On the Farm Again: Shared Harvest

If you have been following the Mike Map above, you may have noticed that though Mingyu and I arrived in Beijing more than fifteen days ago we have yet to escape its clutches.  First it was Mingyu’s visa stuff, which took about a week.  Then it was a couple days of me waiting on a package (long story that’s too traumatic to get into).  Now, finally, after a month of wandering both list- and aimless, we finally found exactly what we were looking for: AN ORGANIC FARM!

It’s called Shared Harvest and we found it through a series of events that was truly random, though perhaps no more so than every other piece of good luck that has sprung up in our path thus far.

1) A Couchsurfing host rejects my couch request but clues me in to the existence of a Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market held on the weekends .

2)      I forget about it on the first Saturday and leave town on the first Sunday.

3)      Protests outside the Japanese embassy lead to the cancellation of the BOFM on the second Saturday.

4)      Mingyu and I wind up going on the second Sunday.  We meet Lynn, who speaks excellent English, is tabling for Shared Harvest, and started volunteering at the farm just a few days prior.  (Thus the importance of my forgetting in (2)). 

So, we got her phone number and made tentative plans for “sometime next week.”  Then Mingyu and I went home and delicately badgered the farm people until they agreed to let us come the next evening.  A short* 40km ride the next evening  and here we are!

Shared Harvest is the largest CSA in Beijing (and in China), with over one hundred customers receiving weekly deliveries of hyper-fresh, organic vegetables.  Here’s their blurb:

““Shared Harvest” is a non-profit, service-oriented social enterprise established in 2012 by a group of young people with a strong interest in promoting ecological agriculture and sustainable lifestyles. To address increasingly serious food safety problems, we advocate four principles of organic agriculture: ecology, health, fairness, and care. These principles guide the management and practices of our CSA. We advocate for healthy and natural lifestyles; and we seek to reestablish harmonious rural-urban development and relations of mutual trust across the rural-urban divide.”

Sounds awesome in theory, right?  Here are some pics to show what it’s been like in practice:

The Share Harvest folk at the BOFM.

 Me and some green onions in sweet embrace.

Day 0: getting straight to work on the long beans and Bok Choi.  Notice that they're tied into bundles with rice stalks.  No trash!

Day 1 (Tuesday): Doing some cleaning at the farmer's house.  We're expecting 25 students from Beijing International School to come for a little farm lesson on Wednesday, so we cleaned out this shed and set up some tables for a DUMPLING PARTY.

 On the way back to our home base, one of the workers, Shaoting (Xiaoting?) stops to show us a Jujube tree.  A couple shakes later we all have handfuls tiny delicious jujubes.

 Then over to the farm to help the hired hands - all extremely friendly, smiley 50- or 60-something ladies - do a little picking and plucking.  They compliment the way I tie knots with the rice stalks and are surprised that the old "thumbs up" means the same thing in the USA.  I always assumed we had invented it...

 THIS IS ALL CILANTRO.  HOOOOOOOLLLLLLLY CRAP.

Peekaboo amonsgt the cucumber vines.  Or maybe long beans.  They're all hung on a very cool bamboo lattice, so, again, no metal, no plastic, no trash.  Only a few knots in certain strategic places.

 Helping the crew get the deliveries prepped. When I said “hyper-fresh” before, it wasn't an overstatement.  Many of the vegetables are picked and packed on the same day, and then trucked the short 50km to Beijing early the next morning, meaning that customers get their vegetables within 24 hours of their** having come off the vine or out of the dirt.  The only way to get them fresher would be to a) grow them yourself, or b) live in the village and pay a fee for access

 Day 2)  Giving a pre-field trip tour to one of the staff coordinating the Beijing Int'l School (BISS) trip.

I knew somewhere in the world there was something that matched this shirt.

 The plan was to make dumplings with the kids, but it's pretty intensive, so the farmer's wife made most of them ahead of time.

Making time for more shenanigans.

Unfortunately, the bus took the kids to Little Donkey Farm, another organic farm 40km NW of Beijing, rather than Shared Harvest (ours), 40km SE.  Luckily the people at LDF are all friends with the SH people and they covered for us while we popped in the car and scrambled over.  

 The kids didn't know the difference, though, and had an awesome time digging for sweet potatoes.

 Unfortunately the transit SNAFU meant that we had to cancel our wild foraging activities and dumpling making.

Which wasn't so bad, since it meant that back at the ranch we got to enjoy the leftovers.

 Oh, yeah, and a good 30-40% of the BISS kids were Korean.  I had a great time screwing with their heads by repeatedly speaking Korean to them and then disavowing all knowledge of the language.  Then I convinced them that I was Korean and Mingyu was from the Phillipines!  It really was a blast chatting with them.  There was also one Italian boy.  I tried to talk to him but  got totally tongue-tied.

