After 90 days of transplanting rice seedlings, Silent Rice is born, documenting the journey of farming

At the end of May, the sky was sunny one moment and rainy the next, and I could not help thinking of the disaster caused by days of torrential rain at the second-crop harvest last year. During last year's second-crop harvest, my friend had wanted to seize the window of good weather and bring in the rice before the dark clouds stitched up the clear sky. But the torrential rain would not stop, and the field soil never really dried out; the muddy soil made the harvester's tracks spin in place, and the sticky mud clung to the tracks, turning out a thick ring of muck like a giant tree-ring cake, and we could only watch helplessly as the harvester sank deeper and deeper, unable to move.

The sky turned dark, and bean-sized raindrops began to fall. The people in the field stood blankly in the rain wearing bamboo hats, looking so helpless; in the end they had to hurriedly ask around, gather several villagers, and, barefoot in the rain with sickles in hand, harvest sheaf by sheaf by human labor. The rice stalks fell one bundle after another and floated in place in the field. Although I was only a helper on the farm, I could still feel that hardship and vicissitude, that sense of everything going up in smoke, of being powerless to turn things around. My knees were almost buried in the field; when I pulled my legs forward, mud splashed up onto my body. My clothes had long since become soaking wet and gray-black, my eyes stung from the spray and I could not help blinking; the moment I closed my eyes I immediately felt the rainwater seeping through my bamboo hat into my head mixed with sweat, running from between my brows across the bridge of my nose, and finally catching on my lips with a salty taste...

In the first crop of year 101 of the Republic of China, the field I rented from my friend was exactly this same plot. Perhaps because the lingering fear remained, from April onward I dried the field hard all the way to May, and during that time I did not release water even once. Oddly enough, every time I felt the rice in the field needed water, rain would fall that day, heavy or light, putting my mind at ease. Watching the rice grow smoothly, the ever-thicker stalks standing plump one by one like a pregnant woman with joy written all over her face.

Looking carefully at the posture of the leaves, you can see the signs: the stems and leaves slowly close up and straighten from a radial arrangement, and in a rice plant carrying grain you can clearly sense the rice brewing. Then, on May 19, when I returned to the edge of the field again, they seemed to have conspired to throw me a surprise birthday party, all pushing out one touching green young rice ear after another. Looking at the whole field of rice heading out, this sacred moment quietly seared a historic image into my heart.

I made a pre-order statistics webpage, and I also gave the rice I grew a name: Silent Rice (please click here to read)

Finally, one more thing: I also very much like to use exchange. Friends who are interested in exchanging, please add a note at the end saying what you would like to exchange, anything at all, even something non-material is fine.