It’s been over two years since I moved to the Valley of Villains, and each year my spending on hired labour and farmyard manure comes to quite a sum. The locals I call in to help often can’t resist running the numbers for me, telling me that what I grow costs far more than anything I could buy. And yes — that is precisely why I don’t dare buy! The ones giving advice meant to persuade me to just buy produce instead of breaking my back and spending money growing it myself. But I, the supposed listener, only feel the less willing to buy the tiring and costly it gets. However hard and expensive the work, I simply must rely on myself. How stubborn!
Although this year I handled the entire rice crop on my own, from planting all the way through to harvest, when the weeds were at their fiercest at the end of spring, I still had to call in help to pull them.
● Click the image to read the recap: “A One-Person Harvest Festival”.The weeding sister shouted at me from among the bean plants as she worked. I can’t understand the local dialect, and even when they kindly switch to Fujian-accented Mandarin, I still catch hardly anything. This time I managed to pick out just two keywords — ‘beans’ and “pretty” — and took it as a compliment on how lovely my beans looked. I was over the moon, calling out ‘Thank you so much!’ again and again. Then I saw the weeding sister stop dead in her tracks, utterly baffled, and it dawned on me: she hadn’t been saying my beans were pretty at all — she’d been saying the beans didn’t look well. And the rest of that half-sentence clicked instantly too — yet again, advice to use pesticide and fertiliser.
I. ‘It Matters’ vs “No Worries”
Everyone around here knows I don’t use chemical fertiliser, pesticide or herbicide. Old and young, men and women, their first reaction is strikingly similar — they all urge me the same way: ‘You simply can’t go without them — nothing will grow!’ My reply never changes either: ‘Not a chance! These crops have been cultivated for thousands of years, and chemical fertiliser and pesticide only appeared here in the last few decades.’ As time wore on, we each understood where the other stood — just as they cannot persuade me, I cannot persuade them. But what’s amusing is that neither side gives up. They seize every opportunity to try to save me, holding up my dismal growth and underwhelming harvests as evidence, and coaxing me along with every flavour of “no worries”: use just a little less — no worries; spray it on the leaves — no worries; wait until after harvest — no worries; what grows in the soil won’t be affected — no worries… But no, no, no — to me, every last bit of it matters.
I, too, have my own list of “no worries”: the weeding sister says my beans don’t look well. But it’s not a beauty contest — no worries if they don’t look pretty; as long as they’re good to eat. A small harvest — no worries; any harvest is a harvest. And if there’s no harvest at all? Still no worries — I’ll just bury the bean pods back in the soil as green manure…
The sister came for four days of weeding, collected her wage of five hundred yuan, received a generous bonus of free guidance, and on her way out couldn’t resist a friendly tip: one bottle of herbicide costs just ten yuan, done in a jiffy — saves money and saves effort…
● My fields and my crops — in the neighbours’ eyes, they really don’t look great. But — does that matter?
II. Tasty Vs. Can’t Eat
The weeding sister pulled weeds and urged me to use herbicide; seeing my yellowed, scrawny vegetables and seedlings, she urged me to use chemical fertiliser; seeing the melons, thoroughly routed and stripped, she urged me to use pesticide… Just as they refuse to give up on saving me, I refuse to give up on persuading them: yes, spraying does leave you with more pumpkins than I have now, but they all carry pesticide residue — and in the end, you eat them yourselves. That is harming others and harming yourself at the same time. Besides, chemical fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide all poison the soil, which in turn poisons every other crop grown there… We mutter our little sermons at each other, talking past one another, neither side convinced. But — but — but! As the weeding sister was leaving, she was carrying a bundle of my taro stalks.
Taro — and taro stalks — are both Hakka delicacies. Peel off the outer skin of the taro stalks, blanch them, and they are wonderful stir-fried or stewed in soup. For my rice-cutting meal, the evening’s accompaniment soup is taro stalks plus homegrown tomato paste — the rich, silky tomato soup it makes is utterly irresistible.
● Taro and taro stalks.How the weeding sister taught me that taro stalks are delicious. She volunteered to thin the taro plants, showed me hand over hand how to peel off that papery outer skin, and when she finished for the day, took a bundle of my taro stalks home to cook. I asked, curious: “Don’t you grow taro at home?” The sister shook her head: Can’t eat them — far too much pesticide.