 Hanging out in the office.  Actually, Mingyu and I haven't been spending much time doing farmwork, since the lady crew has that all covered.  Instead we've been helping out the office staff, who are more in charge of strategy, distribution, advertising, and that sort of stuff.  Also, we've been eating.  A lot.

In the office, we found this knick-knack from the 2011 Organic World Congress in Seoul.  Mingyu was there with his company (Heuksalim/ Soil Savers) and I was there on my own just bumming around, as I do.  It turns out that the founder of Shared Harvest was there too, and actually gave a presentation on the developing Chinese CSA scene.

 Lunch this afternoon - Stirfried cukes, stirfried potatoes, moon cakes.  Awesome food here, all organic.  They eat meat, always organic, usually pork, usually in soup, once a day at lunch.

One of today's tasks: sorting out the good and the bad peanuts.

The farm's founder.  That's right, Shared Harvest is not only the biggest CSA in China but it's also the first!  This lady is a pioneer.  She has written one book about her year WWOOFing in the USA and has translated an English CSA manual into Chinese.  

Using basil from the front yard, tomatoes from the garden, and sheep cheese gifted to one of the workers by one of his friends from Inner Mongolia, I turned the standard morning bread recipe into morning pizza.  Hurrah!

The gang!  The gosh-darn mohawk part has yet to sort itself out, apparently...

And just for fun.

For more about Shared Harvest, check out their official site.  They have some awesome sections about the history and philosophy of CSAs.  

*Whereas I used to consider rides of 10-15 kilometers long, and certainly “longer than any other foreigner in Daegu is willing to ride in order to do a private lesson at a rock-bottom rate,” I now regard anything less than 60km as a pre-lunch stroll.  100km, which used to seem inconceivable, is “a good day’s work.”  280km is “the general anticipated distance between real showers.”  500km is still “are we out of our minds?” territory. 

**(The vegetables, not the customers, of course.)

China:One Month

Now that I've been vagabonding around the Northeast for a month and a day, I feel I'm qualified to say a few things about China and about life on the road. 

The People

Getting along with everyone here has been much easier than I expected.  Partially, it's because I've been away from home long enough that I'm used to the stares.  Partially, it's because the absurdity of my bike and gear mean that all of said staring is completely justified; it'd be stupid of me to take it personally.  Partially, it's because being on a bike means I am only approachable when I want to be – i.e. when I stop to  buy food, to rest in a park, to look for directions – so I don't feel my personal space impinged on too much.  Also, whereas in the past I often felt self-conscious and out of place while backpacking aimlessly, now that  I'm traveling in a way that seems to fit my values and desires and general lifestyle so well, I generally feel cheerful and comfortable and open to just about whatever China throws at me. 

Mostly, though, Chinese people, or at least the kinds I tend to encounter and the in the kinds of places I tend to encounter them, are friendly, warm, curious, courteous, jovial, understanding, etc.  Cooks let me into the kitchen to pick out ingredients.  Other restaurant patrons chat with me before, during, and after meals, sometimes even sitting at my table, sometimes pouring me a glass of beer, sometimes buying me a bottle of apple-milk for desert.  People driving scooters and motorcycles pull up alongside me and chat for a bit as we ride; people driving cars roll down their windows and offer me water and road tips.  Yesterday a guy on a motorcycle stopped in front of me at a stoplight, turned around, said "Hallo" and thrust two pieces of candy at me, then smiled and zoomed off.  Fruit and snack vendors sell everything at fair (i.e. incredibly cheap) prices.  A friend of a CS host of mine even gave me free fruit and two (!) free bags of almonds.  Everybody compliments and indulges my fledgling Chinese.  Even when I'm tired and try to shut down a conversation by saying "I can't speak Chinese!" they just smile, say "You're speaking Chinese right now!", and keep on asking me questions or telling me who knows what.  Nobody teases me (to my face, in ways that I can understand) about my ridiculous biking shorts or haircut.  Most importantly, nobody has hassled me while camping. 

In fact, and of course, 99% of people just ignore me and go about their own lives.  I'm cool with that. 

The Food

Again, two thumbs up!  The basic unit of money is called a kuai and is worth about  15 cents.  Many fruits  and street snacks cost exactly…1 quai.  Or less .  Apples, bananas, plums, mandarins, fist-sized vegetarian dumplings, all sorts of sweet and savory street pastries, cookies, crackers, and more.   A pound of peanuts (raw or roasted) costs a dollar, as does a pound of cherry tomatoes or five pounds of watermelon. 

