Searching for the Soul of the Valley: A Journey Back to 2011

I. Returning to 2011

The reserve’s shuttle stopped by the side of a narrow concrete road, flanked by karst limestone mountains that seemed strangely familiar. We passed through a sugarcane grove; in fact, countless bare stone peaks in the area are surrounded by sugarcane. Unlike the black-purple skin of fruit cane, this sugarcane has a dark brown rind coated in a white frost. The stalks are less plump than those of fruit cane—shrivelled and dry—making it hard to imagine they are the sugar canes specifically used for refining sugar. “Look! White-headed Langurs!” someone in our group suddenly shouted. We all gathered behind a limestone hill. Looking up, several people were already using binoculars and telephoto lenses. The rocky cliff was so close, with no fences to obstruct the view, that no special equipment was needed to clearly see several monkeys with white tufts of hair moving up and down the exposed precipice. These are the White-headed Langurs, a National First-Class protected species even rarer than the giant panda.

● Black White-headed Langurs can be seen on the limestone mountain.

This karst region where they dwell was my first stop fourteen years ago when I began working in rural development.

After graduating from university, I worked in advertising at Ogilvy in Beijing. Driven by a concern for rural issues, and specifically a desire to explore my own roots and identity, I resigned in early 2011. I started as an intern at Little Donkey Farm before applying to join a youth project with Action Aid. There, in their project site in Longzhou, Guangxi, I engaged in comprehensive rural development work, including ecological agriculture, volunteer teaching, microfinance, and the preservation of ethnic culture. Action Aid is an international confederation dedicated to the eradication of global poverty.

A year later, at the end of 2011, I left Guangxi and returned to my home village in Zhejiang. Since then, through various turns of fate, I had no opportunity to return to Guangxi.

● After leaving Guangxi, my wife Mei Yuhui and I returned to our hometown in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, to found “Mei and Yu”.

During the ‘Greater Heat’ solar term of 2024, the podcast I participate in, “Collective Power Structure”, invited Ms Zhang Lanying, the former head of Action Aid China, to discuss the changes she had witnessed in the Chinese countryside and the various stages of rural construction. After recording the podcast, we agreed to revisit the project sites from back then. Two months later, Ms Zhang messaged me with a plan to revisit Longzhou before the National Day holiday, attaching an itinerary. I was somewhat surprised to see the first stop was the “White-headed Langur Eco-Tourism Area”: we had agreed to revisit old haunts, so why had it turned into a sightseeing tour? However, as more familiar village names appeared—Minjian, Bansong, Guiping, and Bangui—I joined in with a sense of excitement.

II. Three Notebooks

While searching through my work records from Longzhou, I was surprised to find three notebooks. I must have followed the advice of the naturalist George Schaller, who suggested that during fieldwork, one should maintain the habit of keeping “three notebooks”: a diary, a data book, and field notes. Rereading these dense pages, I felt as though I had been transported back to the scene 14 years ago, filled with the confusion, bewilderment, and frustration of someone encountering rural work for the first time. At the time, I had joined Action Aid as a “Practitioner of the 6th Youth Development Project” (which also happened to be the final cohort). My application had been rather ambitious, describing me as an “observer and practitioner of China’s (rural) transformation”, aiming for a “systematic exploration of the relationship between urban and rural areas” and pledging to “conduct at least one rural social survey every year”.

● A group photo with fellow “Youth Practitioners”; Ms Zhang Lanying is third from the right in the front row, and I am third from the left in the front row.

As a non-profit organisation, Action Aid had a rather unique funding model—it did not rely on foundations, but on individual donations. An ordinary citizen in a donor country (usually a developed nation) would be willing to donate £10 or €10 from their monthly salary. Through Action Aid, this money supported communities in recipient countries via various projects. Donors and recipients could also communicate directly. During my time in Longzhou, children from the supported communities would draw pictures, which were then sent to the donors via Action Aid.

