Meet "Wanderer" (and it isn't me)

As I hope the previous post showed, we met a whole host of interesting people at Nan'ao.  AJ, the boss, who retired from his computer engineering job to start the farm.  Sam, his son, who quickly took interest and before the age of twenty has already completed a permaculture design course (one of my goals for this trip) and is now doing various cultivation experiments on his own land.  You Hsin and Hwang Yu, who gave up lucrative but unsatisfying careers in sales and chemistry, respectively, to be closer to the land and their loved ones.  Michelle, who out of concern about peak oil and environmental justice issues, decided to follow her parents into farming.  Everyone I met, whether long-term worker or short-term volunteer like myself, had story that I found moving and an outlook that I could identify with.  Rarely do I feel so in-tune with one person, let alone ten or fifteen.

Much like at Sadhana, the atmosphere was always a joyous one, filled with banter, laughter, and music.  Nonetheless, in any group of a sufficient size, there's bound to be someone that stands a little aloof.  In many cases I feel it's me, but this time, it wasn't.  

Meet Jin-Hong, English name "Wanderer."  I didn't really take much notice of him during the first few days.  First off, he lived off on his own, rather than at the farmhouse or at the volunteer dorm.  Second, only appeared irregularly, while many of the other staff showed up for every meal.  Third, he rarely spoke; or rather, in fairer terms, he was simply only about one-fifth as raucous as the rest of us.   It wasn't until Michelle's agricultural English lesson, where everyone present introduced themselves and gave a brief explanation of how they became interested in farming, that I got to hear his story.  

The same 1000km "Huandao" trip around the country that I recently finished on my bike, he did on foot.  It took him ninety-three days.  Behind him he pulled a cart with his few possessions and a trash can, into which he deposited all the of litter he came across on his way, dumping it off at 7-11s or police stations or wherever else he could.  During that time, he often asked himself "What does it mean to be an environmentalist?" and came to the conclusion that, for him, it meant living the simple life.  

Needless to say, Mingyu and I were both intrigued.  I have been trying, in the words of Thoreau, to "simplify, simplify" for years now.  Perhaps even a decade.  I gave up TV.  I gave up soda and juice.  I gave up meat.  I gave up animal products*.  I gave up cars.  I gave up new clothes.  I gave up my apartment, my job, and about 75% of my stuff.  I'm trying to give up plastic, trash, beer, anything I don't need.  Recently I heard that someone named Diogenes once said to Alexander the Great, "I am far richer than you, my lord, for I have disdained more than you will ever own."**  I nodded my head in assent.

* Then took some back, then gave them up again, and am still vacillating.

** Though extensive googling hasn't provided any confirmation. 

Though enviably without the tinge of martyrdom that (I feel) seems to color so many of my actions and so much of my writing, Mingyu leads a similar lifestyle.  Soap rather than shampoo, cold water showers, laundry by hand even when a machine is available, the fewer gadgets the better, no sense of shame about sleeping on floors or crapping in the woods.  Eventually, once he returns to Korea, he wants to build his own house and design everything in it, from the furniture to the appliances to the pottery.   

Thus, the three of us more or less hit it off immediately.  After chatting for a while after the lesson, Wanderer agreed to let us check out his house and introduce us to his "simple life."  

The next morning, Wanderer led us on a ten-minute bicycle ride from the farm volunteer dorm to the place he's currently renting.  Despite being over a hundred years old and pretty much totally barren, it gave off a sense of beauty and comfort that's hard to find elsewhere.

Upon entering, the first thing you see is the living room.  No furniture to speak of, just a floor entirely covered with rocks and pebbles (which he gathered from the beach nearby), leading seamlessly to a fireplace in the center, and some driftwood to sit on.  This is where he does almost all his cooking.  No gas and no electricity necessary, only straw from his friends' farms and downed branches from the forest immediately behind his house.  

The bedroom.  He put his bed together out of bamboo and straw.  For a pillow, he uses: more straw.

In addition to learning farming, he's been practicing his woodworking skills.  His kitchen boasted a handmade cabinet made from salvaged wood, several handwoven baskets, necklaces made out of coconut fibers, and a  bunch of "silverware." 

