It all started 17 years ago
How did I end up here in Miramon?
In order to answer this question, I will have to go back to the summer of 2008, my first year in high school. At that time I had not yet realized that my three year curriculum consisted of two years of learning new materials and one year of intense exam preparation. Intense means that we had to get to school at 5.30 am regardless of the season, return home around 9.30 pm, constantly under a military training rhythm. The darkness of this year indefinitely shaped my view on authority, violence and rebelliousness.
The first year in high school was rather light-hearted, having time to meander at the school sport yard with one or two friends, or to enjoy the heartbrokenness from a young love, and my head was spacious enough to remember the green summer vegetation under two giant sycamore trees. It was towards the end of a semester, only one article left to learn in the literature class. I was rather excited. It was titled Solitude, and nothing speaks more to a love-life-challenged, lost and sentimental teenager. The article was extracted from Walden, written by the American writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. I still couldn't wrap my head around why and how this article found it way into our exam oriented text book, but it was there. And the book quickly became my only shelter.
The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water...I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself.牛蛙鸣叫，邀来黑夜...我在大自然中自由来去，成为她的一部分。
Everything was lifted reading Walden. Sitting in the classroom surrounded by one hundred equally lonely kids, I imagined myself sitting in the little wood shed, the smell of freshly chiseled wood table got accentuated by the humidity from the lake, on it, a flower ring left by visitors before me, sitting quietly. I was absorbed into the world of the valley and the lake. I announced to my family one day with great determination that what I would REALLY like to do, was to live in the mountains, herding sheep. Of course no one knew what to react to a declaration like this, and the book was folded, put aside, submerged under exam materials in the following years.
Isn't it funny that 17 years later, I find myself living at the foot of the mountains, surrounded by sheep and cows, taking care of a plant nursery and building a wood/straw-bale house? Chinese people find an awful lot of comfort in destiny, as any hardship seems endurable if it's part of a greater plan. I wouldn't say that I had any preconceived destiny, but I've always known that I loved plants, I've loved observing the living world, walking in it.
The following years consisted of university in Beijing, then working in the rather glamorous theater industry and attempts to be a “normal” person. I loved my first few years in Beijing. Any young person would agree that this is the place that grants you conversations, regardless of one's cultural/natural reserve, fancy places, worldwide food, parties and drinks, Karaoke, intense friends, and a sense of superiority and inferiority at the same time. It was a new world for me, only nothing to do with Walden. That book by now was gathering dust on the shelf at my parents' house, under the threat of recycling.
I have a hard time imaging how my life would be, if the next encounters had not happened. In a fast pace fashion, I have met the love of my life, enrolled in art school, had more occasions to walk in the forest, moved to an eco6-neighborhood, understood the history of capitalism, planted vegetables, cried inconsolably for the mass extinction of our living world, sowed seeds, found my own definition of creation, graduated from art school, made documentaries about ecological farms, and now I sing revolutionary songs in an activist choir. I'm not capable of summarising how these things, seemingly unrelated, could happen so fast and organically together. The only metaphor I can think of is the following:
Imagine a seed, born with lots of nutrition reserve. It landed on a tired, used-up land, and found itself sprouting under a few layer of leaves; but met with bashing wind and acid rain, the seedling vegetated. Thankfully, the circumstances in life came by, and it was scooped out and transplanted. This time, the soil was radically different, and very fertile. Simulated by the huge amount of nutrition, the seedling grew rapidly each day above the ground. Dark green leaves shadowing everything that passes underneath. Unfortunately, its roots stayed minuscule, only at the surface level where the nutrition input is. It knew very well that although beautiful on the outside, it would collapse at the slightest gush of wind. Then it got scooped out again, and due to its shallow root system, the displacement was fierce but not a lethal event. This time, the plant found itself standing in a soil that is… not easy to stand on, but very lively, full of friends and foes. Its roots received, for the first time, messages from other roots through the mycorrhizal network. Vast and interesting subjects everyday - how to find water in an arid summer, how to work with bacterias that secrete nitrogen, how to send out alerts that a hungry deer just passed by. And how everyone is working on making the soil more lively. Having shed its dark green leaves, it looks bare on the outside, completely open and vulnerable. But its roots have grown deeper, stabilizing it, and finding the support of a whole soil community. Its coming to Miramon, is experiencing its first spring. The small tree now can now deploy its leaves in full.