin clouds began to gather overhead and the light shifted ever so slightly, then the rain was coming.

Sunny days were equally easy to judge; there is a specific scent to the air when it’s about to be clear. If that smell was strong, several sunny days were sure to follow. Similarly, rain had its own scent before it arrived; once that smell was in the air, no matter how fierce the sun, rain was inevitable.

This method rarely failed, remaining effective even during the volatile heights of midsummer.

Hail, however, was harder to sense. It gave us no chance to prepare, sometimes arriving even before the rain. A few times, in a panic to protect the tobacco leaves from being shredded, my sister and I scrambled to cover them with tarpaulins. The hail left us bruised and purple, the pain accompanying a deafening clatter—a memory that still makes me shudder. And such desperate, last-minute efforts usually only salvaged a tiny fraction of the crop.

In the old days, there was no agricultural insurance; if the tobacco was ruined by hail, the entire season’s hard work was for nothing. Hail was the weather we feared most. Fortunately, it was rare.

Wind was also vital; many farming tasks relied on its help. To dry radish strips or shredded radish, we needed the wind to blow them dry; for threshing wheat or rapeseed, the wind was needed to whisk away the dust and husks. But in the sweltering transition from late summer to early autumn, the wind became stingy: it rarely visited, and even when it did, it was but a fleeting moment, not strong enough to move a single husk of wheat.

My mother had learned a way to summon the wind from my grandmother.

Whenever the wind was needed, she would tie her headscarf tight, plant her hands on her hips, stand at the edge of the field ridge, and whistle into the open valley.

It was a melodic whistle. Mother said the melody was so the wind could understand the direction. Because the wind always answered, this melody felt like magic to me, and I learned it quickly.

The next time we called for the wind, Mother and I whistled together.

The wind was sometimes strong and sometimes weak, but it always came.

Writing this now, I looked up some information, wanting to know what actually happened in the world around us when Mother and I whistled that melody.

“Whistling cannot actually ‘summon’ the wind. Whistling merely creates air movement in the immediate vicinity through sound vibrations, thereby producing a breeze. When you whistle, the high-speed airflow produced by the mouth and tongue disturbs the surrounding air, causing small-scale air currents. This moving air carries some of the surrounding air with it, resulting in a very weak wind.” That is what the internet says.

To find it wasn’t magic left me feeling a little crestfallen, but then I looked at the computer screen and laughed. I decided right then to forget the scientific principle and believe, firmly, that it was magic. It was one of the few joys Mother and I shared; I would rather keep it stored in my memory as one of her superpowers.

Neither my sister nor I knew. Seeing our bewildered faces, her confidence suddenly returned: “In the Upper Hamlet region, thundery showers, ten thousand millimetres!”

Sometimes her gestures were so exaggerated that my sister and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. My sister said she looked nothing like the forecasters on TV, but she still loved pestering Mother to perform. Mother would wipe away her sweat, her sagging breasts swaying beneath her loose, old clothes. Like all the women in the village, she had never worn a bra, which made her seem more unconstrained and at ease. When Mother performed at the edge of the fields, she was different from her usual self; she looked happy and free. With the valley as her backdrop, her hands swept through the dry wind, and even the rising dust seemed to come alive.

Her performances never lasted long, as she would suddenly force herself to stop the joy, her face turning stern as she returned to her chores. But in those few minutes when she played the weather forecaster, we all felt a very distinct sense of happiness.

III. The Endless Toil of the Farm

By the time I realised this, it was already too late; I had grown to an age where I was expected to help. Tending to the fields was no longer a game I played with the world; it had become a means of survival.

Every year, during the coldest spell, I thought that once the radishes were cleared, I could finally relax for the New Year. In reality, by the second day of the lunar year, we had to rush to turn the soil—turning, plowing, and harrowing. Once the ground was prepared, the ridge grass had to be cut, while simultaneously sowing tobacco seeds and raising seedlings. I thought I could just wait quietly for the seedlings to grow, but I hadn’t realised that during this time, the planting ground had to be meticulously prepared: forming beds, applying manure, and later shaping those beds into ridges. Once the seedlings were planted, a long and painstaking management process began: laying plastic film, spraying, pest control, removing the film, weeding, topping… Each stage demanded considerable time, and every single plant required attention. Then, you multiply that unit of labour by thousands or even ten thousand times, and only then is the planting process complete.