A bag made out of leaves from the betel nut tree.

Even the little bit of plastic that is necessary - namely, a few wires and light switches - is thoroughly obscured, wrapped with or buried under natural materials so that it need neither be seen nor touched.   

After a brief tour, we got down to business.  I chopped some veggies for a salad, throwing on some bananas for flavor and texture. 

In the meantime, Mingyu and our host put together a small fire to roast sweet potatoes.  The night before, the three of us had bonded while discussing those terrific tubers. Whether you cook them over your own fire or buy them in a market and carry them with you to your campsite, it's easy to appreciate how cheap, tasty, healthy, and satisfying they are.  

In the afternoon, the three of us and another one of Wanderer's friends talked permaculture and natural farming while using rakes, shovels, and hand-scythes to clear about fifty square meters' worth of weeds off of his driveway, leaving him space to build a tepee.  Later this year Wanderer plans to walk from southeast China up to Tibet, so he's currently taking primitive skills classes to learn everything he needs to know about sheltering and feeding himself on the journey.

(Moments after this picture, the rake fell forward, passing just inches away from smashing Mingyu's $1500 camera into smithereens.  Careful with those antics, boy!)

Then it was time for dinner again.  "Five color soup," he called it; an ancient Chinese dish where the color of each ingredient represents one of five elements of the earth. Sounds nice but, to be honest, I don't think it'd be a bad thing if Wanderer planted a little herb garden.



Mingyu took another crack at the fire but had some trouble.  Wanderer, having lived this way for six months now, got it roaring pretty quick and then built an impromptu stove out of stones.  For about an hour we sat in the dark, alternating between chatting and sitting in silence, listening to the crickets and feeding the fire.

After the meal, we stuck around a little longer, singing songs to the accompaniment of chopstick-drums and imagined ukeleles.  My awkward and tone-deaf contributions: Bright Eyes' "Bowl of Oranges," itself simple in composition but so wonderfully full of both sorrow and joy, and the folk song "500 miles," a sure staple of each and every American vagabond. Finally, Wanderer left us with brief mediation on gratitude. Through the simplicity he lives in he has come to a deeper sense of appreciation for even the most basic things - the stones, the wood, the fire, the smoke, the electricity that he uses so sparingly.  I agreed heartily; albeit more for friends and fortune than for the basic physical elements and processes that make my (and any) life possible, several times in the past months I've found myself swept away by feelings of gratitude, all of them deeper, more potent, more meaningful than any excitement or adventure I've come across.  To rephrase Dioegenes' words above: Perhaps one is rich in proportion, not to the number of things he has, but in proportion to the number of things he is truly, palpably, grateful for.

The night left me with a lot to think about.  I'm often pulled back and forth between two thoughts - that I'm not doing enough, and that I'm doing far more than is required of me.  Which one is it?  How much is enough when it comes to environmentalism?  If one frames it in terms of sacrifice, it's easy to say: that's not my duty.  But if environmentalism is about love, respect, and regard for other living beings, human and nonhuman, present and future, it seems that there should be no end to what one is willing to do.  Isn't that the case with a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend or sometimes even a pet?  What wouldn't we give up or change about our lifestyles to save a loved one?

I'm not exactly any closer to having found the answer, but seeing Wanderer happy at home in the environment and choices he made for himself did leave me with a sense of comfort and security regarding my own efforts. For one, I was once again reminded that I'm not alone - indeed, far from it - in my quest for a kinder, happier way of living.  More importantly, while I admired his way of life, I didn't quite feel jealous of it; it seemed to me that each of us has a role to play in our own way, doing  whatever it is that feels right and honest and true. Cycling seems to have chosen me - or at least my mind and habits and dispositions have come together such that out of all the choices that opened up to me over the past couple years, cycling seemed to be the best one.  All I can do is keep it up, hoping to share my thoughts, beliefs, and passions with everyone I meet.  Hoping to intrigue, inform, inspire, just like Wanderer and so many others have done for me. 

Living The Good Life at Nan'ao Natural Farm

I knew that Mingyu was going to meet up with a Korean friend here in Taiwan.  What I didn’t know was that she had already made plans for a farmstay at Nan’ao Natural Farm, one of Taiwan’s best known.  How it had so far eluded me eludes me.  

