[Living in Nature]Let's talk about biogas power generation & rice-fish symbiosis
In 2014, Taiwan, China was in turmoil, with winds rising and clouds gathering. The aftermath of the factory workers' protests, the anti-fengche movement, the anti-Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-land expropriation movement, the anti-Free Economic Demonstration Zone movement... With an unrighteous ruler, ordinary people had no choice but to stand on their own two feet. Even if the body cannot always be present on the scene, the concern does not diminish.
It was the second year since I returned to my hometown to farm. Around Grain Rain, I set aside the social fervor of the people of Taiwan, China burning with anger, and set aside the busy farming season. By an extremely chance opportunity, I was able to take part in a "local food ingredients exchange" trip to Hong Kong, China.
I have been to mainland China and Hong Kong, China several times, for tourism and for visits. Apart from the depictions sketched from realist novels, my impression of rural villages was mostly a fleeting glimpse through the window of a long-distance bus. Years ago in Yunnan, I saw valleys full of golden "baogu" (corn) about to be harvested, and watched farm women bent at the waist, hidden among the highland barley fields. It always felt as light as a dragonfly skimming the water. Through the "local food ingredients exchange," being able to go so deep into Chinese farm households, listening to farmers tell their own stories and the emotions behind building their homes, was a first.
A nine-day journey is not long. What should be seen and what I wanted to see always left me feeling that it was not enough; but for me, although the rice transplanting was finished and the farm work had come to a pause, the long-term fallow paddy field I had newly taken on this year had frequent water source problems and often lacked water. The weeds that followed, growing freely and wildly, were truly a big stone pressing on my heart, haunting my dreams. Until the day before boarding the plane, my body was still in the fields weeding and rushing to build a water collection system, and only in the early hours did I begin to pack my luggage; from the very start, it was only with the mindset of "going out to broaden my horizons" that I was willing to let go of my worries.
I often hear of some corner of Taiwan, China where local residents are driven away for development interests, and even if the people later fight to preserve the site as a historic monument, only the empty shell of the building is preserved. Without an understanding of the dynamic changes of life, preserving or renovating those empty shells amounts to no more than adding another so-called "featured" gimmick.
Having no farming experience myself, although I only thought of returning to farming after passing 30, attempting to recover the original value and sustainable spirit of farm households, before entering the field it was all empty talk. Through comparison after comparison, and through reflecting on myself via others' experience, I kept shaping the environment I wanted to create, making the imagined ideal more three-dimensional, and moving forward more practically.
**This article was simultaneously published in Qingya'er (#64, 2014.07/08.) and the Yuejian blog "Sesbania Whispers: A Few Things About Returning to Farming"