From City to Satoyama: Two Knowledge Farmers and Ten Years Farming Up the Hill

Have you ever dreamed of escaping the city, returning to the countryside to farm, and going back to a pastoral life? Have you ever held a romantic vision of a “self-sufficient” life? Yet real life on the soil is far more complex and demanding than we imagine — and all the more moving for it.

Wenzizi and Changjiaoling are two young people born in the 1980s, both graduates of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Starting out as complete novices at farming, they spent ten years carving out a patch of satoyama in the foothills on the outskirts of Beijing — Gaia Wors Garden.

Unlike remote, rarely-visited deep mountain forests, the term “satoyama” refers to “the boundary between human settlements (sato) and the mountain wilderness (yama)” — a transitional zone where people and nature coexist. Across their 30 mu (about two hectares) of land, they grow vegetables, keep chickens, run nature education programmes, write books, paint, and make maltose. They converse with the soil, live alongside climate change, learn from the older farmers in the village, and share the land with insects, birds, trees, and grasses.

Three years ago, they turned their farming life into the book Rooted but Not Rustic: A Knowledge Farmer’s Satoyama Life, which was warmly welcomed by many fellow growers. This year they published a new book, Farming in the Satoyama, sharing without reservation every path they have walked and every pit they have tumbled into, and weaving in their deep reflections on nature, ecology, and ways of living.

Click here to learn more about their first book, Rooted but Not Rustic

The conversation begins with this curry meal — “everything comes from the hill” — and moves on to what satoyama really means, how people and nature share a piece of land, and how farmers keep adjusting to the violent swings of climate change. Hailstones have wiped out the apricots, autumn crops have been washed away by rain, French beans have stopped fruiting, yet the rice, with the rainy season stretching ever longer, has flourished unexpectedly. Amid all this uncertainty, they maintain a remarkable outlook: don’t curse the sky or blame others — sow more seeds right away. Like every living thing in nature, as long as you can keep growing, life never ceases to renew itself. They speak so lightly, yet every detail carries ten years of hard-won experience on the land.

They also discuss writing, education, the philosophy of living alongside the soil, and why growing even a small amount of your own food can transform the relationship between people, food, and nature. They delve deeper still into the spiritual nourishment that comes from life on the land: how farming dissolves urban anxiety, and why “there is no sorrow that lasts a night in the soil.”

In short, you are welcome to tune in and step with us into this satoyama where lemongrass grows, magpies nest, and hope never stops growing.

This Episode’s Guests

Wenzizi ♀ Changjiaoling ♂

A couple of young people born in the 1980s, both with master’s degrees from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, working in ecological conservation and environmental education. In 2014, they co-founded Gaia Wors Garden in the far suburbs, 70 kilometres from Beijing, embarking on a satoyama life of growing their own food. Their ideal life: keeping a balance between wilderness, farmland, and human habitation, letting the rhythms of people and nature unfurl quietly upon the land.

This Episode’s Hosts

Tianle

Founding editor of Foodthink and convener of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.