The long-term volunteers lived at the farmhouse up the hill, while we short-termers stayed down at the guest lodge, just a few minutes’ walk from the train station.  The agreement: we work from 9-12 and 3-6 in exchange for accommodation and three meals.  Laughter, songs, hijinks, and memories gratis. 

Meet Sam, twenty year-old son of the owner and blooming permaculture* prodigy.  He took an interest in farming when his father started the farm three years ago and recently got his permaculture design certificate.  In the morning he works on his own projects, while in the afternoon he works on his father’s rice paddies.   Here he’s got some sack gardens.  A bamboo pipe runs down the middle and is filled with compost and stones; water that runs into the pipe is thus smoothly diverted all throughout the bag, delivering important decomposing nutrients and worm casings to the plants within.  These bags have lettuce, garlic, and herbs planted at various levels, and passion fruit up top, which will eventually climb up the ropes, cover the roof, and provide both shade and snacks. 

*Digression: What’s permaculture?  As the name implies, it’s an agricultural philosophy and set of techniques intended to let the farmer farm the same land sustainably, and thus indefinitely.  PC incorporates principles of organic agriculture – i.e. no chemical fertizlier, pesticide, or herbicide – but is a little more holistic, insofar as it gives more consideration to the various interactions between animals, humans, plants, wilderness, and the landscape. 

** Second digression: what’s the difference between permaculture and natural farming?  While permaculture makes use of human ingenuity to design healthy, stable, sustainable ecosystems, natural farming strives ultimately for a state of near “do-nothing.”  No fertilizers of any kind, no pesticides or herbicides of any kind, and no tilling of the soil.  The idea, oversimplified, is that nature knows best and our attempts to control or improve it will most likely go astray.  

Here we are working on Sam’s “Mandala Garden,” also called a “Keyhole Garden.”  It’s a set of two concentric donuts.  The innermost donut-hole is a “sink,” where you can dump all your compost, leaves, twigs, whatever.  Everything is in such close proximity that chemical reactions take place quickly, breaking down everything and sending it outwards towards all the plants on the outside. The “keyholes” (one is visible in the upper right) give you easy access to all the plants. 

On top of the donut, which was made from sopping-wet rice paddy clay, we used a technique called “sheet mulching.”  This is essentially a way of creating soil in layers – compost, leaves, manure, cardboard, then fresh grass – so that you can garden anywhere.   

This guy waited patiently to nab whatever grubs we turned up while turning the soil.

In the afternoons, we “worked” in the paddies.  December and January seem to be sort of "off" months; we spent most of our time cleaning rocks, sand, weeds, and broken beer bottles out of out irrigation ditches, with many a break in between for photos.

You Hsin, an awesome long-term volunteer who left a job in sales to live closer to the land.  Though less adept at English than some of the others, he made up for it with incredible candor.   

More proof that boys and men of all cultures enjoy attacking one another with farm instruments (or whatever else is at hand).

Here’s “Yellow Fish” (a direct translation of his Chinese name), a chemical engineer who quit his lucrative, demanding, and relatively joyous job in order to "devote more attention to improving important relationships and finding out what he really wants in life."  He told me that he was often depressed, but at the farm, he was all smiles, constantly joking, shouting, singing, and having a good time. 

“Little Monkey,” a long-term volunteer who decided that he prefers farming to high school.  He was the official weed-whacker-wielder. 

“Tom,” a butterfly photographer who came to the farm hoping to snap some nice pictures and then decided to stay for a year because he loved the work and the people so much.  

Winky, from Guangdong (aka Canton), China, here in Taiwan for a semester “abroad”*

*let’s not get into that debate again…  

 “Echo,” Winky's roommate.  The farm visit was actually her idea - she wanted to visit some of the nearby aboriginal neighborhoods. 

“Star,” a Taiwanese friend of the above two girls, who came along for the trip.  I will be forever grateful for him for recovering my glasses after I cleverly dropped them into a waterfall.

Mingyu's friend Hwa-in.  Into food, buddhism, communities, farming, aboriginals, and learning Chinese.  Remind you of anyone?

