Reflections on a Working Holiday at Fuxing Farm: Experiencing the Infinite Wonders of the Earth

LiPaHa (happiness and joy) every day really isn't hard

As a graduate of National Dong Hwa University, I of course knew that the "temperament" of the east and the west is completely different, but perhaps because of the stereotypes the western agricultural industry had impressed on me, I wasn't actually especially excited about the working holiday I was about to join at Fuxing Ecological Farm in Ruisui Township, Hualien. It was simply that my schedule happened to be fairly free, so I wanted to come and experience it.

Unexpectedly, in the east's clean, spacious and pleasant environment, and through the straightforward, optimistic and warm interactions with the indigenous people, the defenses and reservations I couldn't help but harbor as a westerner were melted away one by one, and I discovered that LiPaHa (happiness and joy) every day really isn't hard. I couldn't help but marvel at it myself. It wasn't until I saw on TV the story of a tech upstart who switched careers to become an organic farmer that, through his inner journey, I found an explanation that hit the nail on the head.

He said the tech industry focuses on data, but the person-to-person interactions he valued simply cannot be quantified; when everyone around you takes profit as their main consideration, even if you just want to hold a colleague's child, others are still rather unwilling, and there always seems to be a lingering smell of money that won't go away (he laughed heartily), so he finally made up his mind to start a new life.

Indeed, this air of "calculation" has long been openly and pervasively spread through every level of modern western civilization. So when I briefly left the west to live at Fuxing Farm, that was why I secretly felt a trace of astonishment and shame inside; the clear, bright mountain spring irrigation water that flows ceaselessly year-round along the field ridges is like a mirror pool, reflecting the dust on me. At the farewell banquet as I was about to leave the farm, the tear that the lovely indigenous community leader naturally let fall must surely have sent ripples through everyone's hearts that lingered for a long time.

Not just nutritional food, but also a sense of participation in organic farming life

But if I were to say that everyone who joins a working holiday does so without considering their own interests, that would of course be "boasting." I recall that in an organic farming class held by the Employment and Vocational Training Administration, a teacher once asked everyone whether their crops, once harvested, were already beautiful finished products. Everyone nodded vigorously, and the teacher immediately replied, no no no, without processing and packaging, how could they be beautiful and alluring? Unexpectedly, most of the classmates still felt that as long as it was something they had grown themselves, it was precious and lovely. Of course, different sides have different positions and there is no absolute right or wrong, but this example also pointed out to me a paradoxical relationship between Taiwan's production and consumption ends.

After the organic farming class ended, I continued to cultivate non-toxic crops myself, and I found that conceiving how to lay out and allocate the farmland, accompanying the crops as they grow, and tasting my own freshest and most trusted fruits and vegetables - all those feelings, known only to oneself like the drinker knowing whether the water is warm or cold - are truly endlessly delightful; I also visited quite a few organic farms and browsed many organic shopping sites and blogs, but faced with the cookie-cutter, self-promoting advertising language, or commercialized behavior that uses price transactions to decide the value of this thing, this place or this trip, I truly felt bored and helpless.

I believe the organic industry is very appealing to ordinary people, but businesspeople seem to have overlooked one key point - organic farming does not stop at providing a kind of healthy nutrition; it also creates a kind of enjoyment of life; in other words, consumers are not satisfied with merely gratifying their appetite, but also long for a sense of participation in organic farming life.

When Taiwan's education teaches everyone to concentrate in the cities to obtain money and power, yet does not remind everyone of the losses and repression produced by losing land, space and ecology, can the owner of an organic farm - the one with the most environmentally friendly and sustainable development resources - realize that, if he steps out of the role of businessman, he actually has a great opportunity to become a "great person" who changes the social atmosphere and leads the people of the nation to create happy lives?

This is precisely my "selfish motive" regarding the working holiday activity at Fuxing Farm. I hope you can give me the chance to immerse myself in the pure, natural ecological environment of Hualien and Taitung, to experience the joys and hardships of your daily lives, and I long to learn new skills and knowledge to remind myself of the poverty and ignorance of my life experience. Because I believe that anything "grown" through a person's own hands-on participation and investment in life, even without commercial value or quantitative data to endorse it, will be cherished and cared for by people, who will patiently wait for it to slowly bloom and bear fruit.

I never expected that Fuxing Farm's sincere acceptance would make me realize that this selfish motive of mine, regarded as shameless and extravagant in the west, is in fact, to you, nothing more than a most natural "opening of the heart," because we all know quite well that the new things we can learn and feel are, like the rich ecology and birdsong in the mountains, simply inexhaustible.

All people and animals are equal, and the earth holds infinite wonders

From the rabbit and ring-necked pheasant on Fuxing Farm's logo, you can tell that its biggest difference from the western organic industry lies in its genuine emphasis on ecological conservation. In order to help farmers in nearby communities understand that human agricultural development can also coexist with environmental and ecological conservation, and thereby promote comprehensive improvement of the overall environment, Fuxing Farm decided to open a fixed area of land for villagers to adopt free of charge, to cultivate without spraying pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and to require planting as many different crops as possible; it also later planned to create a large wetland area to achieve rich ecological diversity.

What surprised me, the little worker, even more was that Fuxing Farm was actually willing to proactively publish on the internet the behavior of one of its farmers secretly spraying herbicide and chemical fertilizer, along with the follow-up handling. This made me, who understands many dark insider secrets of organic farming, feel considerably more trust toward this farm even before seeing that flimsy organic certificate.

Later, during the working holiday tour, the organizer, Brother Lai Menghong, mentioned that at first they worried the ring-necked pheasants would come into the fields and steal the corn. A trainee then asked, why not just catch all the pheasants and lock them up? For a moment no one knew how to explain. Only later did I, the little worker, recall that medium-sized wild hare that hopped straight toward our whole vehicle on the night we went out for nocturnal ecological observation. In that instant when we encountered each other, a strange, moving feeling rose in my heart - one that came from a pause in being unable to "interpret" what was before my eyes -

This creature before my eyes was neither a cute pet in a cage, nor a feast of mouth-watering delicacies on the dining table, nor a neatly organized animal illustrated guide in a book, but a living, inconceivably vivid being. It has its own way of life and an unknowable future; like a person, it breathes, it thinks, it needs to make decisions every second, and together with countless other living things it enjoys all the wonders of this endless earth.

In that moment, that hare attained a status equal to that of all of us humans in the vehicle, and dignity as well. Locking animals up for viewing simply destroys all of this, turning them into ordinary, lowly "objects" for humans to manipulate, control and explain. On the coastal mountain range ecotourism trip that followed, perhaps because our group was so large, the animals all kept far away from us, and we found only many "living" animal tracks, bird calls and beast howls; but I, the little worker, believe that after these few days, even if we did not see them, everyone who came along could more or less feel or imagine the vivid existence of these lives.

I, the little worker, cannot help but silently cheer on Fuxing Farm in my heart, and I hope to have another chance to contribute my small part to the farm, and to guard a pure paradise on this noisy little island of Taiwan, China.