Farmers are not props for your photo hunts. Please respect farmers when taking pictures.

Harvesting rice by hand is hard work, and it is even harder under the blazing sun. The machine drum (threshing machine) was dragged along with difficulty by the young people who had returned home to help with the farming, yet there was always a photographer shouting "Cut!" and "Slow down a bit." The old man carried 40 jin of grain on one shoulder and 80 jin on both, and there was always a photographer yelling: "Walk that way again, back up a little." The junior high school students and elementary school teachers who had come to help were directed on how to hold the rice ears: "Lean a bit to the left!" We, the helpers, joined the frame, and those neatly lined-up big cameras demanded: "Could you wear a bamboo hat?" After everyone left, unthreshed grain was scattered all over the ridge, and the old man silently picked it up…

Just what gives them the right? Farmers are not props! Please do not stand on someone else's field ridge and boss people around!

It is understandable that the beauty of the terraced fields makes people want to capture an image; it is understandable that the uniqueness of traditional rice harvesting makes people want to keep a record. But the dignity of laborers does not increase or decrease because an industry is special or rare. This is not a performance put on for others, nor a specimen in an exhibition hall. Everyone's dignity at work, and the protection of agricultural produce and private land, are rights that farming households who simply want to earn a living by their own efforts should have. Please respect them along with us.

In fact, sharing the beauty and the journey here was originally a joyful thing. But if such things create pressure on farming households and leave the work team struggling over respect for the environment and culture, then we too will have more concerns about the media entering and no heart to be active about it. We say sorry to the media who sincerely wish to take part. Apart from the limited manpower of a nonprofit organization, we hope even more to leave the community a little more space to think things through, so that both the environment and the people can be ready to face friends who come from afar. Because this is a basic right, and because there is so much ecology and culture here that so many people want to protect. Thank you for your understanding and respect.

Note 1:

For details, see The Meaning of Water Terraces and the Ecological Imagination of Gongliao (Part 1): Starting from the Point of Departure and Before the Rice Harvest