As for restaurants, we've been to a range, from bright-lit ones with table cloths and floors swabbed shiny to dinky, mangy ones where there's not even a menu.  The stir-fries are often pretty similar to the ones I knew from Chinese food back home – that kind of perfect level of greasiness and goopiness that makes everything delicious.  The more exciting ones incorporate ginger, red pepper, and even vinegar.   Tofu can take numerous forms ranging from sloppy to totally dry.  Noodles, also come in all sorts of spiffy varieties: rice and wheat (some are even made of tofu!), skinny and wide, long and short, doughy and not, hot and cold.  So, whether we're eating at a "rice room," "alcohol house," "alcohol room (hotel), a "small eats," a "homemade vegetable," or a "noodle room" (thus ends the lists of kinds of restaurants that I can recognize), it's always an adventure and it never fails to please.

I remain a bit mystified at how certain things seem to be missing from Chinese cuisine.  Like, from the standpoint of a country with a huge population and looming resource problems, isn't cooking everything in oil kind of a big waste of beans?  Wouldn't it be better to eat food prepared in less resource-intensive ways, like boiled, steamed, raw, or pickled?   The only thing I can think of is that in a country with so many people (though I'm not convinced that China really has more people than Korea or Japan relative to area) there must be a lot of pressure on restaurants to cook as quickly as possible.  Or also perhaps that people just don't need to care about efficiency and sustainability quite yet.  After all, despite all the land, water, oil, etc that go into raising animals, meat consumption here is on the rise, and fast.

The Roads

So far, much better than anticipated.  We do most of our riding on second-tier roads since the first-tier roads are major interstate highways that are a) no fun to ride on and b) off-limits to bikes anyways.  The second-tier roads are paved nice and smooth except in the occasional construction zone, as are even the third- and fourth-tier roads.  It's only in occasional parts of the deep, deep countryside that we've had to ride over gravel and dirt. 

Most everything is also wider and less-congested than expected.   Even driving around Beijing didn't feel any more dangerous than Korea, though I suppose that's not saying much.  The main and almost-main roads in most mid- and large-sized cities tend to have dedicated bike/scooter/donkey cart lanes separated from the car lanes by some sort of barrier.  Countryside roads generally lack the barriers, but they still have dedicated "alternative transportation" lanes which are often twice as wide as the car lanes.  Plus, it's not uncommon for there to be two, three, or even four car lanes in each direction where only one would do.  Let's not forget that just about everywhere the roads are lined with trees on both sides so that I get to cycle in the shade almost all day long.

Unfortunately, the drivers don't quite measure up to the infrastructure; traffic here does have an element of lawlessness to it.  Passing on the wrong side of a two-lane road is standard practice, as is making a left turn the instant the stoplight turns green, trying to speed through the intersection before the cars coming from the other side do.  At smaller junctions, drivers making left turns will often cut into the wrong lane a hundred meters early and then take the turn from the inside lane rather than go for a nice, orderly 90-degree angle turn.  Cars and trucks will even pass one another on switchbacks, bridges, and unlighted tunnels!

Still, what I refer to as "lawlessness" is mostly a figment of my imagination.  Because the rules of the road look different from my own, I'm tempted to say that there aren't any.  In reality, though, there are rules and Chinese drivers know them and everyone gets along fine.  Indeed, the craziness of it all probably makes everyone a little more careful, a little less complacent.  And, somehow, even a bit more patient and forgiving.  The only real cases of road rage I've witnessed have involved foreigners (other than myself), and I've only seen (the aftermath of) one accident**. 

[**I couldn't quite make out what had happened, but one mac truck which should have been in the left lane (from my oncoming perspective) was blocking most of the right and had the right side of its front cabin bashed in.  This would lead me to guess that it had been trying to take the turn wide, only to run head-on into something else.  Except that that "something else" was another mac truck which had been thrown off the road and into a ditch.  To my right.]

The one thing that does bother me is the honking.  Drivers of vehicles of all sizes here honk.  Frequently.  When passing you, when approaching you, upon seeing you coming in their general direction.  And it's not usually a gentle little  "Just so you know, I'm coming towards you, so you might want to be a little extra careful" warning honk.  It's a big, nasty, head-shattering blast.  I have no doubt that when I swerve, it has less to do with my being distracted or enraged and more to do with successive sound waves pounding into my bicycle.  I've had big trucks honk at me despite the total, unarguable absence of even a single other vehicle in my bike lane, the two lanes going in my direction, the two lanes going in the opposite direction, and the opposite bike lane.  Just me, a truck, and landscape as far as the eye can see.  I can only guess that the driver must have been a) concerned that I might swerve over two entire lanes into his path, b) thinking that I would be so absorbed and mesmerized by the utter silence of the landscape that I wouldn't be able to hear his loudass engine, c) a sadist, or d) just bored.  I suppose d) would be understandable given how big China is.  Rough job.      

