Please come with me to the countryside and experience rural life firsthand.

Text / Zhang Shuning

With nothing but a stubborn streak of foolishness, I rode my bicycle into the countryside and the fields. I remember every person I met, their voices, the curve of their upturned lips, and those hands with their thick layer of calluses, hands that always carry the fragrance of the soil. I walked into the countryside because I wanted to face the essence of life, to see whether I could learn what it has to teach me. Give yourself a little time, bring a few good books, a backpack, a bicycle, and go alone, visiting rural villages around the island, learning to observe with a farmer's eyes and to listen with a farmer's ears.

Since childhood I have squeezed myself into the city, where everyone around me is in a hurry, and it is hard for us to quiet down and listen to the voice at the very bottom of our hearts. Like a rootless generation, we are blindly pushed forward by a rapid torrent. New high-rise buildings eliminate old apartments, new storefronts replace old shops, we loudly sing of the global village, we let industrialization rapidly swallow up rural areas that seem to have little economic value, and then, we do not know with what feelings we should look upon the word "hometown," or what kind of culture it should carry. How can we possibly have a corresponding feeling and understanding of culture and history for something that has never been part of our life experience?

Looking at the international picture, global climate anomalies and constant natural disasters persist; even though human wisdom is infinite, the resources on Earth are, after all, limited. The food crisis of 2008 confirmed the truth of this warning; global oil production will pass its peak around 2015; the water resources available on Earth are becoming rarer and rarer; the biological food chain continues to deteriorate and shrink sharply. The sustainable development of environmental protection cannot be just a symbolic shouting of slogans; it must be carried out with a positive attitude and active action.

Half farming, half X? Sustainable farming? Environmental protection? Low-carbon living? In the end, no one can tell another person how to live correctly, because everyone has their own gifts and their own lessons. After a month of rural life, I am very lucky to have met so many people who are raising the self-sufficiency rate of their dreams, and to be able to share their stories. Even though setbacks keep coming and it is hard to create a sense of influence, I still keep seeing people who are willing to throw themselves in.

There are consumers who simply want to breathe fresh air, producers who play the role of guardians of the land, farm managers who use online marketing to improve their operating difficulties, musicians living a half-farming, half-X life, professional scholars studying natural farming, middlemen who contract with farming households at reasonable prices, independent bookstores concerned about environmental issues, distinctive restaurants that follow the principle of eating local and in season, journalists actively reporting on agricultural and environmental issues, and so on. Because of them, I can hear more wonderful stories of supporting agriculture and safeguarding a sustainable environment from different angles and in different roles.

So I will keep going, keep setting out on my bicycle tour around the island, bravely exploring Taiwan's agricultural scene in exchange for food. If you have only dreams without putting them into action, then the enormous energy those dreams generate at this moment will eventually stop. How many possibilities life truly holds, none of us knows, but only by trying, by bravely seeking the right direction, will the answer appear along the path of the search.