Zhu Xueheng's First Wedding Experience: Buying Directly from Farmers

The images in this article are provided by "Voice of the Otaku Resistance Army"

Zhu Xueheng is getting married! Hmm - that stopped being news a long time ago.

He's hosting a banquet with 100 tables! Well - compared with the 2,000 tables hosted in Dajia, Taichung, for the winter melon farmer taking a daughter-in-law, that's small potatoes.

But the "otaku" wedding banquet ingredients are being bought "directly from farmers" at the source. Wow - now that's cool!

Otaku Zhu Xueheng held a New Year's Eve wedding banquet on 12/31, with ingredients contracted directly from farmers, and the wedding photos were taken in the fields

Choosing to hold the wedding banquet on the last day of 2011, Zhu Xueheng not only invited friends, relatives and otaku to share the joy of marriage and celebrate the New Year together, but also had a deeper intention: to encourage restaurants to use more locally produced organic ingredients when hosting banquets, and even to contract with farmers.

What is a "contract farming" arrangement? Simply put, it means "buying directly from farmers"! So this contract farming work with organic farmers fell to Maimaishi, author of The Quitting Diary, who served as coordinator. Zhu Xueheng hoped this wedding banquet could establish a standard operating procedure for contract farming with farmers, so it could be promoted to other food and beverage businesses.

The menu items at Zhu Xueheng's wedding banquet that used organic vegetables were: double greens in oyster sauce (bok choy, iceberg lettuce), taro and sago soup, chives in plum vinegar, radish, steamed spotted red fish (with scallions for flavor and color), and fresh guava, fruit corn and cherry tomatoes.

Although menu items using organic vegetables accounted for only about one third of the total, they were the most taxing part of organizing this New Year's Eve wedding banquet, because the entire contract farming process not only had to be figured out from scratch, but also depended on whether heaven would cooperate and let the vegetables grow on schedule.

The Otaku Resistance Army team visited farming friends in Xingjian Village, where the contract farming took place

Why did he think of combining a New Year's Eve wedding banquet with organic vegetables? Zhu Xueheng said that beyond the moving inner journey of small farmers engaged in organic agriculture that he felt while writing the recommendation preface for Maimaishi's The Quitting Diary, he also felt that while Taiwan takes pride in its abundant agricultural produce and sweet fruits, farmers are not given corresponding respect and compensation; instead, so-called "high technology" is constantly hyped - an industry that consumes most of society's resources but contributes a disproportionate share of taxes.

Therefore, he hoped that through this wedding banquet contract farming, he could not only directly support hardworking organic farmers, but also set an example and encourage more newlyweds to "buy directly from farmers" for banquet ingredients as much as possible.

Climate Change Intervenes: "Rainy Fields" Give Maimaishi a Fright

In order to prepare organic vegetables early, Maimaishi not only discussed the menu with Chef Ading, who was responsible for the wedding banquet catering, but also, based on the ingredients needed for the menu, went to Yilan's Xingjian Organic Village more than two months earlier to discuss contract farming with farmers.

Based on past experience, winter has less rain and is suitable for growing radishes and leafy vegetables. Unexpectedly, the climate was abnormal this year, with especially heavy winter rain. A whole row of white radishes planted in the soil was soaked rotten by the rain, leaving only rows of weeds in the radish field and just two surviving radishes barely hanging on. The iceberg lettuce and bok choy planted in the net house also grew very slowly because Yilan had long periods of cloudy weather and insufficient sunlight.

The otaku goes into the field

As the wedding date drew closer day by day, the vegetable seedlings in the net house, despite everyone's hopes, still could not grow even a cun in a night. To avoid the wedding banquet falling through, Maimaishi began touring organic small farmers all over Taiwan, hoping to find enough vegetables to supply the event. Who knew that the agricultural damage caused by heavy winter rain was island-wide; for example, Kaohsiung Meinong, a major production area for white radishes, was also hit badly this year.

After discussing with the chef, baby corn originally on the menu was replaced with corn. The harvested quantity of iceberg lettuce fell short of the target, and the shortfall was replaced with round-leaf A-choy, which has a similar texture. After much running around, the fruits and vegetables needed for the wedding banquet ingredients were finally gathered.

Maimaishi said that although the contract-farmed vegetables did not grow as expected, Zhu Xueheng still bought them all. As for the process of finding substitute fruits and vegetables, in order to give organic small farmers more exposure opportunities, she deliberately avoided large farms, and thereby discovered many moving stories behind little-known small farms.

Maimaishi Xiao Jin (bottom right) was the behind-the-scenes coordinator for the contract-farmed ingredients at this otaku wedding

For example, the "Hu Tian Xi Shi" farm in Ji'an, Hualien, is an organic farm established specifically for single-parent families. In addition to providing stable employment opportunities for parents from disadvantaged single-parent families, the name "Hu Tian Xi Shi" also expresses the hope that single parents can cast aside past disappointments and welcome a new life with the mindset of "holding a happy event."

Although Zhu Xueheng's wedding contract farming this time was disrupted by the "rainy fields," Maimaishi said that because of the winter heavy rain, even conventional vegetable prices rose astonishingly, which conversely made organic vegetables seem not so expensive. Looking at it another way, eating genuine organic vegetables at a price close to conventional vegetables was also an unexpected gain from this wedding contract farming.

Zhu Da's Appeal to Otaku

Because of Maimaishi's introductions this time, Zhu Xueheng had the chance to go to Xingjian Village and meet farmers face to face, directly go into the fields to experience farmers' work, and only then deeply feel that city dwellers obtain food too easily, neglecting how hard farmers' production process behind the food is and how low the treatment they receive is. "Zhu Da" leads by example, calling on all otaku men and women, if they have free time, not only to support buying local agricultural products online, but also to personally walk into rural villages, keep company with farmers and the land, and experience life beyond the internet.

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Zhu Xueheng's Otaku Know-It-All Office – Our Family's New Year's Eve Wedding Menu