However, by the time I arrived in Longzhou, this funding model was already precarious. The 2008 global financial crisis had left many ordinary donors unemployed. Furthermore, they were seeing reports of China’s development in the media—moon landings, satellite launches, hosting the Olympics—and concluded that China had the capacity to solve its own problems, leading them to prefer donating to even poorer regions in Africa or South Asia. (Action Aid officially withdrew from China in 2016.)

● Although Action Aid officially withdrew from China in 2016, the sign for the Longzhou office remains. Seeing the sign during her 2024 visit, Ms Zhang Lanying, the former head of the organisation in China, was overcome with emotion.

III. What is Development? And Why Develop?

Beyond the organisation’s struggles, my own confusion, bewilderment, and frustration stemmed more from a clash of perspectives regarding “development” between the organisation, the villagers, and my own beliefs at the time. I was practising vegetarianism then (which I maintained for a year) and was deeply influenced by the concept of “simple living” advocated by the Taiwanese environmentalist Qu Jifu. I hoped to achieve freedom by reducing consumption rather than by earning more money. For a while, I left Longzhou to work at an ecological orchard in Guilin, where my daily task was simply to mow clover. Once a cycle was complete, new clover would grow, and the process would begin again. Meanwhile, the appearance of the Zhuang ethnic villages in the project area was undergoing a drastic transformation. Through migrant work and sugarcane farming, villagers had gained cash income, most of which they invested in building houses. These new houses were not in the traditional Zhuang stilt-house style, but were instead modelled after the multi-storey buildings of the eastern coast, making them “cold in winter and hot in summer”.

“Bangui Village currently has 26 multi-storey houses, of which 9 are single-storey, 8 are two-storey, 2 are three-storey, and 7 are under construction; there are also 24 single-storey bungalows. If they are ‘multi-storey’ houses, why are some only one storey? Because they want to live in a new house but lack the funds to build two storeys, so they first build one storey in the style of a multi-storey house, intending to add another floor after the sugarcane harvest next year; those with more money can build a three-storey house all at once. Three-storey houses account for 4%, two-storey houses 16%, one-storey houses 18%, houses under construction 14%, and bungalows 48%. Many villagers, based on fortune-telling, believe that building a house in the Year of the Rabbit is unlucky, so they have postponed it until next year; it is expected that over ten more households in Bangui Village will build houses next year.”

—Research Report, “Bangui Village, a Zhuang Settlement”, Yu Jiangang, 2011

● (Top) In 2011, there were still many of these traditional stilt houses in the village, with cattle pens on the ground floor. (Middle) In 2011, the village was already seeing a construction boom of “modern” buildings. (Bottom) By 2024, the dominant architecture in Bangui Village consists of the 2–4 storey small houses common in rural areas across the country.

The duck-rice co-culture ecological farming project, which had looked promising, also hit a snag. The project hoped to encourage villagers to raise ducks in the rice paddies; the ducks would reduce weeds and their droppings would fertilise the fields, thereby reducing the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. However, villagers would often catch the ducks and then spray the paddies with chemicals. I was sometimes asked by the project coordinator, Liang Jie, to go and “supervise”.

“Went for a walk in the fields again; the ‘Shanyou Zhan’ rice has already flowered, though the super rice is clearly lagging behind. Just as I was about to head back, a man approached carrying a basket. I asked where his field was, and he pointed it out—a neatly rectangular plot enclosed by netting, about 0.066 hectares. Many of the rice leaves were withered and yellow. I assumed he collected the ducks every night, but he told me: ‘I’m getting ready to spray, so I’m catching the ducks first.’ As he caught them, I finally caught someone in the act!”

— 23 June 2011, Work Notes

At the time, I had a significant dilemma: why did more than half of the villagers still feel the need to leave for migrant work, despite years of poverty alleviation from government and non-profit organisations? Hong Village is the largest hamlet in Jinlong Town, with over 170 households and a population of 700; the village head said nearly 300 had left for work. Bangui Village has 62 households and 251 people; 18 families have moved away entirely, and another 20–30 households have at least one member working away, mostly in factories in Guangdong, including garment, toy, and electronics plants.

