Penghu Has Agriculture Too: The Sight of Elderly People Selling Vegetables

At the edge of the vegetable market, the elderly women sit in a whole row, fully geared up against the sun and wind, but they are not sitting there idly. They are selling vegetables!

Luffa, pumpkin, yardlong beans, sweet potato leaves, bottle gourd, green pepper, okra, scallions, carrots, eggplant, chayote, dragon fruit, peanuts... Simply put, these are the vegetables grown from Penghu's soil, grown in their own home gardens, and the amounts they sell are tiny too, maybe just two or three packets, three or four fruits, and a few pieces. They ride the bus for free, so they may have come from far away, gathering for half a day to chat about everything and nothing, and along the way bring the harvest from home to sell. As long as something sells, they have made money today.

This is Beichen Market in central Magong City. Walking inside, you also see people who just plop down in the middle of the market path but only sell two packets of vegetables, or elderly men pushing small carts through the already very crowded market. That is a real battlefield! The big vegetable vendors and the shops are professionals! But the elderly are not afraid. Even if it is just a packet of small sea snails, if it sells, it immediately becomes their own income.

The elderly in Penghu can support themselves, and it seems they can do so no matter how old they get. I see they are not just in their sixties or seventies; they may well be in their eighties or nineties. Though their steps are slow when they walk, it is not very difficult for them. I can imagine them growing vegetables at home, or gathering things by the seaside, sorting them out a bit, and then heading out early in the morning to join the market. Magong City is so lively that they need not fear a lack of business.

I have also run into an elderly man at the entrance of the fish market selling his own cantaloupe, chayote and yardlong beans. In short, in the corners and edges where crowds gather, a small stall spread out on the ground and business begins. They do not even sell their vegetables cheaply, and they will emphasize the strengths of their produce, often telling customers: "Mine have not been sprayed with pesticide!"

They seem especially healthy, perhaps because they have labored for years, have their own way of living, have their own convictions, have resilience honed over time, and also have the adaptability to face social change!

The cheapest vegetables I bought in Penghu were from an older man in a floral shirt who came to sell them on a motorcycle. Because the Penghu South area where I live, Shili (the character shi has a mountain radical on top), counts as the countryside, there is only one small grocery store, and to buy fresh vegetables you have to wait for the "vegetable truck" to come. It usually parks at the plaza in front of the temple and uses the village "loudspeaker" to broadcast, letting everyone come out to buy vegetables.

Mostly they are small pickup trucks, but that day this older man actually came riding a motorcycle and parked at the doorstep of my next-door neighbor. He had tied a large blue square plastic basket to the back seat, and it was full of yardlong beans, two kinds mixed together, one all green and one slightly purplish-red; the scallions were in another shallow plastic basket, already on the ground beside him, and a small traditional scale was waiting on the ground behind the vehicle.

Two older women were picking out yardlong beans and chatting at the same time. I joined in the buying, and of course I had to chat along too. I asked the older man what else he had grown. He said luffa, sold at 50 per jin, but it was already sold out! I then asked whether he had grown pumpkin. In the same proud manner he answered me: "Yes! All sold out too!"

It was clear our village was not his first stop; he must have gone to other villages earlier. I felt he was in a very good mood today, because the two older women had already gone home first, leaving only me. The yardlong beans that were originally 25 yuan per jin, I picked some and put them on the scale, less than a jin, and I said then use scallions to make it up to a jin. He pulled a small handful onto the scale, which already went over, and the older man actually said to me:

"I will charge you 20 yuan!"

I was deeply touched, not because of that 5 yuan, but because I felt the older man's charm and dash, and a little bit of boldness too! He was wearing a light-colored floral shirt and suit trousers, and a pair of gold thin-framed sunglasses with brown lenses, and from beginning to end he never took the sunglasses off! It made one want to describe him as "elegantly poised."

From hearing him speak, he should be over seventy, yet he was still nimble, so unhurried, so at ease, as if there were a kind of grace about him. I think this trip out to sell vegetables was, for him, like going on stage to perform. He had clearly dressed up for it.

If someone asked me to give an example of "vitality," the first thing I think of now is the sight of elderly people in Penghu selling vegetables, not only because they grow them at home and bring them out to sell themselves, but because when they sell vegetables, even if they are seated low, below our line of sight, when they look up at passersby and recommend the vegetables in their hands, they are not humble.

I actually still do not know how deep the relationship is between these elderly people and Penghu's agriculture, but at least I very much enjoy squatting on the ground to buy vegetables from them! Laid out in a row on the ground, these are truly crops nurtured by Penghu's land, far more abundant than I had imagined. And this so special, not only traditional but even somewhat primitive way of old farmers producing and selling, can there be anything different about it? I will slowly look for the answer.