Luke, a good friend from South Korea, lives quite near and came down to spend a day working with us. I have a feeling he'll be spending lots of time at Nan'ao in the future.   

This teacher came to give some volunteers a lesson on Chinese acupuncture theory.   At dinner, we bonded over shared vegetarianhood and wound up talking about Vipassana (I’m still working on my post about my 4^th!), chakras, Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy, and who knows what else for about two hours.    

The kitchen was a constant source of chaotic joy.  Out in the fields, we were often too absorbed in our work or too physically spread out to talk much, but in the kitchen we all swirled around one another, cooking  together, taking turns chopping, stirring, scrubbing, searching, cleaning...

 

A typical meal: several stir-fried veggie dishes, one egg dish, and one meat.  

 Interesting kitchen find: “Meekang.”  Rice hulls, dry-roasted then fermented.  They give off a stink kind of like Dwoenjang, Korean-style fermented soybeans, but have a different use.  Rather than cooking with it directly, you submerge vegetables into all of its probiotic glory.  After three days you’ve got pickles.  Floppy yet a little crisp, with a sort of cheesy taste.  A bit strong for my taste, but fantastic in a salad with rice.  Awesome low-cost, low-energy, low-impact, no-nonsense cooking method. 

A favorite way of giving back: cooking for our hosts.  Mingyu and Hwa-in and I headed to the market to see what was available, and it turned out they had bags of Kimchi!  US $30 bucks later and the three of us had enough veggies to whip up a meal for 15 people.  Kimchi-fried rice, eggplant pancakes, mushroom pancakes, blanched spinach, spicy bean sprout soup. 

Clearly, everybody loved it.

The meal on our last night.  

Every evening we had some sort of enrichment session.  Mingyu presented about Heuksalim*, I whipped up a PPT about Sadhana, other volunteers gave status updates on their projects or reports about recent travels, and Michelle, being both completely bilingual and highly knowledgable about permaculture, gave an excellent agricultural English lesson.  

*the organic agriculture R&D / distribution company he worked for in South Korea

 

After cooking and eating lunch together, we had some free-/down-time between about 1 and 3PM.  On this particular day, we took off to a nearby “waterfall.”  That’s it in the background.

Quite brisk!  

  

On the  last morning, I wanted to cook for everyone.  In about 15 minutes I was able to cycle to the market, fill up one reusable container with fresh, steaming-hot soy milk and another with fried peanuts, buy a bunch of bananas, pick up some baking powder, and come back home. Then I taught the boss man to make VEGAN BANANA PANCAKES.  Needless to say, they were a hit.  

On the morning of our departure, instead of working, we had a nice long breakfast, then sat around and sang songs together.  Mingyu had taught Yellow Fish to sing one of his favorite Korean tunes, “ 꼭 껴안고”  (Ggok ggyeo anggo) a song about the joys of surprising family and friends with out-of-the-blue bear hugs.  It was an appropriate parting song.  Much like Sadhana, I came hoping to learn about living close to nature and left with a whole bunch of new friends.  Nothing builds bonds quite like working, eating, and playing together day-in and day-out.  There wasn't a single person I didn't have an interesting conversation with, or didn't grow fond of.  May you all stay happy and healthy until we meet again!

NOW: we’ve left the farm and returned to Taipei.  In the morning, we’ll set out on our last bicycle escapade together for who knows how long.  On the 17^th, Hwa-in will fly back to Korea, Mingyu will be off to Malaysia, and I’ll be left here in Taiwan to make some gear changes, revamp my website (!), and fiddle around with the DSLR and that Mingyu sold me on the cheap.  Until then, the plan is to ride from Taipei to Sun Moon Lake (one of Taiwan’s most scenic spots), then up and over Wuling (at over 4000m, the highest mountain in SE Asia), then down through Taroko Gorge national park, and back home.  Six days, six hundred kilometers, and over ten thousand meters of altitude gain.  Due to the intensity of the upcoming couple days, we’ve dropped all expendable gear.  For me that means about sixty percent of it!  No computer, no extra clothes, no superfluous toiletries, no repair gear beyond the absolute basics.  Just my tent, sleeping bag, camera and bunch of longan muffins from the family.*

*Did you know that I can make inter-lingual puns between Engilsh and Chinese now?!  Check this out – “muffin” sounds a lot like “ma1 fen3,” the Chinese word for “horse manure.”  Better yet, the family understood my joke!