“If the work of ActionAid and similar development organisations is merely to help the economically backward regions of the West catch up with the East, while tacitly accepting the existing mainstream development model, then what is the point?”

— 18 July 2011, Diary

On one hand, the development projects run by non-profits were less effective than migrant work and could not keep villagers at home; on the other, I began to feel that the projects themselves were simply following a mainstream development model, which clashed with the philosophy of “simple living” I wished to practice. I found myself trapped in this crisis of meaning.

IV. Population decreasing, county town expanding

Leaving the White-headed Langur eco-tourism area, I reached Longzhou county town near dusk. The hotel where I stayed happened to be right next to the Longzhou Uprising Memorial Hall, which faces a vast square. I remember this place. Fourteen years ago, with my bag on my back, I took a train from Beijing to Nanning, then a three-hour bus journey from Nanning, and this square was exactly where I got off. Back then, the area around the square was very desolate, but now it is crowded with newly built houses and various milk tea shops. The dining area also felt like a newly sprouted district, leaving me completely disorientated.

A companion told me that over a dozen years ago, the population of Longzhou County was 290,000, but it has now dropped to 230,000, yet the county town has clearly expanded. It seems everyone has migrated from the hamlets to the town.

The next morning, Liang Jie took us to a noodle shop in the Cedaoshe community for breakfast, where she introduced the community’s “food forest system”: various herbs planted in pots, longan and mango trees in front of and behind the houses, and the rooftop vegetable garden of a “Heaven and Earth house”. Locals call these self-built detached urban residences “Heaven and Earth houses” because the owner possesses their own piece of ground and their own piece of sky.

● (Top) The Uprising Square in Longzhou county town. (Bottom) Liang Jie taking us to visit the “food forest” in the town.

V. The village school with only 5 students

We finally entered the village, stopping first at Minjian Village Primary School.

“Guiping Village School is relatively well-equipped, with teacher dormitories. Currently, there are only three classes: one pre-school, one Year 1, and one Year 2. After the principal left, only two veteran teachers remained. By comparison, at Minjian Village School, students can study up to Year 5, there are more teachers, and the facilities are better, including a five-storey teacher’s dormitory, single-storey dorms for boys and girls, and a canteen.”

— 30 August 2011, Work Notes

Compared to other village schools, Minjian’s establishment was still relatively complete at the time. I once stayed briefly in the teacher’s dormitory there. I remember it was the only place in the whole town with Wi-Fi; whenever I needed to send or receive emails, I would ride my motorbike over. Some of the children boarding there were only in Year 1 and lacked the ability to look after themselves; the dormitory beds weren’t very clean, and they didn’t know how to wash their own clothes. With limited staff, the teachers could only do a headcount every night before bed to see if anyone was missing. One promising young teacher, Mr Bi, was eventually seconded to the town centre primary school. Returning 14 years later, that massive banyan tree, over 200 years old, still stands at the gate. The school is empty over the weekend, and weeds grow in erratic patches across the paved playground.

Villagers told us that the school now has only five students in total. Once bustling with noise, Minjian Village Primary School has no choice but to face the same fate of closure as the other village schools.

● The Minjian Village Primary School and its classrooms, now overgrown with weeds and home to only five students.

VI. The Passionate Youth, Revisited

Last night at a restaurant in the county town, I recognised Nong Ping (a pseudonym) immediately. He had previously been a field assistant for ActionAid in Minjian Village, helping us coordinate local projects and activities. Nong Ping looked somewhat weary. To better oversee his children’s education, he had returned from working in Zhejiang two years ago; he now works at a local lift factory. He said with some embarrassment, “I haven’t bought a house yet, my marriage didn’t work out… I feel like a bit of a failure.” Back in 2011, before he was married, he was one of the village’s passionate youths, deeply concerned with public affairs. At the time, the issue of left-behind children in the village was already quite severe. Nong Ping used the guise of running an internet cafe at home to provide a gathering place for these children. Outside the village’s cultural activity centre, I remember seeing a document posted on the wall: “Application Report on Changing the Ethnic Status of the Budai People of Jinlongdong,” an attempt to reclaim their identity as “Budai people”. Due to his overly radical anti-corruption rhetoric, Nong Ping’s status as a “Party activist” was revoked.

