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Farming is one of the earliest skills mastered by humankind. Farming not only fed humans themselves, but also produced culture and tempered character. As for rice cultivation, 7000 years ago the Chinese people had already mastered the planting technique.

But we know far too little about it. Is the best rice the Wuchang Daohuaxiang mentioned in A Bite of China? How do you tell indica rice, japonica rice and glutinous rice apart, and which kind are we eating?

By the shore of Jingpo Lake, at the Xiangshui rice base, we met agricultural extension researcher Liang Guilin, which gave us a deeper understanding of "rice" and aroused a very warm feeling toward rice. All our questions about rice were answered.

Growing rice: a dialogue between lives

Liang Guilin, an agricultural extension researcher, has worked in agricultural production for 42 years. He is the former deputy director of agriculture at Farm 853, has experience managing 1.3 million mu of agricultural production, and is an expert in the large-scale production and intensive management of modern and mechanized agriculture.

"Rice plants are alive. Growing rice is a dialogue between lives," Liang Guilin said. When he gets up in the morning, Liang Guilin goes to the greenhouse and sees a drop of water perched on the tip of every leaf, while the air around him is filled with the unique fragrance of the Daohuaxiang original seed. Yes, even the seedlings carry the fragrance of cooked rice.

When the seedlings reach the three-leaf-one-heart stage, it is time to transplant them. To damage the seedlings as little as possible, Liang Guilin uses traditional manual transplanting.

The leaves of the seedlings can speak. When fertilizer was applied and when pests struck can all be seen from them. This is not knowledge from a study; it requires going out to look, to look at the water, the leaves, the weather. Adjustments must also be made according to the farming season, growth condition and temperature, just like caring for a child. Only by understanding whether the rice is cold or warm can you cultivate it better.

When the rice seedlings grown by Liang Guilin are transplanted into the paddy field, there is no setback period, because the original seed has strong stress resistance and the seedlings are sturdy and adapt well, which lets them win more growing time than other seedlings. For rice in cold regions, this is extremely precious.

Like the local Korean elderly farmers, Liang Guilin works in the fields almost all day long. Wearing rubber boots and gloves, he carries the seedlings on his shoulder and delivers them to the paddy field.

Good seedlings mean half a year's grain. He plants the seedlings he cultivated from original seed into the field by hand, controlling the spacing between plants at 9*3 cun. To achieve precise spacing, he and his colleagues use the simple equipment shown in the picture above to run guide lines.

Practical technique, and practice brings true knowledge. Having traveled to many places and eaten many kinds of rice, as for what rice tastes good, Liang Guilin says tastes are hard to please everyone, and many people mix personal emotion and more sentimental memories into what they consider delicious.

The South grows indica rice, while the Northeast grows japonica rice. Indica rice is slender, and the cooked rice is loose, with poor stickiness and a hard, gritty bite. Japonica rice is short and thick, sticky, good in palatability, soft and springy. Northeast rice is single-season rice, japonica rice, produced only once a year, so it absorbs enough nutrients. Here the ground below is stone slab, warm underfoot, and the rice grown here contains 7 amino acids that the human body cannot synthesize.

The field we saw grows Northeast Daohuaxiang rice. Apart from Wuchang, only this place in the Northeast can grow it. The Daohuaxiang variety has high requirements for accumulated temperature. In the Northeast, mornings are cold, the midday high-temperature period is short, and the temperature drops quickly at night, so it is actually not suitable for Daohuaxiang to grow, but both the Wuchang area and this place have a small-basin climate, and together with the heat retention of volcanic rock, they satisfy the growing conditions for Daohuaxiang rice.

The Daohuaxiang here is also different from that of Wuchang, with differences in taste and nutrition. Xiangshui Daohuaxiang rice contains 7 amino acids that the human body cannot synthesize. The porridge made from it is clearer and brighter, and after sitting for a while, a skin of rice forms along the edge of the bowl that can be lifted with chopsticks. Its fragrance is slightly lighter than Wuchang's.

Leave a grain of good rice for our descendants

Human activity and industrial pollution are rapidly advancing into our vast land. The grain and vegetables we eat no longer taste as they once did. Liang Guilin and his colleagues once conducted an experiment testing mushrooms produced in a greenhouse 300 meters from the roadside, and automobile exhaust pollutants were detected in them.

Guarding this precious land for the motherland and making it produce good grain has always been what Liang Guilin and his colleagues insist on. Lenovo Jiabei has four bases of its own: the Xiangshui base, where the land is volcanic stone slab fields and the water source comes from Jingpo Lake; the Wuchang base, with humus black soil and the Longfengshan Reservoir as its water source; the Yanbian base, planted in a small basin among the mountains, with the Hailan River as its water source; and the Xingkai Lake base, with cold-region peat black soil and Xingkai Lake as its water source. Liang Guilin travels among the four bases in order to let his descendants eat clean, good rice grown from good mountains and good water.

"The Northeast has 13 million mu of black soil, and there are far too few people who know how to farm. The local farmers we now find for transplanting rice are all over 45 years old. The young people have all gone to the cities to work. In 10 years, the methods of farming may be lost."