A Study Tour of Rural China (3): Before and After Entering the Countryside

Editor's note: Wei-Hsuan, who studies at National Taiwan University's College of Agriculture, and her peers became part of the Taiwan Rural Front through various circumstances. These young people come from both cities and farming communities, and their starting points for engaging with agricultural issues differ; their relationship with the organization also varies from close to distant. Regardless, as a group of young people concerned with agricultural issues, they call themselves "rural youth."

On behalf of the Taiwan Rural Front, Wei-Hsuan traveled to the Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center in Beijing, China, for a two-month exchange and visiting program. Her reflections from the visit and her thoughts on Taiwan's current situation have taken shape in three articles, which will be published in succession on NewsMarket. This is the third in the series. To read the other articles in the series, please see the links at the end of the article.

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When I first entered the youth green commune of the Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center (hereafter "Liang Center") on the outskirts of Beijing, I was surprised that all the complex work across the entire courtyard was being supported by just over twenty young people close to my own age (ranging from high school graduates to those in their early thirties), specifically more than ten full-time and part-time staff, six or seven one-year interns, and a number of long-term volunteers. The Liang Center's original director, Liu Laoshi, who had an academic background and was widely respected, died in a car accident in March 2011. Fortunately, the Liang Center's concrete organizational structure and division of work modules meant that young people still had clear work to carry out, and Liu Laoshi's sudden death did not affect the operation of the whole organization too greatly.

In mainland China, the entire "rural reconstruction system," including the Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center, emerged under Professor Wen Tiejun of Renmin University's political-economic theoretical analysis of the mainland's "three rural issues" (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers). In addition to the "Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center," which is responsible for youth training and farmer organization (cooperative) training, there is also the "Guoren Green Alliance" (whose staff overlap with the Liang Center), which helps cooperatives sell organic agricultural products in the city and promotes urban-rural links; the "Little Donkey Citizen Farm," which develops citizen farms and community-supported agriculture; and finally the "Guoren Tianjin Workers' Home," which cares about the problems of urban migrant workers.

The rural reconstruction system's idea about youth participation is that young people should enter rural areas to learn and temper themselves, to find themselves amid a university life of drunken dreams, lack of goals, and lack of self-aware education. Therefore, young people are required to have the ability to manage their own lives, to be as self-sufficient as possible in rural areas, and not to take a single cent from farmers for nothing. When living in the youth green commune or in rural areas, collective living is usually the main mode: in the morning everyone runs together, holds morning talks, and sings songs to forge group spirit, and each person takes turns being on duty to cook and clean the environment.

In addition, because the goal of the Liang Shuming Center is to make farmers self-aware and then organized, and under the overall political environment of China this still counts as being on the edge of sensitive issues, the youth under the rural reconstruction system often have a tragic and urgent mood about engaging in rural work, and are more conservative than outside NGOs in trying new things. In fact, the rural reconstruction system also counts as a distinctive minority in style within China's NGO circle.

Now, after Liu Laoshi's death, the differences among each young person under the Liang Center are actually not small. In a state where carrying out existing work is primary and discussing consensus is secondary, it is hard to say exactly what style the Liang Center has. Perhaps it is young people with certain qualities or expectations who are attracted and then enter the rural reconstruction system, and perhaps it is also because these young individuals who enter each shape the Liang Center at each different stage.

However, looking back from the rural work undertaken by mainland youth to Taiwan's rural youth, a different perspective indeed emerges.

Young people in the north often make flour staples by hand to include in dishes. Second from the right is a young person who returned to work at a cooperative in his mother's hometown.

Beginnings and Continuation

Over the past year or two, many young people in Taiwan have begun discussing agricultural issues and caring about matters big and small in rural areas. This is unprecedented since Taiwan entered industrial development. Three years ago, in order to let a younger generation disconnected from rural life experience move from imagining rural areas entirely through stereotypes to being willing to come into contact with and understand real rural problems, the Taiwan Rural Front decided to hold the Summer Cultivation grassroots interview and survey camp, an idea that was very influential.

It was also during that period when agriculture was completely marginalized and weakened, and the College of Agriculture became the college with the lowest admission scores at National Taiwan University (though it still is today), that the seniors eager to attract more young students to care about rural areas generally set very low expectations and standards for young people: even if their understanding of the demands of each major issue was vague, even if unfamiliarity with the background of Taiwan's agricultural development meant they could not form their own arguments and judgments, even if a lack of farming knowledge and experience made their labor clumsy, even if a lack of actual social movement experience meant that even when they took to the streets together it was more moral support than practical help... none of this mattered. As long as they were young people willing to participate together and care about agricultural issues, they would become good children full of hope and much encouraged and praised in the hearts and words of their seniors.

Now, three years later, young people have many more opportunities for growth and learning on the road to becoming "rural youth": agricultural clubs or youth communities in colleges and in society have begun organizing various reading groups and interview and survey actions for independent discussion and learning, helping to hold farmers' markets so that young people can think more about the relationship between producers and consumers, and rural residencies allow young people to leave behind student treatment and merge into local ways of thinking in various places;

The two 717 farmer overnight protests on Ketagalan Boulevard and various farmer actions let young people personally feel the tension and techniques of movements; organizing the Summer Cultivation grassroots interview and survey camp for three consecutive years has continued to draw more young people into the ranks of "rural youth"; and the battle over the Kuokuang Petrochemical project, which began with the second-stage Summer Cultivation interviews and surveys, pushed the newly formed identity of "rural youth" onto the front lines of the movement, turning them into "oyster youth"...Starting from a complete blank in understanding rural areas, we have indeed learned a lot, yet beneath this seemingly gradually easing wave of agricultural revival, we seem to need to grasp more.

Although Taiwan's agriculture is classified as disadvantaged under the larger environment, rural overall construction and farmer education are much sounder than in mainland China, giving us the chance to play while learning along this path and granting us much room to develop freely. Next, perhaps we can require ourselves to become more familiar with cooking and farming techniques, require ourselves to understand the importance of relevant agricultural organizations to farmers, require ourselves to be able to form our own arguments and judgments on important agricultural issues, and even further be able to explain them to others, require ourselves to learn the background of Taiwan's agricultural development and the general situation of global agricultural development, require ourselves to be able to discuss with family and friends the reasons for caring about agriculture and wanting to engage in rural work, require ourselves to be able to enter the actual threads of thought and political judgments in rural areas, require ourselves to write interview and survey articles of academic value...

Referring to the ideas and methods of the Liang Shuming Center, raising one's own standards, learning to be life-centered, personally practicing and understanding rural values, and strengthening one's own understanding of all aspects of agriculture can be the next stage of self-challenge for partners who already have a "rural youth identity."

Every year, rural youth graduate from school and devote themselves to rural work that young people once forgot, and in order not to let "rural work as a vocation" become a mere slogan, there is inevitably something rather serious about it. For me, devoting myself to this work in rural areas is not about treating it as a springboard for building my own career, but about hoping that a sustainable society of balance and harmony for all and mutual respect and love between people and the environment will appear somewhere along the way starting from the present. Because "body and soil are not two," our values are embodied in life, and life will also shape our appearance.

An embrace to all partners who continue to support and move forward, and I look forward to more unknown encounters.