Leaving the Minjian Village Primary School, Nong Ping took us to his orchard. The orchard lay beside a rocky hill; during the village’s land consolidation process, Nong Ping had deliberately chosen the plot furthest from the village.

The entrance was actually a massive livestock shed, reinforced with thick steel pipes. It was filled with miscellaneous clutter, but contained no animals. Nong Ping explained that it was the remnant of a failed attempt at cattle farming.

Beyond the shed stood a banana grove. This was my first time standing inside one; they were taller than I had imagined, and the soil was soft. Nong Ping’s mother was tending to the banana blossoms. Custard apples and pomelos were intercropped within the grove. At the other end lay a pond for raising ducks.

As we left, he pointed to a small banyan tree growing flush against the rocky hill and told us he had planted it himself. He planned to build a house beneath it in the future to run a farm stay, complete with karaoke.

● (Top) Nong Ping plans to open a farm stay under the banyan tree he planted himself. (Bottom) Nong Ping’s mother working in the banana grove.

VII. Back to Pangui Tun

We didn’t stop at Jinlong Town, but headed straight for Bangui Tun. On either side, the jagged rocky hills remained, with the few fields at their feet densely packed with sugar cane, flanking a narrow concrete road. Where there once were several paddy fields of rice, there was now no trace of them. Fourteen years ago, on several evenings as the light faded, I rode my motorbike along this deserted road, and these rocky hills would suddenly feel eerie and foreboding. We parked at the basketball court on one side of the border road at the village entrance. This road, following the China-Vietnam border, curved gently in a wide bend at Bangui Tun. Just as it was fourteen years ago, rice was still growing in the paddy fields inside and outside the bend. At the end of the fields outside the bend stood a towering rocky mountain. We walked deep along the ‘Three-Sided Smooth’ canal—a former project of Action Aid. The water was crystal clear, with fish and shells visible.

● Walking to the end of the ‘Three-Sided Smooth’ canal leads to Bangui Tun, where I was stationed fourteen years ago.

Teacher Zhang Lanying asked where the apple snails were. More than a decade ago, I first encountered this invasive species in Bangui; now, it has spread 2,000 kilometres away to my hometown, the waterways of the Hangjiahu Plain. One reason Action Aid introduced the ecological farming project of rice-duck farming at the time was to use the ducks to control the apple snails.

Entering the village, things looked different. I remember the air once being a mixture of earth, cow dung, and maize stalks, sometimes laced with the potent fragrance of longan and yellow plum. Now, three- and four-storey houses have become more common, and concrete roads reach the doorsteps of every household. The thick bamboo groves are gone. The clearings left after the bamboo was felled have been enclosed as small vegetable gardens in front of and behind the houses—a landscape common to Han Chinese villages, is it not? Yet, I truly cannot recall where everyone used to grow their vegetables over a decade ago.

● Rice (top) and sugar cane (bottom) remain the primary crops of Bangui Tun.

VIII. Socialising through Cattle Herding

At first, only Nong Lina and Nong Lihua recognised me, until someone said, “He’s the one who used to herd cattle with that mesh bag on his back.” Everyone suddenly realised: “Oh, it’s you! Do you still have the bag?” If the term “social butterfly” had existed 14 years ago, I would have certainly thought it meant “socialising through cow-herding”. This mesh bag was a green woven sack, worn slung across the back—the kind local elderly people usually carry when doing farm work, especially herding cattle. I bought it for 10 yuan from an old woman at the town market and wore it every day in the village, keeping my notebook, phone, and water bottle inside.

