Zhigenong Backpacker Hostel: A Warm Stay Friendly to Small Farmers
Spring had just passed in 2011, and Hualien was preparing to enter the peak summer tourist season... Although I had already immigrated to Hualien more than ten years earlier, my relatives in Taipei still came to Hualien often, and our little house with only three rooms naturally became a guesthouse for friends and family. Once summer arrived, I had nowhere left to stay...
"Let's go find a place of our own to live!" my mother and I thought to ourselves. By chance, we discovered that Hualien's first hotel with a curtain-wall glass facade was selling suites. The layout was simple, and the location was right in downtown Hualien, between two night markets and near the largest department store; when you opened the window, just 200 meters away was the deep blue Pacific Ocean, and on the other side were mountains -- and I love mountains most of all!
(The lovely Hualien view looking out from Zhigengnong)
"Do you like it?" my friend said.
"I love it!" I said.
"But the owner won't sell a single unit; he wants to sell the whole floor," my friend said with regret.
After a night of thinking, in the end I bought an entire floor of a "hotel" -- more than I had expected.
At first, I planned to pick the one I liked best to live in myself and sublet the others to nearby office workers or students, until one day I attended a talk by a Ms. Elizabeth from the United States...
She is a pioneer in promoting Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) worldwide. The talk was excellent, and those who attended were all local small farmers engaged in organic production. In the interaction between the speaker and the audience, the difficulties of developing community-supported agriculture in Hualien were revealed --
Maybe I could do something about this; if I could solve the inconvenience of connecting small farmers with supporters from other counties and cities, could CSA then run smoothly on the land of a few small farmers?
Therefore, solving the lodging and transportation problems for supporters from out of town might serve as an incentive to attract supporters, and could also let them visit the land they have adopted more often and have more connection with the land, rather than just paying money to adopt it.
Once the idea was there, the difficulty of execution is always the killer of dreams. Yet through a series of fortunate encounters, I got to know some wonderful friends one after another. Some offered design ideas, some taught me methods of management and operation, and some friends were willing to lend exquisite antique furniture to support my dream... so let's get started!
With a very tight budget, how should 12 suites be renovated? Of course, by relying on DIY and decorating, starting with reducing renovation costs. Every day once the work began, from morning to night it was nonstop patching walls, painting, patching again, then continuing to mix colors and paint... The ceiling plus walls came to about 500 ping of surface to paint, and for two months I was painting even in my dreams; when it was over, I immediately threw the brush into the trash can and never wanted to see it again!
(Using vintage Taiwanese furniture and repainting it created a one-of-a-kind rustic countryside style)
For the plumbing and electrical work, I hired a professional electrician and followed him every day to learn, begging him not to hire an assistant so I could take that place. I majored in information management in university, so I treated wires like circuits, the electrical box like a computer case, and switch panels like motherboards... After a month, the plumbing and electrical work was done too!
Although many friends laughed and asked why I did not find someone else to handle it instead of wearing myself out like this, I knew this was a process and a rare opportunity to learn. With that mindset, no matter how hard it was, I did not feel tired! By the day of the opening on December 18, seeing the joy on the guests' faces, I knew it had all been worth it!
Returning to the essence of the business, I hope to build a platform that helps farmers increase their market visibility and the number of supporters. Although I am not a farmer myself, and the friends who come here are not necessarily involved in agriculture, we all hope to recover the warmth of human connection that existed in the agricultural era of the past, and that deepest, closest feeling toward the land. That is why it is named "Zhigengnong": determined to be a happy farmer!
There is no television in any room; the only television is in the lounge (which also serves as the dining room), so that every guest does not just stay holed up in their room!
Zhigengnong is the number one fan of high-quality agricultural products -- because only by becoming a buyer can you truly give local small farmers substantive support and keep them thriving in the agricultural supply chain. We constantly gather high-quality local organic agricultural products, make delicious breakfasts with them, or provide them free to guests as ingredients to cook with themselves; organic shampoo, body wash and hand wash are also a must in every room.
To us, cost is just a number, but for the environment and the health of our guests, it has profound meaning.
When guests live in such a pure environment, even if only for two or three days, they will surely feel the response from their bodies; when they return to the cities where they live, they will miss it and be willing to use organic products or eat organic food, becoming substantive supporters just like us, and then our goal will have been achieved!
The aspiration and value Zhigengnong sets for itself is to be kind to the earth. Zhigengnong is the connecting point between everyone, small farmers, and the land.
Rush's mother is in the kitchen preparing the next day's breakfast; the kitchen is open for everyone to use.