From City to Satoyama: A Decade of Farming in the Hills by Two Knowledgeable Farmers

Have you ever fancied escaping the city, going back to the countryside, and returning to a pastoral life? Have you ever held romantic ideas about being entirely self-sufficient? Real life on the land is far more complex and difficult than we imagine — and far more moving.

Wenzizi and Changjiaoling are two graduates of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, both born in the 1980s. Starting as complete farming novices, they spent ten years creating a “satoyama” in the shallow hills on the outskirts of Beijing — Gaia Worth Garden.

Unlike remote, unvisited deep mountains, a “satoyama” refers to “the boundary between human settlements (里) and the mountain forest (山)”, a transitional zone where people and nature coexist. On this 30-mu (roughly two hectares) plot, they grow vegetables, keep chickens, and run nature-education programmes. They also write books, paint, and make malt sugar. They converse with the land, live alongside climate change, learn from the village’s seasoned farmers, and share their space with insects, birds, grasses and trees.

Three years ago they wrote up their farming life in a book titled In the Dirt, Not Crude: A Knowledgeable Farmer’s Satoyama Life, well received by many fellow vegetable-gardeners. This year they have published a new book, Farming in the Satoyama, sharing every step they have taken and every pitfall they have stumbled into without holding anything back, and weaving in their deep reflections on nature, ecology, and the way of life.

Click to learn about their first book, In the Dirt, Not Crude

The conversation begins with this “all-from-the-hill curry rice”, moves on to what a “satoyama” actually is, how people and nature share a piece of land, and how farmers keep adjusting amid the wild swings of climate change. Hailstones destroy the apricots, autumn vegetables are washed away by the rain, French beans stop setting pods, while the rice — benefiting from a lengthened rainy season — is unusually bountiful. Amid all this uncertainty, they maintain a remarkable composure: don’t curse the sky or the earth, just get on with sowing the seeds. Like all living things in nature, as long as growth can continue, life goes on endlessly. They talk about it lightly, but every detail carries a decade of experience with the land.

They also talk about writing, education, and their philosophy of living with the land, and how growing even a little for yourself can transform the relationship between people and their food, and with nature. They go deeper into the spiritual nourishment that comes from living alongside the land: how farming dissolves the anxieties of city life, and why “in the field, no sorrow lasts past the night.”

In short, welcome to this episode — let’s step together into this satoyama of lemongrass, magpie nests, and ever-renewing hope.

This Episode’s Guests

Wenzizi ♀ Changjiaoling ♂

Two urban youth born in the 1980s, with master’s degrees from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, working in ecological conservation and environmental education. In 2014 they co-founded Gaia Worth Garden in the far suburbs, 70 kilometres from Beijing, and began a self-sufficient satoyama life. The life they aspire to: a balance between wilderness, farmland, and human habitation, letting the breath of people and nature unfold quietly upon the land.

This Episode’s Host

Tianle

Founding editor at Foodthink and convener of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.