● In 2011, I bought a mesh bag for 10 yuan from this old lady at the market and carried it with me. The person second from the right in the afternoon photo is me, wearing the bag and spending time with the left-behind children in Jinlong Town.

I also frequently wore it while herding cattle with the elderly. Back then, the staff and volunteers from Action Aid usually commuted between the villages and the county town, relying on the earliest and latest buses. I disliked that hectic pace, so I eventually moved into the village. At the time, the organisation was undergoing adjustments due to funding difficulties; few projects were running, and the future was uncertain. Coupled with my own unresolved doubts about rural work, I simply decided to go herd cattle. Summers in Longzhou are exceptionally hot, so the cattle are usually only taken out after 3 pm. There are two types: yellow cattle, which go up the mountains, and water buffalo, which are massive and generally graze on flat land and in paddy fields. Next to Bangui Tun is Guiping Village Primary School; at the time, it had fewer than ten students and two teachers. One of the teachers would lead three or four water buffalo onto the playground to graze.

“Bangui Tun currently has 54 cattle. They are driven out to graze by designated people, usually the elderly. The elders gather firewood while herding, leaving at 2 or 3 pm and returning at 6 pm. In winter, when grass is scarce, they are fed rice straw. Besides ploughing the fields, cattle manure is an indispensable fertiliser for sugarcane and rice production, playing a vital role. After the autumn harvest, all the cattle in the village are let into the fields for free mating.”

— Research Report: Bangui Tun, a Zhuang Village, Yu Jiangang, 2011

Through constant herding, many villagers I grazed with began to chat with me. That is how I met Huang Zhenjin, and through him, I learned the real situation regarding agricultural inputs and outputs. I also met the old Party Secretary, who told me much about the history of Bangui Tun. They were of great help in completing my research report. More often than not, if the herder was an elderly woman, she likely didn’t speak Mandarin. I would just stay with them in silence. I still remember a phrase in the Zhuang language they taught me: “lin wai”, which means herding cattle. After herding many cows, my confusion regarding the countryside seemed to begin to clear.

“Even as the media reports that ‘the young have all gone, leaving only the 386199 army’ in the countryside, it is hard to imagine from the outside how such a village remains habitable; wouldn’t it be mentally breaking? Yet, I see the elderly who stayed behind still herding cattle every afternoon, children attending school as usual, and a sense of order. The whole village is still permeated with the breath of life.”

— Field Notes, 25 September 2011

● Cattle can graze on the playground or be taken to the riverbank for mud baths.

● The old Party Secretary (left), who herded cattle with the same type of mesh bag as mine, and the women who herded with me and taught me the Zhuang language.

IX. The Tiled Stilt-Houses Remain

Lunch was at Nong Lina’s. When I left years ago, Lina’s family was building a new house. Returning now, they have two buildings—one for each of her two sons. Back when I was in Bangui Tun, I stayed at the house of Lina’s uncle next door; beneath the thin floorboards was the cattle shed, and I often drifted to sleep to the pungent scent of cows. Because he had worked away from home for years, he eventually bought a house in the county town. Despite the fact that the entire village has rebuilt with new concrete buildings, his home still preserves the tiled stilt-house where I lived 14 years ago. Walking up the stairs and seeing the familiar protective charms at the entrance, the two large beds, and the earthen stove in the kitchen with unburnt firewood, it felt as though no time had passed. During lunch, we briefly caught up. I mentioned that I’ve developed a habit of adding minced garlic to hot oil when stir-frying greens (a practice my family in Zhejiang still cannot accept), which I learned from Lina; I also learned how to make the sour bamboo shoots found in the famous Guangxi rice noodles.

After lunch, Mr Zhang suggested a discussion about the changes in the village over the years. Sister Liang asked everyone to form a circle; then, she turned to me and, almost commandingly, said, “You take the minutes”—the atmosphere suddenly became very “collaborative”.

