Farming is my journey of finding my roots

I am not a very literary person, and I was afraid I might not express myself clearly or that it would come across as too heavy. But when it comes to returning to farming, what I want to convey is simply that journey of panic, doubt and struggle in the search for the meaning of life; behind it, in fact, is also a story full of passion, faith and courage.

At first, I simply wanted to know what I was going to do in the future.

It probably began at that empty workstation beside the Keelung naval harbor. Staying alone in a steam boiler room of sixty or seventy ping, keeping company with a huge boiler rumbling as it turned, the pipes wrapped in coarse steel mesh hissing and growling as bursts of white smoke rose from them. The hot steam being sent out was for the naval ships at anchor to boil water, cook rice and take showers. Especially in winter, I often had to stoke it three times a night, which frequently left me unable to sleep all night.

During my military service, having just graduated from a shipbuilding research institute, I formally said goodbye to student life. Apart from the regular duties I faced every day, I spent the rest of my time in a tiny duty rest room at the workstation. There was almost no room to move in that duty room; a bunk bed covered in cobwebs, a television pressed against the corner of the wall, and a bathroom with broken floor tiles almost filled the entire space. In that nearly sealed-off state, I quickly went from being fresh and curious about everything at first to gradually feeling numb.

Loneliness. Often the world was reduced to just me and that concrete wall staring back at me. At first I tried to relieve the loneliness with cigarettes and television, but I soon found it was futile. It was also then that I understood that smoking and drinking, for me, were purely a kind of human social behavior, not something arising from my own needs. Those days in the military, which felt like being in prison, now come back to me full of self-examination and reflection. Reflection needs inspiration, and the source of that inspiration came from the words in books. I, who had never read books before, began to love reading and buying books, and I deeply sensed the power of words. What makes words different from television is that words will "select" the readers who suit them; they will stop and wait for the reader to chew on them and think. Watching television, by contrast, blurs day and night, swallowing everything whole, accepting whatever comes with no time to think.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I, who had always regarded the laws of physics and engineering as the only truth, began to reflect on philosophical questions such as the meaning of life and the role humans play on Earth. I remember reading several wonderful works, such as The Old Man and the Sea, the dystopian trilogy, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, novels by Paul Auster, and some passionate travelogues about cycling around the world, among which there were also things like the BBC documentary Planet Earth... These books, which discuss human nature, society, spiritual liberation and the current state of the Earth, made my head feel as if it had been given a hard twist. It seemed I could see something more clearly, yet it also seemed I had fallen into an even greater mystery.

I began to ponder and be troubled by the meaning of life. I always believed that living in this world, there should be something more meaningful than pursuing money, yet I also had to admit I could not escape the realistic mindset that money is almighty. I encountered difficulty, and so did the characters in the novels I read and the films I watched...

This is a passage from my notes at the time: "Why does society keep borrowing the pursuit of progress when in reality it is encouraging consumption (waste)? Why does it desperately tell us to make money, so that after taking out loans we become slaves to the bank for life? What is so bad about cherishing, protecting and managing well what we already have? Is it because if we did, the entire capitalist system would collapse? If so, do I still have to survive within this system? I hope to find a way to live sustainably with nature..."

One day I saw a book that from then on made me fall into even greater confusion: Into the Wild. This book made me begin to believe that thinking about my own path in life was something I should no longer avoid or delay... That book attracted me from the very beginning, because the protagonist's background overlapped with mine in many ways. The story describes a young American man born into a stable middle-class family, who had just graduated from university with excellent grades. When society was opening its arms to welcome him and a bright future awaited him, he refused everything that this society and his family offered him. Peeling things away layer by layer, he cut up the credit cards in his wallet, abandoned his old car, burned the banknotes on him and the maps he did not use, and even disdained to use a compass. Like a martyr, he left only his bare body and his pure soul, making a pilgrimage into the embrace of the wilderness. He was a pilgrim of the spirit. Between wilderness and city, with an almost harsh will, he found his definition of happiness in life. In his diary I felt his infinite worship of nature's vastness and inclusiveness, and I also felt the sweetness of human kindness from the simple life in the countryside and the mutual help among people. I knew that what he wanted to seek was complete goodness and eternal joy.

This book shook my world greatly. Just how far could I abandon the material world and pursue a spiritual life? My heart was still full of doubts... After all, the world in the book was one I had never experienced at all. Although I felt inexplicably stirred by their brave will, in the end that was not my life. Perhaps they could treat ideals as food and could die for ideals, but I did not know whether I could do the same.

Even though it seemed a pebble of a dream had sent ripples through my heart, this dream was still very vague, the concrete method of pursuing this goodness was still very unclear, and I was not yet certain enough. After much thought, I decided that before I knew what I wanted, I should first accept the social responsibility this society had cultivated me for and entrusted to me. The knowledge I had accumulated over nearly ten years was also due time to give something back to society. Even though I was often disappointed by this society full of class hierarchy, one that laughs at poverty but not at prostitution, at least I could get by on my own, and I also believed no road walked is walked in vain. I hoped that as long as something could help me grow and understand myself better, then every attempt and experience would be good for me.

Growing rice had not yet entered my thoughts at that time. I only knew that nature must hold some mystery; after all, it is what fascinates so many people, including that young man who died in Alaska. I was a child who grew up in the city. The memories of going back to my hometown during New Year and festivals as a child, "annihilating" the red apple snail eggs in the rice field ridges, and folding paper boats to race down the irrigation channels, disappeared along with urban renewal and the requisition of my hometown. Broadly speaking, I was a child who liked nature and the outdoors. Perhaps I had once climbed Mount Fuji, but that was all. As for nature, at that time I could say I knew nothing at all.

I truly felt the greatness of nature only after I began rock climbing and river tracing...