Farmer's Life Episode 028: Plunging My Feet into the Paddy Field

I have actually often disliked going down to the fields, ever since childhood. My skin and hair produce oil every day; the slightest exertion of my limbs or movement of my body and sweat comes pouring out. In summer, I can be just sitting there and still break into a heap of sweat. So the moment I go down to the fields to work, most of my shirt is instantly soaked with sweat, and with a bit more labor, my whole outfit feels like it has been drenched by heavy rain, even my underpants cannot escape it. Imagine that sticky, smelly mixture of oil and sweat, and then, when your body is already so hot it feels about to explode, the clothes that were supposed to keep you clean and fresh are all clinging tightly to your body. Of course, you actually have no time to worry about this, because mosquitoes and many other unnamed little insects come by to say hello from time to time (and occasionally that extremely terrifying blood-sucking horsefly shows up too). Yet I still have to throw myself wholeheartedly into the labor, because the slightest carelessness will accidentally produce a wound here or there. And my old dad still nags endlessly about everything I do in the fields; even now, while seriously ill, on the drive taking him to the hospital for a follow-up visit, he still has things to say.

Since I dislike going down to the fields so much, why am I now standing in the field?

All day long I stuck myself to the bed like a lump of mud; even after getting up, I shamelessly crawled back in, saying my limbs were weary and I had no strength. And so, the labor I had agreed to do was dragged out until the sun slanted west before I finally went out, the time already past four o'clock. No help for it, the paddy field needs water, and recently every plum rain front has destroyed the irrigation channel outside the embankment; at the very least I had to go fix the waterway, even if it will be washed out again by the big water from the creek in a couple of days.

Once the diversion channel was fixed, I turned to check on my own little rice paddy. The golden apple snails were probably starving beyond endurance; the weeds among the rice had almost all disappeared, so they had no choice but to start gnawing on the rice plants that had already grown big and were no longer tender. Although the damage was not great, a few small patches of bare soil had already been exposed. Time to go into the field and pick up the golden apple snails! And along the way, transplant a few more seedlings in (the rice really has not grown well this year!).

One footstep, one hole; in an instant both feet were wrapped in the dark gray, soft, mushy paddy soil. The weather had turned hot, and the paddy water was no longer icy cold. I picked up handful after handful of golden apple snails and tossed them into the uncultivated grass a few meters away. The rice seedlings originally left at the edge of the field had already grown quite tall; time to transplant them! I planted them in small bundles into the paddy soil, hoping they can still catch up in the future and grow up safely.

What on earth am I doing? Doing field labor so lazily and stupidly. Could it be that by plunging my feet into the paddy field, I too can grow like a rice seedling and bear plump grain? (Don't be silly, I am already well past young, and all I do is foolish things.)

Yet, amid so much reluctance and discomfort, through the soil and the greenery, through my feet covered in mud, I felt strangely at ease, even extraordinarily content. Those golden apple snails endlessly breeding and mating, the weeds that in the blink of an eye grew taller than the crops, the rice that had received no fertilizer and been attacked by disease, the creek that brimmed with muddy water every time it rained heavily - all of them, without pause, without the slightest shame, even nakedly and brazenly, displayed their lives. And if I merely suffer a few more grievances and wounds in life, so what? Am I not still alive? What use is complaining, fretting, resenting?

When I plunge both feet into the paddy field and get my body dirty and hurt, my heart, instead, can be transformed and made extraordinarily clean. Like those pilgrims who, though staggering and frail, still bow their way forward the whole journey! With my life, I can make my soul grow strong.

 2014.5.31 Xiaoman