Stepping onto the path of farming, my future is like a rice seed about to be sown

At this same time last year, I was still working in Singapore. Taking advantage of the holiday before the Lunar New Year, I returned to Taiwan and rode a bicycle to Taitung to search for something. What I was searching for, I wasn't sure either. It was as if I had a romantic longing for the Hualien-Taitung region, as if only there could I breathe a mouthful of truly fresh air.

By January 2012, I had already been in Taitung for more than half a year, and every day I could see the scenery of the East Rift Valley. The work was hard and no salary landed in my pocket each month. I pretended not to care, while everyone else worried about me more than I did. From land preparation, rolling rice seedlings, replanting seedlings, carrying organic fertilizer, weeding, hand harvesting, threshing and sun-drying...I had experienced all these farm chores bending over in the embrace of the Rift Valley. I really liked the name of National Taiwan University's Bending-Over Market, and I often deliberately wore their short-sleeved T-shirt while working(even when the weather was very cold). I felt that saying I was living a bending-over life could not have been more fitting.

Bending over was not all I did. I helped the community carry stones one by one in heavy rain to build flower terraces, scoop out soil and haul cement and sand one ladle at a time, carry Japanese-style roof tiles and bricks, and even tie rebar. When my back ached from the work, I would straighten up and raise my head to look at the vast Rift Valley plain. Perhaps it was still naive and unrealistic, but I always felt that both body and mind would be soothed by nature. If the weather was clear and cloudless, the blue of the sky would turn so blue it seemed almost dark. In the distance, the Xinwulu River flowing from the Central Mountain Range divides at Chishang: to the south is the Beinan River, and to the north is the Xiuguluan River. Because the spring water from the mountains passes through sediment, the stream water is rich in minerals, and only then can the soil on the Rift Valley be fertile; because of the South Cross-Island Highway pass in the Central Mountain Range, the fields of Chishang receive a little more average daily sunlight. These seemingly ordinary movements of the sun and moon are in fact precious gifts from nature, and they are all the reasons the rice here looks so distinct grain by grain, tastes bouncy and springy in texture, and is as smooth going down as if coated in a layer of oil.

This half year of life happened to be exactly one season's cycle of rice growth. At this time the land on the Rift Valley began again to be plowed, flooded, and made ready for transplanting after the Lunar New Year. I remembered this same time last year: the morning was an incomparably clear and fine day. I rode my bicycle with my girlfriend along the long downhill slope of Brown Boulevard and glided all the way into the embrace of the East Rift Valley, as if we were about to rush in one breath to the distant Central Mountain Range. Facing the cool morning air, mixed with a great deal of the smell of soil, all around us were endless rice fields. Egrets and hill mynas searched the fields for frogs and earthworms. Fields not yet plowed were blooming with yellow rapeseed flowers, while flooded fields joined patch after patch into one great mirror reflecting the blue sky, white clouds, and those deep green mountains. So the Rift Valley seemed to become one great lake, and we glided amid the reflections of lake light and mountain color. That kind of shock from nature cannot be received without being there in person, and to this day it still has not left my heart.

Yet now I am someone who lives here. The heavy rain during this year's harvest season kept the rapeseed flowers in the fields from growing in time. After half a year of taking part in both conventional and organic cultivation processes, I rented three fen of land from a friend, preparing to begin the natural farming method (no pesticides, no fertilizer) that I really wanted to practice. The reason I wanted to use this farming method is that I regard this most natural, nature-law-following farming method as a language for communicating with nature. Through this language I want to ask Her whether we can coexist harmoniously, ideally like the Indians or Australian Aborigines, taking from nature only what is necessary for life while returning everywhere to the earth in a balanced cycle(see the two books "The Tracker" and "Voices of the Wild").

During this half year I traveled north and south to listen to lectures by Grandpa Kimura and the Rice God of Thailand, and only then did I discover that seedling raising and soil are the two major key factors in crop growth. Among them, because current agriculture divides labor so carefully, most farmers no longer raise seedlings themselves and instead buy seedling sheets from seedling farms. After one season of cultivation they buy new seedlings again, so the land never has a chance to let seeds multiply and adapt in the same place and truly cultivate a second generation, or even more generations, of crops suited to this piece of land. This fact has clearly become a blind spot under divided agriculture, a little cleverness humans use to reduce the probability of failure in raising seedlings.

So I went to Luye to visit a farmer practicing the Showming method whom I had read about for a long time on his blog, Mr. Xu of "Gan En Mi" (Gratitude Rice). The Gan En Mi that Mr. Xu breeds himself has already multiplied to the fifth generation on the same piece of land. Under the laws of nature and Mr. Xu's care, the strength of the seedlings has become tougher with each generation. Holding the mindset of a disciple learning a craft, I asked him for guidance. Mr. Xu kindly and without any reservation taught me his methods, and even promised to give me the fifth-generation seeds of Gan En Mi and invited me to join his ranks. At that moment I truly could not believe such a dream-come-true development: "When you wholeheartedly want to do something, the whole world will help you." I sincerely thanked every person who had reached out a hand to pull me along and patted my shoulder to cheer me on.

Just like that, my rice-growing journey had a breakthrough development. This year the beauty of the Rift Valley was still the same. In Luye I stayed at a simple, warm guesthouse that did not charge passing travelers a single cent. At night, I listened to the owner, Uncle Xu, describe in detail the happiness brought by a life of selfless dedication, and at last I was no longer merely gazing at the boundless night sky and imagining the future. My future was now packed in a yellow rice bag beside me, ready to be sown, to fall to the ground, to take deep root, just like my heart, my journey of searching for roots, the meaning of my life...