What is it like to shop while bending over? We experienced it firsthand that day

It is strange: impressions from traveling abroad usually blur and bleed together after many years, yet the impressions from wandering through markets in various places, even farmers' markets, always stay so vivid. Whenever I reach a place, I simply have to seek out the local market and wander around several times with great relish; the moment I smell the local strange fragrances and odors, it instantly stirs up a peak of memory in my mind, and even after ten or so years it has not faded.

Visiting a market, especially a traditional market where you can meet farmers face to face, is like reading a local chronicle of soil and climate. Very quickly you will know what the locals eat and how they eat it. Some particularly strange ingredients and ways of eating will make you want to dig into the local culinary history to find out exactly what is going on.

Among those markets, what I remember most is the farmers' market in the old Dutch city of Leiden every Wednesday and Saturday along the canal bridge, where a dazzling array of agricultural products dressed up the riverbank in brilliant colors. Dealing directly with small farmers and fishermen, asking all sorts of questions, I was not afraid they would find me long-winded. Raw herring with finely chopped onion: "Wow!" Honestly, only a gourmand who truly loves seafood could keep sending it straight into their mouth bite after bite. Small farms' homemade cow's and sheep's cheeses of every kind; farmers' home-brewed herb vinegar, herb fruits, and jams; homemade hand-baked pastries; vegetables grown and pickled by farming families themselves; and fresh nuts so delicious they were explosive; honey raised by small beekeepers, and other primary processed agricultural products, as well as tomatoes, root vegetables, leafy greens and the like freshly picked early in the morning, so colorful and eye-catching that they stirred up hunger and made me wish I could buy a little of everything to take home and taste.

There is also Kerrytown near Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, with a farmers' market every Wednesday. Besides agricultural products, there is no shortage of handmade goods such as hand-woven straw baskets and dolls made from wheat ears. In Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, the smell of spices fills the air, with wool blankets, gold and copper vessels, leather bags, leather lamps, and various flavored black teas, formed by 20 intersecting streets and more than a thousand shops, leaving you dazzled by everything and assailed by a thousand scents, so that in a moment you forget what you originally came to look for; you seem like a modern person whose soul has been thrown into confusion within a thousand-year labyrinth.

This kind of experience of facing farmers directly is truly fascinating. Many years ago I already wished Taiwan had this kind of market.

So when I saw the Hop'e Farmers' Market in Taichung, I secretly envied the people of Taichung. When the 248 Farmers' Market first set up in Taipei's East District, I did not hesitate to drive a long way there to shop, lugging a week's worth of heavy food, but over time it was hard to keep it up. From time to time I began to feel a bit jealous of the residents of the East District: when would it finally be the turn of residents of Taipei's South District to chat and shop directly with farmers?

When I learned that the second "Bending-Down Farmers' Market and Life Festival" was about to be held on the NTU campus, I could finally chat with farmers somewhere reachable by the MRT line. This is a kind of fresh agricultural product that combines the human warmth of a traditional market with the ability to buy without worrying about pesticides and chemical fertilizers, delivered directly by farmers to their stalls.

In most people's eyes, organically grown agricultural products are surely priced far higher than those from conventional farming, and things at small farmers' markets like this may be very expensive, but the facts are not necessarily so.

In Taiwan, food prices have long been kept low for various reasons, and at the same time the channels for obtaining food are too easy, so people very easily buy large quantities of all kinds of food, far more than the amount they truly need to eat. Stroll through a farmers' market, and when we come into direct contact with farmers and know that the agricultural foods on their stalls have been accumulated bit by bit in accordance with the seasons of all things growing, we will cherish them especially and understand the principle of taking less in all things.

Given the lifestyle of modern urbanites, most families (unless three generations live under one roof and the elders are used to cooking at home) already mainly eat out, and the meals they cook themselves in a week are at most four (the two weekend days). If we choose ingredients according to this kind of lifestyle, first assess exactly how much your household needs, and then buy the pesticide-free agricultural products supplied by small farmers. For example, perhaps your household eats eggs; then the small, cute Japanese mountain eggs sent over by the Yilan Da Zhai Yuan Friendly Market, buying just 1 box of 12, frying or boiling 1 the next day, is enough for the whole family to eat for quite a few days. What is more, this small-bodied Japanese mountain chicken is raised freely in the mountain forests, evidently a happy little hen, and the eggs it lays must surely have more energy than those from confined birds.

