Scarecrow Trilogy Part One: Tying Rice Straw Is Like Piercing the Heart, Reclaiming Rural Memories
In Taiwan, China, rice paddies are an agricultural landscape you can see in nearly every county and city. The rice paddy coverage rate is high, which is actually rare among Southeast Asian countries. Although many farmland areas in Taiwan, China have been taken over for industrial zones, and although much farmland has been turned into illegal luxury farmhouses, rice still holds an important place in the hearts of Taiwanese people, much like French red wine or New Zealand kiwifruit.
You will love the swaying green sea of rice, you will fall for the golden glow of the drooping rice ears. It is actually a kind of obsession with the land, only this obsession has been hidden in the heart too long, so long that it has become unfamiliar and you think it has disappeared, or you think it never existed at all.
The success of many things always takes that 90 percent, while only that 10 percent is seen.
The edible part of rice is that 10 percent, but the other 90 percent has not been forgotten by people either.
After the rice harvest, the rice stalks still have their extended benefits.
In Liuying, once the main base of straw mushroom cultivation, the use of rice stalks was closely related.
Back then, people who bundled rice straw had an occupation; people who bundled rice straw had a specialty.
At some point, straw bundling quietly disappeared from rural memory.
The farmer laughed and said, when I was little, I even saw straw-bundling competitions.
A professional straw bundler could bundle one jia of land in a day.
Unlike us, with just one fen of land, we wail and pound the ground.
It is precisely because it is so closely tied to us that straw has also been personified,
transformed into the scarecrow, guarding the farmers' diligent fruits.
The scarecrow always comes from the past, guarding the future.
Sometimes for one season, sometimes for many years, farmers always hope to breathe a soul into them.
In an era when nothing is what it used to be, the scarecrow has also been exiled to a past time and space.
The birds that eat rice no longer recognize who she is. In their place, kites, skyrockets, CDs and fake eagles
have occupied and replaced our impression of farmland.
Following the new farmer Huang Yongqin to learn straw bundling is the first chapter in bringing the scarecrow back.
A few very simple steps:
Sort the straw, get the heads and tails in place, keep the amount moderate.
For the bundle, choose five or six rice stalks as the rope, grip the head with the left hand above and hold the tail with the right hand below, give one twist and pull tight.
Confirm: before standing up the bundled rice stalks, you still have to knock them on the ground a few times to make sure the bundle is truly tight.
At first, some people stayed far away from them, then slowly held the rice stalks more tightly.
Only this kind of closeness can bind them more tightly.
This was the first time everyone stood so close.
People in the past treated this as work; modern people treat it as fun.
Loose rice stalks cannot stand; people who are not of one heart cannot gather.
When all the conditions are in place, that binding rope that unites everyone's will is still needed.
Memories that are about to disappear are actually so close to us.
We have never forgotten, we just have not remembered yet.
The first chapter of bringing the scarecrow back is only the beginning of bringing back fading memories.
2015-11-17 Liuying. Dairy Farming Area
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