The Shanghai Farmers Who Grow Flowers with Boss Bao — Are They Still Farming Today?

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Foodthink Says

In the final episode of the recently hit TV series Blossoms Shanghai, the protagonist Boss Bao quotes the famous line from Gone with the Wind — “Only the land and tomorrow remain” — before retiring to the farmland of Chuansha in suburban Shanghai. Had Boss Bao’s land not been sold to Disney or turned into some other real-estate project, would the Shanghai farmers who truly tilled the soil back then still be farming today?

In 2023, Qiu Tian, a final-year student in Chinese literature driven by the very same curiosity, joined the Foodthink Lianhe Programme as an ecological agriculture intern. They arrived at a farm in Shanghai not far from Chuansha and spent more than half a year as a colleague of a group of local farmers with an average age of over 70. This article is Qiu Tian’s observations of and reflections on these elderly people who are still working the land.

●In the final scene of Blossoms Shanghai, the protagonist A Bao stands on the farmland of Chuansha in Shanghai, gazing hopefully toward the future. Thirty years on, the little farmland that remains in Shanghai is still being tilled by those same elderly farmers.

I. Elders at the “Final Threshold” Still in the Fields

“Final Threshold” is a term from the Guizhou dialect. My university roommate grew up in the Guizhou countryside, and when he talked about the old people back home, he said that the rural world has never known a concept of “retirement.” Elders simply work until they can work no more. Once all the sons and daughters have married and settled into their own lives, needing no further help, it is only then — frail and spent at seventy or eighty — that the old folk lay down their fieldwork, drift over to a lively mahjong table, or gather under a tree or at the village edge for idle chat. Nothing left to worry about; one can depart in peace. This is life’s final stage, and the locals call it shàng kǎn — the “Final Threshold.”

Having grown up in the city, I knew next to nothing about the land, the crops, the animals, and the vegetables my roommate spoke of with such fondness, and the old verse he recited — “A cowherd rides his yellow ox, his song resounding through the grove” — stirred nothing in me. I was the very embodiment of the ancient charge: “Idle in all four limbs, unable to tell the five grains apart.” Filled with curiosity about all these things, and about the elders who still live their days in the countryside, I arrived at Letian Haiwan Farm in Fengxian, Shanghai, in March 2023. A final-year undergraduate at the time, I had joined the Foodthink Lianhe Programme as an ecological agriculture intern, and for more than half a year I became a “colleague” of a group of elders already at the age of the “Final Threshold.”

● The uncles and aunties who work at the farm wear straw hats; from a distance, you would never guess their age.

Fengxian District falls under the administration of Shanghai Municipality, but in the eyes of local people the relationship between Fengxian and Shanghai is rather delicate. In the local dialect, “Fengxian” and “Shanghai” are treated as two separate places — there is no sense of one belonging to or containing the other. When someone needs to head into the city proper to handle business or see a doctor, they will often say they are “going to Shanghai.”

The farm’s setting is equally peculiar: on one side it adjoins the single-storey houses and broad stretches of paddy fields typical of a traditional village, and on the other it is separated from tarmac roads, elevated railways, and modern residential estates by nothing more than a wall. It often left me bewildered, unable to tell whether I was in the city or the countryside.

● On one side of the farm lie the paddy fields; on the other, modern roads and elevated railways.

II. Both Labour and Socialising

The uncles and aunties who work at the farm are people who have lived here all their lives. With an average age of over 70, they are the farm’s core workforce.

Over the eight months I spent immersed in this land, I gradually became their friend. I often joined them in their idle chatter between the rows, and took the chance to visit their homes and mooch a meal. They would tell me about the history of Haiwan Village: the merger of Xiwan and Fenghai, the collective labour of the People’s Commune era, and the village Party secretary’s slogan — “Xiwan, Xiwan, big and difficult!” We would also chat about the operas they had heard as children and the songs they loved. One uncle — the second of eight siblings — even sang me a couple of lines from The Sea Voyage Depends on the Helmsman through his gap-toothed smile.

●The farming tools on display at the farm have retired from the fields, yet the elders who once worked them are still out there, tilling the soil.
These elders enjoy a decent-enough social security pension; depending on the policy of the place where their hukou (household registration) is filed, they receive between ¥2,000 and ¥3,000 a month — more than enough for people who already have a home and land to their names. The farm operates seven days a week, paying between ¥100 and ¥130 per day. Before I arrived, I had taken it for granted that “hoeing grain at high noon, sweat dripping beneath the seedlings” was the everyday norm for these farmers, and I had always wondered why people well past retirement age still worked so hard.