In the fine drizzle of mid-October, our family of three leisurely wandered around the NTU campus, carefully looking at the goods at every stall. At Little East River Handicraft Workshop, run by a family of seven (five children), the fourth child was the most amusing. Right away he gave us a seed capsule toy, and when we asked how much it cost, he said, "It's a gift for you!" Along the way, my little one held it preciously in the palm of his hand, and after getting home he kept asking, "What kind of seed is this exactly? Hurry up and look it up in the seed guide!"

I was especially happy to see the stall of the old farmer friends from Xingjian Village. These farming friends, who usually bend over to cultivate the land, now straightened their backs and greeted us and chatted. Before we knew it, we had bought rice, sweet potatoes, and also water bamboo shoots, and Uncle Kunzhang, who grew sweet potatoes bigger than a person's head, asked proudly, "Do you want to buy some?" The last remaining bag of brown sugar from Brown Sugar Farm, the most natural yam from Gongliao, and the bananas and guavas from Da Zhai Yuan Friendly Market, soon became too heavy to carry. We rested our legs and first drank a bowl of Master A-Lin's shrimp ball soup cooked by Sister A-Lin herself to warm up, waited for the millet zongzi steamed by Liqiu from Taitung, and at Xidi Yaozhuang placed an order for a scarf from Xiulian Dyeing and Weaving Workshop. My little one, who loves playing with creative snacks, passed by the Shangxiayou stall, saw wheat flour for making SCONE, chose the vanilla flavor, and was eager to go home and try making it. This child also played with a few woodblock-print notebooks at the Taiwan Rural Front stall. In the blink of an eye, another family member tried Elephant Mountain old tea and ended up with a packet in hand. We also tasted Rainforest Coffee on the spot and brought some home along the way.

After half a day, our hands were full of treasures, all useful for the household. Even if we did not buy here, we would still have to shop at an organic store; it is just that when buying I still repeatedly weighed the amount our household uses, because I would never want to see the crops farmers worked so hard to grow simply thrown away. This is also why every time I hope to bring my little one along to these places, to let him see these farmers for himself and read the "chronicle of soil and climate" of the place where he grows up. I am not clear exactly how much I can influence him.

However, when I think of what Jane Goodall wrote in "Harvest for Hope," I feel a piercing sting: "I have three young grandchildren, and when I think that we have been harming the Earth since I was their age, I feel a piercing pain. For their sake, we must reverse the trend of destruction. One genuinely transformative approach is to think about what we put into our mouths. Our every decision, including what we choose to buy and eat, will have an impact on the environment, on animal welfare, and even more importantly on human health."

Perhaps I cannot play the role of someone raising an arm and shouting loudly, but within the scope of my personal life, I try to play the role of a mother whose dietary consumption influences her child, so that the things our generation and the previous one messed up may have a chance, through the sprouting of this tiny seed of teaching by example, to change this world bit by bit and ounce by ounce. I only hope we are still in time.

11/20 (Sun) 10:00-17:00 Bending-Down Farmers' Market, meeting you at NTU Palmetto Avenue

Bending down to cultivate is the farmer's humility before the crops, the sky, and the earth,
and we who receive the grace of nourishment from heaven, earth, and farming friends bend down to learn the earth's tolerance and the farmer's steadiness.
Bending down is a form of reflection, letting us learn humility toward the environment and coexistence with all things in nature;
Bending down is an attitude, letting us buy directly, consume locally, enjoy what is in season, support small farmers, and protect the environment;
Bending down is a self-expectation, letting us newly "from the heart" understand the relationship between agriculture, land, food, and you and me.
Every third Sunday of the month, Bending Down meets you at NTU Palmetto Avenue, and together let us show the power of green consumption.

[Bending-Down Forum] 11/20 (Sun) 13:00~15:00 @ NTU Palmetto Avenue Market Site
Topic: This time, talking with you about coffee
Speaker: Wu Ziyu (Fair Trade Rainforest Coffee)
This month's Bending-Down Forum invites Wu Ziyu, a worker with "Rainforest Coffee" dedicated to combining the concept of fair trade, to share with everyone how a cup of coffee can connect with this society. At the same time, you are also invited to start with a cup of coffee and think about how a bowl of rice, a persimmon, a bunch of vegetables…. connect oneself with society; you are invited to think together about how an alternative way of thinking and attitude toward consumption can change and construct the possibility of a better environment.