● The house and bed where I stayed 14 years ago are still there; the cattle shed is right below the second-floor room.

● Lunch at Nong Lina’s (left). Sour bamboo shoots, a dish I learned to make here (right).

X. Changes in the Village

What changes have occurred in the village? The roads and houses are wider and larger, the area planted with sugarcane is greater, yields are higher, and the village environment is cleaner and fresher. The women in the village have become more confident: “If you men want to scold me, you’d better have the right to do so.” Most surprising of all is that aluminium ore was discovered beneath the ground in Bangui Tun and nearby villages a few years ago—they truly “have a mine at home” now. The contractors leasing the minerals must pay villagers 30,000 yuan per mu annually.

But as cash income increased, many also felt confused, feeling that they are “not as happy as before”.

Land is more concentrated and sugarcane is better cultivated, but “there is work to be done all day long”. “The women’s groups used to gather to sing and dance.” “We would sleep until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and only head to the fields when the sun set; it was comfortable.”

The younger generation has moved to city life, and families remaining in the village must bear higher expenses for mortgages, education, and healthcare. “Now you have to go for a prenatal check-up every month; it wasn’t like that before.” “Fifty thousand a semester for a university student.”

● A photo of me with Nong Lina and her mother-in-law (top). The Women’s Group from back then still exists; on the far left of the back row is Sister Liang, and in the centre of the front row wearing blue is Teacher Zhang Lanying (bottom).

XI. The Water Buffalo have Vanished

For me, one of the most significant changes is that the water buffalo have vanished from the hamlet. Including the yellow cattle, Bangui Tun once had 54 head of cattle. As the village architecture shifted from traditional Zhuang stilt houses to multi-storey buildings, the ground floors—which previously served as shelters for the water buffalo—disappeared. Most of the water buffalo have also gone (I saw only one on the day of my visit); without the buffalo dung, the village roads have certainly become cleaner. Perhaps it was my experience herding buffalo here, or perhaps a shared kinship with those who raise silkworms, but I felt a pang of regret at their disappearance. Consequently, in the meeting minutes requested by Sister Liang, I wrote:

“Water buffalo are not only the mainstay of paddy field cultivation but also a source of traditional organic fertiliser. Their food consists mainly of wild mountain grasses, meaning there are no feed costs (aside from the time cost of grazing). Furthermore, from the perspective of future study tours, nature education, and tourism, the water buffalo are a unique cultural landscape. It is worth considering how we might keep the village clean while still preserving the water buffalo culture.”

Despite the numerous challenges, Sister Liang still harbours a hope for the continued development of ecological agriculture in Bangui Tun, suggesting that everyone explore ecological rice and sugarcane cultivation.

● The rice remains, as do the heirloom seeds, but the water buffalo have vanished.

XII. Na, Ban, and Kapok Flowers

Leaving Bangui Tun, I passed through Jinlong Town once more. I couldn’t resist asking to stop and take a look. Walking through the alley, I saw that my old residence was still there, though the turquoise-green doors were firmly shut. This single-storey house had served as my home, a reading room for left-behind children, a village general store, and a meeting centre for the Women’s Group. Next to the house used to be a cattle market; on market days, I would always be woken by the clamour of people and cattle. The market is gone now, replaced by a trendy two-bay commercial building with large floor-to-ceiling windows. I left in a hurry. Along the way, the rocky mountains rose in layers; beside the towering sugarcane forests, there were patches of emerald-green paddy fields in the foreground and distance. In the Zhuang language, “Na” means paddy field and “Ban” means village. No wonder the road signs are filled with these two words: Bansong, Banyan, Nanong, Nakan, and so on.

By the roadside, there were many kapok trees. Teacher Zhang mentioned a passage by Mr Yan Yangchu: “The kapok tree blooms during the hottest season in the Philippines. Mr Yan likened rural community workers to kapok flowers—blooming most brilliantly under the harshest conditions.”