Such a plot twist! Should I cry or should I laugh?
III. To Eat or Not to Eat? That Is the Question
I have always loved taro — especially the large southern betel nut taro, far superior to the small, hairy northern corms. Here at last I have seen taro growing in the soil — the real, living taro plant. It was only when I came here that I learned the people who grow taro do not eat the taro they grow. The local taro is richly fragrant, holds its shape through long cooking, and is of superb quality — soft, yet with a firm, springy bite. Betel nut taro is the region’s main cash crop. In good-price years, one mu can earn ten thousand yuan; in lean years, six thousand; averaging out, about eight thousand per season.
The road to town passes through vast taro fields. At harvest time, all the taro that meets the size standard is cut and taken away, the taro stalks laid in neat rows across the field, and the undersized corms left standing beside them go unclaimed. There are taro corms under the stalks too, but they don’t measure up — outside buyers find them too small, and the locals fear pesticide, so they won’t eat them. I have to admit, their taro looks far more presentable: neat, pretty, two or three times the size of mine, and not nibbled by insects.
● At taro harvest, only the large corms are taken; the small ones go unwanted, and the locals won’t eat them either.
Every taro harvest season, the roadside fills with enormous lorries, all loaded with taro. The giant articulated lorry on the left bears red Shandong plates; further ahead are more of these big vehicles, all with northern plates from Hebei and Henan. When I took the photo, I deliberately captured the load capacity on the cab door — 40 tonnes. That one load is seventy or eighty thousand jin, bound for tens of thousands of households in the north — including, once, my own. Only I didn’t know it then: the people who grow taro do not eat it.
● Lorries from the north haul taro back south to north.
Taro here is raised on chemical fertiliser and pesticide, sprayed every few days. I have seen the spraying from a distance and fled as fast as I could. They used to use heavy-duty sprayers; now they have upgraded to drone sprayers. They know exactly how toxic it is, so naturally they do not eat it.
It is not only taro the locals will not eat. The local Qingming Festival custom is to eat rice-skin vegetable wraps filled with spring bamboo shoots and dried tofu. The rice flour is kneaded with cudweed juice, turning it vivid green, with a faint herbal fragrance on the tongue. Some of the sisters come specifically to my field looking for this herb, even though there is plenty of it along the field edges and roadsides — yet they say: “Can’t eat it — there’s herbicide on it.” They are far from ignorant of the dangers of pesticide and herbicide… which only makes the whole thing all the more laughable and heartbreaking.
● I don’t use herbicide in my fields, so the neighbours come specifically to “weed” — for them to take home and eat.
IV. Loss? Or Profit?
Taro growers do not eat their taro — they sell it to the far north. Yet they buy Shandong apples and Hebei Snow Pears, covering their own ears while ringing the very same bell — a self-deceived cycle of mutual harm. Come to think of it, this is hardly a new discovery. I once saw vast fields of pepino melon in Banna; the locals tending those orchards never ate a single one. When visiting a Dai bamboo house, occasionally someone would bring out a plate of small, wrinkled, unpretty pepino melons and reassure you: “These are grown in our own yard — no pesticide.” So that is why I am so particular about any store-bought food in my diet. What concerns me is not the name or the origin of that purchased apple, but the chemical fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide behind those fruits, and the answer to the question: “Why don’t the growers eat their own produce?”
Others feel sorry for the money I seem to throw away; I worry about the chemicals they spray. My little sutra of “no chemical fertiliser, no pesticide” — I chant it wherever I go, but it falls on deaf ears. Over two years now, and apart from Old Fan in the next village, not one local will listen. I know I have no power to solve the big problems by changing others, but I keep trying to sort out my own small ones within the Valley of Villains.
I choose for the things I care about, and I pay the price for those choices. I accept that.
I know my insistence on no chemical fertiliser or pesticide will be laughed at, and I know it is more than just being laughed at. Whether it is my taro stalks or my cudweed, the locals feel lucky simply to get a taste — and I feel just as lucky. At the end of the day, it is the very mouths that laugh at me casting their vote for me.
Foodthink contributorKouziA farmer-pilgrim on a resolute walk, village brewmaster. Full-time foodie, part-time farmer, amateur writer.
All illustrations in this article are by the author. Editor: Tianle