The work that followed was even more grueling: foraging for firewood in the mountains for the curing barns, carrying it home on our backs, maintaining the curing barns, harvesting the tobacco leaves, and weaving them neatly onto curing poles. Bundle after bundle was moved into the barns, where we kept a sleepless vigil over the furnaces, tending the flames and controlling the temperature. After several days of curing, the leaves were carefully removed, stored in bundles in the loft, taken down leaf by leaf to be flattened, graded by quality, tied, and kept in a cool, dry place before finally being transported to the tobacco station.

Land that had grown tobacco was far more troublesome to treat than land that had grown radishes; just digging the roots out of the soil required immense effort. Plants as tall as a person were pulled out one by one, followed by another round of turning, plowing, and harrowing.

In the rural areas of Yunnan, growing tobacco is considered a major agricultural undertaking, so whenever the land was finally tended to, our whole family felt a collective sigh of relief. But that relief was short-lived; the cabbages had to be planted.

Once again, the soil was formed into beds, small holes were dug, and sheep manure and urea were scattered. One by one, the cabbage seedlings—either bought or home-grown—were placed in, soil was banked around them, and they were watered…

Fortunately, cabbages are not particularly delicate and do not require the same painstaking care as tobacco—provided, of course, that the weather is kind. If the rains failed, we would have to water them every few days.

While the cabbages grew, it was time to plant dew grass, string beans, or snow peas. The process was much the same: creating ridges and planting. The legumes required an extra step of building supports, which meant trekking up the mountain to find suitable bamboo or wooden poles—a tedious task in itself.

Once a harvest ended, there was no respite for the land, nor for us. It was back to tilling, ploughing, and harrowing. Planting radishes wasn’t as simple as just scattering seeds; first, the manure had to be dried in the sun.

Sheep manure was the best, mixed with cow and chicken droppings and a bit of nitrogen fertiliser—though some households used compound fertiliser directly. After drying for several days, it was broken up, bagged, and carried to the fields.

This required three people working in coordination: one to dig the trenches, one to spread the manure, and one to sow the radish seeds. The distance between each hole had to be uniform, and the amount of manure had to be just right—neither too much nor too little. No more than three seeds per hole, and they must not touch the manure directly, or they would be scorched by the fertiliser.

To prevent the seeds from being scorched, some families waited until the radishes had sprouted before top-dressing. With thousands upon thousands of seedlings, one had to stoop and fertilise them one by one. It was good for the radishes, but exhausting for the people.

Before the radishes grew large, we had to weed and thin the seedlings. If it didn’t rain, we watered them; if there was too much rain, we dug drainage channels. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, once the radishes had grown, every household would carry various stakes to the fields and nail them into the ridges, stretching nylon ropes between them to create drying racks. Then, the process of slicing the radishes into strips could begin.

Radishes as tall as a child were pulled from the earth, their tops and tails trimmed and the mud washed away. They were carried in bamboo baskets to the foot of the drying racks and sliced twice with a simple device. The whole root was hung on the nylon rope, and then each slice was carefully separated so they wouldn’t stick together, making it easier for the wind to dry them.

Once the radish strips were hung, everyone prayed for no rain. If it rained, the radishes would turn red or even mould and turn black, rendering all the hard work pointless. Most of the time, we watched the weather with hawk-like intensity. About twenty per cent of the radish strips would be caught in the rain; the rest were successfully harvested slice by slice, graded, and tied into bundles about the thickness of an adult man’s wrist. Only then could they finally be packed and sold.

Then the land returned to its usual rotation. When spring arrived, Beima would lead us in sacrifices to the land. We would celebrate briefly for a day during the Dragon Festival, and then it was time to plant tobacco again.