            

The Riding

Nevertheless, being on the road is wonderful.  Physically, it's much less taxing than you're probably imagining, and emotionally it's much more rewarding. I would (indeed, I have, I continue to) gladly trade a day of being honked at for an evening alone with the woods and the stars.  A day of dust and exhaust in my face for an hour of winding through quiet cornfields with blue skies above.  Three hours of grueling climbing for ten minutes atop a mountain looking down at my achievement and thirty minutes coasting down the other way. 

I can no longer count how many times I've had my breath taken away.  Not by the Great Wall or Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City, but by packs of sparrows bursting in unison out of a hedge as I pass by; by clouds casting shadows on rolling hills; by terraced mountains and corn as far as the eye can see; by bare-faced rock walls standing perpendicular to the road, towering over it; by valleys beneath me, rivers alongside.  On some nights I can see more stars in one glance than I'd see in an entire year of normal life.  Several times the sheer beauty of it all has moved me to and even over the brink of tears, overwhelming me with such a love for "nature" that I count myself lucky to be alive and grateful for everything I have and everyone I know.  It's at moments like this - not when I feel scared, or alone, or exhausted, of freezing, but when I feel totally alive and connected to and of this Earth – that I miss family and friends most.  It's a missing rooted not in the sad fact that they (you) are not here with me, but in the happy fact that we are each in our own place, leading our own particular lives, and at least for some length of time our paths ran alongside one another.  May they soon do so again!

Solo Week Photo Log

Fauxbo's Dilemma Sweet Potato Chips

Resting in a park

Homestay grandma and grandkid

Homestay courtyard

Dudes hangin' out. 

I popped by this old town called Jimingyi.  It was definitely the coolest people-made place I've been too so far.  It was a postal outpost several hundred years ago, connecting Beijing and Inner Mongolia. Now it's mostly falling apart, but in a really rustic, beautiful, (here's that word again) authentic sort of way.  Reminded me of a Bright Eyes lyric:

"And I sat watching a flower

as it was withering.

I was embarrassed by

its honesty."

No colors, no pretensions. 

Rock, mortar, wood, dirt.

The whole city was walled in.  Each wall was about 1km long and only had one entrance, here at the center. I nearly just rode by, figuring that there would be an entrance fee.  Then I saw someone just buzz in nonchalantly on a moped and I figured I'd give it a try.  

Leaving Jimingyi.  

Along the way, I stopped to have a snack.  I chose this park because they were playing corny-sounding old Chinese music and at least twenty-five couples were dancing ballroom-style in the park.  As soon as I sat down on the ledge to eat my apple and street bread, though, people started to gather around me, some poking my bike, some trying to chat me up, some just staring.  I placated them as best I could while munching and then asked if I could take a picture before going.  It was then that I noticed that nobody was left on the dance floor.  They had all come to gawk at me. 

On the perils of not being able to read a menu. I thought I had ordered one dish of vegetables and one dish of noodles.  Instead, I got two plates of noodles, one of which had stir-fried vegetables in it.  I am POSITIVE that it didn't have the character for "noodle" in the dish name.  

Shop owner and I had a chat about the characters on the piece of art above.  I showed off which ones I could read and gave him a little lesson in Korean pronunciation.  

 Couchsurfing in a giant empty fancy shmancy apartment.

 Goat shepherds.

 I ran into these folks who had pulled over to the side of the road to pick wild jujubes.  We chatted (in Chinese!) for about 30 minutes while stuffing ourselves.  Turns out the pink lady's sister teaches Chinese in Koera.  Also, the yellow pants one refused to join me on my trip.

 The view from where I camped that night. 

It's getting chilly!  Down to 50 degrees (F) at night. Good thing I've been trying to live without heat in the winter in Korea for the last two years.   Then again, I had comforters and hoodies then.  

 Climbing and climbing.  

A new record!  Getting up this high nearly killed me.  Out of about 40km up to this point, at least 35 had been uphill, and the last 3 or so had been in my lowest gear.   

Rewarded with a plate of tofu and vegetables in hot pepper oil at the end.  Two dollars.

 And then the trail kept going up!   My optimism had been crushed enough times to know that this wouldn't be the final pass.  

 Still more climbing, even on the other side of this.

 1416 meters!  Yeahhhhhhh!  After this, I coasted downhill, not pedaling once for 20km, then only occasionally for the subsequent 10.  I need new brake pads.  

On my way (to my friend's) home! 

Dudes who stopped me, chatted, gave me water, and offered some advice about the road ahead.  Specifically, they said to take a detour on Xi'an Lu Road so as to avoid a certain 1000m high mountain pass.

Some reservoir.

Camping!

The next morning's breakfast.All sorts of leftovers.

That's a wrap!