Culture

Farm life grows naturally on city

By Meng Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-26 07:49

Song Rongfang, a successful career woman, picks leek she grows on her farm at the foot of the West Mountain in Haidian district. MENG JING / CHINA DAILY

From Monday to Friday, Song Rongfang lives the typical life of a successful career woman.

Because of her excellence in selling life insurance and financial services, she has a choice of fancy cars for her commute to work and is able to employ a helpful housekeeper who makes sure she is never troubled by housework.

But at weekends, the city slicker undergoes a transformation - into something more like a peasant woman - as she heads to her farm to weed, feed chickens and harvest vegetables and fruit.

The traditional Chinese medicine graduate says it is all about looking for balance and trying to maintain a natural lifestyle in the face of an urban world that forces people to live against nature.

Casual visitors to Song's cottage at the foot of the West Mountain in Haidian district would find it hard to believe that the woman who owns it is a successful working professional.

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Her four-bedroom courtyard house is equipped with very few household electronic appliances and has very little decoration.

"Do in the village as the villagers do," said Song when explaining her design concept for her dream home.

"When we live in downtown areas of Beijing, we have nothing to do to kill time but shopping, watching television or surfing the Internet," she said, adding that she developed the idea of building her own home because she wanted to do something different.

After she decided to build her house in the countryside, some of her designer friends offered to help build a modern, stylish residence but she believes beauty and nature lie in simplicity and insisted on making her house out of red bricks and wood.

The only decoration in her rural home is fabric wallpaper and woven straw knickknacks.

The house has no access to the Internet and there is no television because Song believes her family should be able to find enough things to do to entertain themselves in the natural environment.

"If we want, we can always find something to occupy ourselves," she said, pointing out that she rents two hectares of farmland in which she has hundreds of fruit trees, a dozen different kinds of vegetables and even some chickens and donkeys.

Even though she grew up in big cities, Song said she has always longed for village life - something she says she cannot fully explain.

"When I see land and the natural environment, I can feel the connection to them," she said.

She took out a 30-year lease on the land in 2008.

While she is well-educated, she admits she didn't know the first thing about agriculture before taking on the farm.

Since then, she has grown into a very competent farmer.

"I used to chose big sized vegetables and fruit when I did grocery shopping. But now that I actually grow them, I realize that they will never grow into that size unless chemical fertilizer is used," Song said.

And that is something she shies away from. The only fertilizer used on Song's farm is the natural kind - from her chickens and donkeys.

She is very proud of her sustainable management system.

In addition to using the waste from chickens and donkeys for fertilizer, leftovers from family meals is fed back to the animals.

And no one gets to eat the chickens because Song thinks they are more useful as fertilizer producers.

"Only our nearest friends who happen to get sick can have the opportunity to eat our chickens," she joked.

Though some in Song's family were against the idea of building a farmhouse at the beginning, they have gradually become very fond of the place.

After spending quality time in the natural environment, Song's teenage daughter now has a dream of becoming an entomologist and devoting herself to the study of insects.

"Even my stubborn husband enjoys our homegrown vegetables now. Though I use very few seasonings to cook them, the taste is much better than those vegetables sold in the markets. Nature speaks for itself," Song said, relishing the flavor of her hard work.

Song Rongfang spends her weekends at her village cottage.