From May to November, Longzhou in my memory was always exceptionally humid and hot.

● The house I lived in back then in Jinlong Town is still there (left, taken in 2024), but the reading room for left-behind children, the village general store, and the Women’s Group meeting centre that once occupied it are gone (right, taken in 2011).

● Jinlong Town remains (left, taken in 2024), but the former cattle market has vanished (right, taken in 2011).

XIII. Between Humans and Monkeys

In the evening, I was taken back to the reserve to see the monkeys. This time, it was a small species called the ‘slow loris’, which is listed under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). The method of spotting slow lorises is to sweep a torch across the canopy; their eyes reflect back as two red dots. The area where the slow lorises live is actually farmland, filled with sweet potatoes, maize, and fruit trees. I recall that the rocky mountains where the white-headed langurs live are also flanked by sugarcane fields. The distance between humans and wildlife is surprisingly small.

Mr Zhang mentioned that Action Aid’s previous projects did not involve animal protection, nor did they have that awareness.

Looking back at over a decade of rural development work, we seem to have been too urgent, too linear, attempting to ‘solve everything in one stroke’. We lacked a softer perspective.

XIV. The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Dao Gong

The final day of the trip was spent visiting the ‘Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape’ in Ningming. The rock art is etched onto the cliffs overlooking the Ming River, depicting reddish-brown frog-like human figures—elbows bent and raised, legs splayed, squatting with knees bent, and wearing swords. Alongside the frontal frog-people are numerous profiles of humans, dogs, and bronze drums. The scenes are both solemn and joyful, recording the sacrificial activities and shamanic rituals of the ancient Luoyue people. Most of the figures lack facial features and other details; only one type of person has eyes—the tribal shaman.

“The secretary mentioned that his family has always been Buddhist and cannot eat beef or dog meat. His father is a Dao Gong, and he was very strict with the children’s education. For instance, when doing work for others, one must not take a single penny more than agreed; any excess must be returned. In this village, a Dao Gong is required for weddings, funerals, and the building of new houses. As for why there are straw figures in front of every house, it is because there is a funeral in the village these few days. A funeral lasts between three to five days at shortest, and over ten days at longest. I asked the secretary, ‘In the summer, if a body stays in the house for ten days, wouldn’t it smell?’ The secretary replied that because the Dao Gong recites incantations, it absolutely will not smell.”

—18 September 2011, Field Notes

The villagers call those who preside over traditional rituals ‘Dao Gong’, and they hold a special status within the village. Through oral tradition and chanting, the Dao Gong have preserved *Buluo Tuo*, the creation epic of the Zhuang people, to this day.

● Rock art from over 2,000 years ago on the cliffs by the Ming River.

XV. Sister Liang

Before heading to the airport, Sister Liang suddenly asked on the riverboat on the Ming River: “What more can we do for the countryside?”

After Action Aid withdrew, Sister Liang, as the final coordinator for Longzhou, did not leave. We hadn’t communicated much—distance separated us, and we had only met two or three times over the last decade or so. I know roughly that she later returned from the county town to live in Bangui Tun, and her daughter came along to attend the local primary school. She established an agricultural cooperative in the village, promoting rural-urban exchange between Bangui Tun and the provincial capital, Nanning. I also saw on WeChat that she was constantly attending various training sessions; this deepened her understanding of land and agriculture to the point where she wanted to show us a ‘food forest system’ in an ordinary residential complex.

For various reasons, she eventually had to move back to the county town. The cooperative’s operations did not go smoothly. She is still working on the front lines of rural development for a public welfare organisation.

During the latter half of the symposium, although Sister Liang mentioned her hope to continue developing ecological agriculture in Bangui Tun, she wasn’t ‘over-excited’, nor did she set a timetable.

She seemed to be believing in, and waiting for, the village’s own return.

● Sister Liang (far right in the image below) at her residence and office, converted from an old house in Bangui Tun.