ETD: 8 hours!  Wish me luck!  

More Taiwanese Treats, Part Two

Ready to gain a few pounds vicariously?

Fried broad beans in several different flavors, including curry.

Auntie working on some more pan bread.  I asked her if we could make it together, but apparently with all the waiting it takes about five hours.  

It comes out shaped like Biscotti, but it's nice and soft and chewy.  

Homemade stir-fry with celery, onions, peppers, "dried tofu," and squid.

Auntie's sister brought over a pita filled with raw veggies and hummus.  I thought I'd have to wait until Turkey for one of these.

Marinated tofu skins.  Taste kind of like BBQ ribs.  "Kind of."

Chocolate-coated sunflower seeds.
 

At long last, a new street-food: julienned and then deep-fried taro (left) and sweet potato cakes.  The perfect warm, crunchy, chewy, fatty, spicy or salty (depending on which sauce you slather on snack to munch on while walking along the boardwalk.

Another homemade meal.  Celery and oyster soup, snap pea and button mushroom stir-fry, and sauteed  purple greens.  I'm betting there's another dish hidden behind the hot pot, but I don't recall.

Rice, three veggies, and one fried thing for $1.50 or so.

 Hotpot.

Hotpot places generally have a little buffet where you can make up your own dipping sauce.  Sesame powder, slices of green onion, chili flakes and oil.  Oil and fat and spice, ooh yeah.

Hot pot, again!  This one is Schezuan style.  Nowhere near as spicy as real Chinese stuff.

Tim the artist was too busy painting to enjoy the coconuts that dropped down onto his driveway.  Luke and I, on the other hand, needed something to do in between rounds of tossing the frisbee.  I

In the city, we found a bus stop called "fruit street."  The green things on the left are some kind of cross between an apple and a jujube.  The red ones on the right are wax apples, all light and watery and crisp, something like what celery would be if it were sweeter and not so stringy.  

Taidong is also known for its "Shijias," which I've heard called Custard Apples and Buddha's Head fruits.  Beneathy the warty surface is a big clump of ice-creamy stuff.  These cost about $4 a piece in Taipei, but only $1.50 per pound down in Taidong.  Unfortunately, none of these were ready to eat!  We bought a whole box only to find that all of the fruits were rock-hard.  Still waiting for them to soften up so we can chow down.

There were only two restaurants near Tim's place, so over the four days we had a chance to visit them both.  This was the Vietnamese one, where for about $3 each we got a six-course meal.  Here's the appetizer: fresh spring rolls, with shrimp for the omnivores and dried tofu for me.

Noodle salad.

 The other place was Italian, run by a Sardinian named Michele.  Not only did I get to break out my extremely rusty Italian, but I got to have some real authentic stuff.  We ordered one of everything on the menu - tomato and eggplant sauce, pesto sauce, oil, chili, and garlic sauce, and vegetarian carbonara.

In order to savor the pasta we ate it "rotino by rotino," i.e. spearing a single piece of pasta from one plate before moving clockwise to the next one.  It took the five of us at least half an hour to finish it all.  What with all the buffets and street foods, I had almost forgotten the pleasure of slow food. 

It wouldn't be Italian in Taiwan without some slightly funky Tiramisu for dessert.  This meal was my end-of-the-year splurge, and it cost me about $10.50.

In 2010 and 2011 I  really deepened my understanding and appreciation of Korean cuisine, exploring every nook and cranny of Daegu in search of local, organic, veggie fare, and even visiting farms and farmers to learn where it all comes from.  March and April took me first to Taiwan and then to Japan, I bid adieu to Korean cuisine throughout the late spring and early summer.  By September I was getting used to menus written entirely in Chinese characters, only to find myself mostly lost again when I landed in Taiwan in November.  Now it's a new year and within another month or so I'll be wrapping up my voyages in Northeast Asia and heading South-Southwest.  I can only wonder what wonders 2013 will bring.  Stay tuned!