The farm work I have described comprises only the primary tasks of my hometown, or rather, my own family. There are far too many other chores to list one by one in a few words. Generally speaking, a farmer’s life is complex and stressful; there is no idyllic, pastoral beauty to it—instead, it is lived in a state of constant anxiety.

While tobacco generally has a unified purchase price, all other crops are a gamble. Perhaps when the cabbages are still small, the market price is two yuan per kilo, but by the time they are ready for harvest, it has plummeted to fifteen pence.

It was the same with radishes. They might be ten yuan a kilo when taken to the market in the morning, only to drop to seven by noon, perhaps rise to twelve the next morning, and fall to six the day after.

As for the snow peas, string beans, and dew grass… these depended entirely on luck. If you were lucky, they would all sell at once; if not, they simply rotted in the ground.

It wasn’t just the prices that made us anxious, but the weather. Hail was the worst, followed by prolonged droughts or floods, any of which could wipe out a whole year’s effort in an instant.

Whether the harvest was good or bad, being a farmer was always a hardship. That is why I was so, so afraid of spending my whole life as a farmer.

The work was never finished.

Except for the time I spent at school, I spent all my time working alongside the adults. Everything had to be done by hand. While my mother drove the ox to harrow the land, my sister and I followed behind, picking out roots and using hoes and rakes to break up clumps of soil. Whenever we saw a wireworm, we plucked it out one by one and crushed it.

Of all the chores, planting tobacco was the most grueling. The seedlings were expensive and fragile; each one had to be planted with utmost care and gently covered with soil. Because the seedlings were difficult to preserve and the timing had to be precise, we were often in the fields before dawn and only returned home after dark. The sun was so fierce it made one’s head throb and the back sting. By the end of every summer, my ears would begin to peel in layers, just like a snake.

Our fingers clawed back and forth through the dry soil until calluses formed on the pads. Our nails were permanently black, and hangnails clung to the edges like open blossoms of wool.

Weeding the tobacco was equally taxing. In the sweltering heat, with the cicadas shrieking, my sister and I would crouch beneath the plants, holding the leaves with our left hands while our right hands rapidly tore away the weeds. “Ah!” my sister suddenly screamed. I looked up to see her clutching a snake, which she flung toward the ridge, before she burst into loud sobbing.

Mother comforted her for a while—but only for a while—before my sister crouched back down to continue working.

It wasn’t just snakes; while weeding, we also caught toads and skinks. Compared to those, grasshoppers, snails, and slugs were considered gentle guests.

Topping the tobacco was no easier. We were much shorter than the plants, so we had to keep our arms raised high; the topping chemicals would trickle down our arms and into our clothes. At night, our armpits would sting with a burning pain.

Tobacco leaves have a sticky resin, so after tying the tobacco, a residue remained on our hands that turned black upon contact with the air. Our fingers were always black—not tanned, but dyed. It looked dirty, as if we had never washed our hands. During the time I attended the Han Chinese school, these black hands cost me many opportunities to play with my classmates. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only student from a tobacco-farming family. As soon as school ended, I would run to join the older ‘black-fingered’ children, taking our lunch tins to the canteen. We instinctively queued behind the ‘white-fingered’ children and only stepped forward once they had been served.

Farm work was so exhausting. Spring, summer, autumn, winter—the cycle repeated endlessly, as if it would never end. Yet through this day-after-day toil, our family barely managed to keep ourselves fed. In those moments, I couldn’t help but wonder: would we starve if we stopped? Couldn’t we just rest for a while? How many people in the world are like me, following behind their parents, working and working without a moment’s pause?

The books praised farmers as ‘great’. Where was the greatness? Isn’t ‘greatness’ supposed to be a good thing? Why did great people have to live such grueling lives?

