Hello from Huiran #10
Jan 8, 2020 // First of the new year! Or decade, if you prefer. It's up for debate, apparently.
Dear friends,
I’m starting this letter while on a train, the Puyuma Express 211, from Hualien to Taipei. It’s the last leg of my recent trip to Taiwan, which was part work (my mom had meetings and gave talks while I Sat and/or Roamed Around, as one’s child does while their parents are Working) and part mother-daughter road trip around Taiwan. We started our journey from Taichung in the west, drove south, crossed the island through a mountain pass, and headed up north through the Eastern Rift Scenic Valley to Hualien city, where we returned the car. We’re now on the way back to Taipei, from where we will fly to Beijing. While I’ll still be abroad for another three weeks, the ‘holiday’ ends today - China will be a collage of family visits, flitting between my mom’s office and lab, and chilling in my grandparents’ home. It’s not like being at home, but the familiarity of it all is a close enough proxy.
Speaking of home - what and where is that, exactly? I’ve been made to confront this question with some urgency, and some need for finality, these past months. This time last year (last year… oh my, happy new year!!), I would have said - I’m shuttling between Singapore and Thailand, and they are both home bases. But as you may recall (or not, it’s ok) from some of my previous letters, Thailand is home-by-default now. There’s something to be said for being nomadic - and embarrassingly, I must admit I am not - but… how does one stay organized while constantly on the go? They say that if your sock drawer’s out of order, so’s your life - well I don’t have that many socks, but without shelves and boxes and such where my important stuff (documents, clothes, electronics, blah) can reside somewhat permanently, I feel pretty lost. Maybe the lesson here is to have less stuff (did you know that Theravada Buddhist monks are allowed fewer than ten personal belongings, and change huts in the monastery every few weeks in order to rid themselves of attachment), and that isn’t one I take lightly. But I do find comfort in routine, both temporal and spatial, and home as a physical place seems to be the answer to that.
I’ve also been taking more seriously the idea of homesteading: “A lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale.” During our trip, we stayed in a number of rural homestays, or 民宿 as they’re called in Taiwan, that were set up by people both young and old who had reverted to the countryside. After some years of living in the city, often in the commercial world, they’d return to the towns they’d grown up in, and set up a small business. They would grow and eat their own food (not out of a naive, urban idyll for farming, but custom - many do it offhandedly, with enough native knowledge to tide them through), trade between neighbors, and supplement their livelihoods with a B&B, F&B trade, or something along those lines.
This was really appealing to me. Of late, we’d set up planters at home in Khao Yai, and I was working on them every day before I left for holiday. We planted tomatoes, coriander, kailan, garlic, and started a number of other seeds. It turns out that growing things isn’t as hard or failure-ridden as I imagined. It’s not so easy either, but it can definitely be done, and often there is more than enough food for our family of three. Just the amount of kailan alone… *Edvard Munch’s The Scream emoji* I find peace in the slow, daily act of nurturing plants; practice in learning to grow just enough, to temper my own greed and desire for more; and joy in watching nature take its course, where human (me) and nature (plants) grow together. But enough gushing over symbiosis. I always come back to this - food is so fundamental. We can survive without trains, shoes, movies, bags, and stickers (all of which are things I like). But we eat and drink every day. Why don’t we spend more time nurturing ourselves, through nurturing what we live off, which is in essence the land? Seeking any other livelihood - forgive me - just feels arrogant. As if we’re too good for… ourselves. But I know that is a naive and privileged perspective. The other thing I really appreciated was how community-oriented the rural folk are. Neighbors and friends trade among themselves; they give their excess away freely, and in supporting others also create a comfortable environment for themselves to live.
Of course, it’s not perfect - conventional jobs (odd that office jobs would be ‘conventional’, as they had only become so a few decades ago) make one more money, and that affords luxuries like travel, nice things, fancier food, etc. Living in the city brings one closer to convenience, medical facilities and public infrastructure. (Note that I didn’t say health - one isn’t necessarily healthier in the city, just closer to health facilities…) Farming comes with its own risks - pests, inclement weather, and in my house, elephants and now apparently snakes (my dad saw a black cobra near the farm yesterday…) *The Scream emoji, reprise* And of course, it’s not for everyone. Many of the China side of my family, spent some of their childhood or adolescence in the countryside, frolicking and farming (thanks to the cultural revolution) - I doubt they’d willingly return to that lifestyle. But I find working with my hands and body to be the most fulfilling and pure of experiences.
I’m not one to make new year’s resolutions, but ta-da, here I am about to make some, or at least to mull over what to make of myself in this new year. Have you given this some thought, and what are your resolutions if any? What are your sentiments about new years - do you celebrate them, or revile celebrations and silly customs?
Anyway, here goes - I’m going to take farming seriously this year. I want to observe and learn from the land I’m on, and to use it in a way that respects its ecology and the other creatures living on it (I respect you cobras, but please don’t bother me). There’s more, but this is the gist of it. As with most developments in my life, this has not been so much of a bang but a bubbling. The past months have seen more, and increasingly confident experiments with growing things, and this trip has unexpectedly tied some loose ends together for me. In Taiwan, they call this phenomenon “半农半X“, or ‘Half farmer half X’ - and this is a much-touted, niche path to the ‘good life’. I enjoy goodness, but more than that I crave fundamentality. And how do you get more fundamental than soil?
All right, I must stop here. Talking about farming feels too pretentious (because it’s rather the opposite of doing anything, and I certainly can’t do anything in this box in the sky - train —> plane —> Beijing atm!), but I did want to write and say my first Hello of 2020, especially after a long absence.
As always, please write back if you’d like to - I promise to respond, and if you’re reading this I love hearing from you.
Happy, or ordinary if you prefer, new year once again;
All my love,
Hui Ran