After talking with them more, I found that the reasons for working at their advanced age largely came down to the following:

1. There is nothing to do at home. The village has mahjong, square dancing, and other entertainments, but none are their forte.

2. They bicker at home and are unhappy there — better to come out and work.

3. They have friends at the farm; there is company during work, and a chance to chat together.

The third point came up most often. Whenever we worked together, neighbourhood gossip and farming-related bawdy jokes made up our everyday chatter. Even in the scorching heat of August, everyone managed to keep a relatively relaxed pace.

● Master Ni (left), aged 75, is one of the farm’s principal workers.

III. Work Without End, Shifts You Can Leave

The working system at this farm, straddling town and countryside, shows no small ingenuity. Drawing on the traditional agrarian wisdom of “working at sunrise, resting at sunset”, it flexibly adjusts start and finish times across the seasons, while strictly observing the eight-hour working day of a modern enterprise. There are no rigid performance targets; the workers mostly follow the rhythm of phenology and the weather, while also taking on some farm-building tasks — sawing planks, erecting fences, and hauling goods.

In August, I was often assigned what everyone agreed was the most exhausting job: tilling the soil with a small rotary tiller. My hands would go bright red, and even after I let go of the handles they kept up a faint, persistent tremor. In return, once I had turned over a plot, I could rest properly. The farm has a motto: “The work here never ends” — and the uncles and aunties, well versed in its truth, pace their labour with seasoned ease. Of course, sweating as though in the rain is still unavoidable.

● A sign at the farm, meant to encourage city visitors trying their hand at farming, is also a portrait of the elders who labour here day after day.

A modern sense of time has taken hold among these farmers who live by the weather, too. Besides the straw hat, arm sleeves, and large water bottle that each person needs daily, the uncles and aunties all keep one thing close at hand without fail — a phone or watch that can chime the hour loudly, to remind themselves how long they have been working. Much like the estimated delivery times on online purchases, we have all grown accustomed to letting time advance on our lives, cashing in on future events in imagination before they arrive.

Behind all this lies the “performative quality” that this suburban farm prizes. As machines free up productive capacity, labour, on the one hand, becomes an exchange of time, energy, and money — a vital part of our lives. On the other hand, with bodily sensations like hunger fading, the very motivations that sustain work are increasingly called into question.

In theory, the elders who work at the farm need only deliver an eight-hour performance timed to the clock and ensure that the produce — the vegetables — meets the consumer’s standard. This is no easy feat, of course, but the farmers need not give the land any more labour than they would for vegetables destined for their own table.

● “Resting at sunset” alongside the uncles and aunties at the farm.

IV. Is a Future Only Found Far from the Land?

In October, I left Letian Haiwan Farm. The uncles and aunties were always urging me to find a new job. In their eyes, farm work holds no future — it is young people who walk away from the land who truly thrive.

Old Ni is the eldest of all the workers, and the one who sang for me. At seventy-five, he has been with the farm for three years and is preparing to formally retire this year — a kind of reaching the “Final Threshold”, perhaps.

Before I left, we laughed and said it was the last time we would ever see each other in this lifetime. I asked him, rather presumptuously: “Are you afraid of dying?” He smiled and replied: “Die, then you die — go into the ground, and find peace.” From leading the Fenghai Production Team, to tending the greenery along Haiwan Road, to working at Letian Haiwan Farm, Master Ni has never left this stretch of coastal land.

● I took a photo with Master Ni (left) and said goodbye to the farm.

Foodthink Author

Qiu Tian

Half an accountant, half a Chinese-literature graduate still fumbling toward whatever comes next.

 

 

 

 

About the Ecological Farm Intern Programme

The Lianhe Programme’s “Ecological Agriculture Intern” project was launched by Foodthink in 2021. It aims to support both young people aspiring to work in ecological agriculture and established ecological farms — enabling young interns to acquire farming knowledge and practical skills through hands-on experience, documenting and passing on the hard-won expertise of veteran growers, while in turn supplying farms with high-calibre talent and injecting fresh energy into rural communities.

To date, two rounds of recruitment have been completed, supporting more than forty partners in undertaking internships lasting anywhere from two months to a year at over ten ecological farms across the country. The second cohort of interns will “graduate” at the end of 2023, and open recruitment for the third round will begin in February 2024! We invite you to keep an eye on the Foodthink “Ecological Agriculture Intern” programme!

Images: Qiu Tian / Foodthink

Editor: Tian Le

Published by Foodthink