XVI. Buluoduo

The people had nothing to eat

The common folk could not sustain their lives

Then Heaven sent down late-season seeds

And the immortals brought seeds of japonica rice

Seeds tucked into the waist were brought back

Ears of rice pinned to the body were brought back

He paced the slopes behind the house

He surveyed the ridges beyond the valleys

He took up the scythe to cut the wild grass

He took up the hoe to dig the waste land

He sought a foot-plough to turn the earth

He sought a great water buffalo to pull the plough

Four fields were created

Four plots were fashioned

At the Start of Spring, the seeds were sown

Seeds scattered across the four hillside fields

Seeds sown within the four plots

One grain sown in the mountain forest grew into taro

One grain scattered in the mountain gully grew into sweet potato

One grain sown upon the mountain grew into plums

One grain scattered on the threshing floor grew into peaches

One grain sown by the mountain edge grew into foxtail millet

One grain scattered on the field ridge grew into rice

Henceforth, the people had food to eat

Henceforth, the common folk could recover and thrive

In those days, though there was food to eat

There were still no clothes to wear

They draped themselves in leaves to cover their bodies

King Suichao came to sit in the hall by night

King Suichao prayed once more to the heavens

And the heavens bestowed hemp seeds

King Suichao taught the common folk

To sow the hemp seeds at the Start of Spring

The hemp could be harvested by the sixth month

To harvest the hemp, they took knives to cut

Or they used daggers to slice

The hemp was spun into strands of thread

The hemp thread was wound into yarn

It was wound upon the spindles

It was placed upon the looms

The yarn was woven into cloth

The cloth was sewn into garments

Henceforth, the people had skirts to wear

Henceforth, the common folk had clothes to wear

—Excerpt from the Zhuang creation epic, “Buluoduo”

XVII. Who Needs Whom?

I said to Teacher Zhang: “Is it not an admission of humility to say that we are the ones who need the countryside, rather than the other way around?”

XVIII. Searching for the Grain Soul

As one of the earliest peoples to cultivate rice, the Luoyue ancestors believed that the seedlings possessed a soul. When the rice grew poorly, it was because field spirits were playing tricks, leaving the soul of the rice scattered and broken. To ensure the seedlings flourished, the fleeing grain soul had to be summoned back.

As rural workers, we believe our entire endeavour is a search for the lost soul of the countryside—

Every child’s drawing sent to a stranger who donated

Every final bus rushing back to the county town at 4 pm

Every notebook of field observations

Every youth development programme

Every instance of raising ducks in the rice paddies

Every village school

Every protected white-headed langur

Every blooming kapok flower

Every food forest at Tiandilou in the county town

When all those who came from afar depart after a decade, the villages nestled among these mountains continue to exist on their own orbit; just as they were, like the rock paintings upon the cliffs of the Ming River.

It turns out the soul of the countryside has always been there; she is the one who found us and brought us back—allowing us to become better versions of ourselves. The songs of the Zhuang creation epic, *Buluoduo*, seem to echo once more:

“Grain souls flee far and wide,

Grain souls scatter everywhere,

The King builds a floral shrine,

To summon the grain souls back,

Return, O grain soul,

Come home, O grain soul.”

Yu Jiangang

First draft: 21 October 2024

Final version: 8 January 2025

Foodthink Author

Yu Jiangang

Born and raised in Zhenghebang, a silk village in Jiangnan. After graduating from university in 2008, he worked in brand consultancy in Beijing. Driven by a concern for the issues facing agriculture and rural communities, he resigned in 2011 to become an intern at Little Donkey Farm, later volunteering in rural construction within Zhuang villages on the border of Guangxi and Vietnam. Upon returning to his hometown, he co-founded “Mei and Yu” with his wife, Mei Yuhui, focusing on the production of finely crafted silk quilts and the preservation of traditional craftsmanship. He hopes to revitalise China’s intangible cultural heritage related to sericulture and farming, creating a new tradition. WeChat Official Account: Mei and Yu

Editor: Tianle