Life gave me no answers. I had a vague feeling that only by studying hard at the Han Chinese school could I possibly escape a lifetime of farm work. Unfortunately, my grades were not good, and my workload did not decrease because I was in school; in fact, the chores during the winter and summer holidays only increased. One evening after a thunderstorm, I was carrying a basket and a sickle to gather pig fodder. The rocks along the riverbank were too slippery, and I suddenly sprawled across them. The fodder spilled out of my basket, fell into the river, and was swept away by the rushing current, vanishing within minutes.

That day, I lay by the river and wept alone. My blurred hopes for the future vanished in an instant, swept away with the pig fodder. I felt that I was destined to work the land for the rest of my life, like every other farmer in the village, like my mother, like my grandmother—working until my body withered and my eyes grew cloudy, until death.

Of course, as a farmer, there were one or two tasks I actually enjoyed. First was digging for medicinal herbs. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t ‘farm work’; it wasn’t bound by the same urgency. You didn’t have to race against time or the weather; whether you dug for them or not, the herbs would always be there.

Whenever we took the cattle out to graze, my sister and I would bring our small hoes and the cross-body bags my mother had made for us from woven sacks. With two rice balls in our bags, we would head for the mountains where the herbs grew. The cattle knew where to graze, leaving us to dive into the undergrowth and begin digging for herbs.

Digging for herbs is exhausting in itself; you have to stay bent double to search, and your back begins to ache after only a short while. The joy, however, lies in the fact that wild raspberries and cloudberries often grow alongside the herbs. Their taste is fresh and sweet, and picking berries while digging for herbs is far more pleasant than pawing at the earth under a scorching sun.

Generally, by the time the cattle were full, our sling bags were also full, and it was time to drive them home. The herbs we brought back would be dried for a few days and then carried to the Han village to be sold before school started. A weekend’s labour might fetch about two or three yuan. The woman who collected the herbs would pour ours into her own large woven sack, sit heavily upon it to compress the load, and only then would she settle our payment.

…

Picking mushrooms was also a decent way to make a living.

We would set off at the first light of dawn with small bamboo baskets, picking up a handy stick along the way before disappearing into the dense forest. In the woodlands near our home, the easiest to find were the delicious porcini, milk-caps, and coral fungi. These are all non-toxic wild mushrooms that taste wonderful when fried; they aren’t worth much, so even if we brought them home, our parents wouldn’t sell them. We would take the initiative to clean the mushrooms ourselves, hoping that Father might add a bit more of the precious lard when frying them, giving us a fragrant, delicious feast.

As I grew older, I began to hope for more valuable varieties, such as termite mushrooms, *ganba* mushrooms, yellow boletes, *jianshouqing*, and blue-head mushrooms. I was utterly stunned the first time I learned that a single palm-sized *ganba* mushroom was worth as much as a whole year’s worth of digging for herbs. I couldn’t understand why people in the city were willing to pay such a high price for them; *ganba* mushrooms are delicious, but the worthless coral fungi taste just as good. Still, it was good that some people were willing to pay for mushrooms; it provided us with a channel to acquire the necessities of life. Before every trip into the mountains, a vast field of *ganba* mushrooms would flash before my eyes, motivating me to persist for hours in the rain-soaked forest. However, termite and *ganba* mushrooms are not so easily found by children. Compared to those who devote themselves entirely to picking mushrooms during the rainy season, we were mere amateurs. They would do everything in their power to protect their “mushroom patches”, making it nearly impossible for us to find any that had been overlooked.

I remember one year when the rainfall was particularly good; the perfect balance of moisture and sunlight brought a bounty of mushrooms. My sister and I picked a fair amount of yellow boletes and sold them for over eighty yuan. That term, our bowls finally saw a bit of meat when we went to get our meals.

I never liked farm work, yet I could not bring myself to hate it. At the very least, during a childhood of abject poverty, farm work sustained my precarious sense of identity. It made me feel as though I were doing something “useful”, and it gave me a glimmer of hope: “Even if I’m not good at school, I can at least fill my belly by working the land.”
Fortunately, I had that hope; otherwise, how could I have endured those days of discouragement, confusion, and anxiety alone, knowing I couldn’t concentrate on my studies?

All images in this article provided by the author