A girl who grew up in the mountains, close to nature, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
The very first time I’d met Ching, at age eighteen, she was driving a tractor, passed through the bushes of a fruit farm towards me.
The tractor she drove was narrow and very unspacious, used to transport the fruits such as persimmon, pears, or apples, etc. The fruit farm was short, and if we’d set straight up, our foreheads would bump into the bushes all the way, and so, my friend and I can only get cramped up on the bug, lie flat, like slaughtered pigs. And the transportation truck bumped on for six, to seven whole minutes, and, right when I felt that my bones are about to shatter into pieces, we’d finally, arrived at her home.
Ching had shouldered up the responsibilities of being a farmer’s daughter, and, driving this tractor was her job, it’s nothing that surprised her. What’s more unimaginable was, there was, a KRT that’s bigger than she, that she was responsible for operating.
In order to get through her businesses, she’d often rode this motorcycle down the mountains. Each trip to Yilan took three to four hours. All the way, she’d driven through the clouds and the fogs. And, rode on those winding mountain passes, and, she’d passed through six to seven tribes on her way there.
Such a magical scene, and yet, if you have a daughter as she, would you not worry? But, Lun, her mother believed her to be old enough, besides, this is distant, and up in the mountains, everything the two of them needed, they’d had to get on their own. And, the motorcycle wasn’t used to travel, instead, it was, a transportation necessity.
Lun had planted the fruits on Lishan for eighteen years now, and, all the trials she’d endured were, unimaginable to me. But, after I’d arrived at the worker’s shack, I was shocked, to discover the rose bushes planted by. And, the roses had been there since over ten years ago, solely for the purpose of beautifying the environment, which showed, that the owner of this place had her own view of aesthetics.
Lun who took up photographer when she had the spare time, also loved sketching and painting too, and she’d loved drawing the roses. On the rainy days, she’d quickly sketched a colorful rose bush. That life-like drawing, I can tell, that she does sketches for fun regularly, and, she’d must’ve done it a thousand times over, for the flowers to look so realistic.
Ching sat close by, and quickly, sketched out a cartoon character too, I’d seen these figures on their websites. Ching is very good at using the words of the young literaries, and used the pictures and words, to create with her mother, and, help spread the concepts of friendly planting to others. it seems, that this agricultural knowledge website is more of a literary site, instead of a platform for the fruit farms. It’s a wonder that her website was voted one of the highest ranked Mandarin blogs globally, and, it’d shown the warmth of their lives too.
Although there’s the glory, but, Lun and her daughter showed nothing BUT gratitude, thanked the Atayal tribe for letting them use the land, so they can farm on it freely. Along with the endless number of set customers, for their year-after-year constant support, that they were, able to march toward their ideals of the way they envisioned agriculture.
My biggest curiosity is still Ching, because she’d just graduated from the Langyang All Girls’ High School; and she’d, stopped her education. And the reason, as she’d told me, was that she couldn’t cope with how fierce the competition were, and didn’t really know what she wanted in life yet. In the cities, she’d boarded in her middle and high school careers, and, she wasn’t at all happy. And now, she’d returned back onto the mountains, and became less curious about the outside world, and, her identifying with the land of her home front grows stronger by the day.
Her mother supported her choice too, the two of them learned together, and treated the fruit farms as a classroom, and, they’d unknowingly, marked out a path to learning to plant. Ching was very able bodied in learning the ways to sell the fruits, and got close to the consumers’ hearts, with her mother’s guidance. Her colorful articles not only managed to capture the faith that people placed in agriculture, it’d also showed that innocence of a kid at age eighteen too.
the animated character of Princess Mononoke, picture from online…
The opportunities that Ching had found in the fruit plantations, is not something that the high school teachers can give to her, nor could she have gained what she had from a college education either. There’s no need to hurry, getting a higher education. Wait until she wanted knowledge on other areas of expertise, then, she can study in the cities, I’m sure, she will gain more from it then.
Recently, she’d followed the farmer’s road to and from, and wrote, “half way home, the nature I’d encountered reminded me of the industrial city in Princess Mononoke. I’d smelled the scent of charcoal burning on the foggy southern peaks. In my memories, that, is the warmest feeling in the winter season for me.
How blessed we are, to have a child who’s so talented, in a self-instructed learning environment of a fruit plantation. In the company of her families, the clouds, the tribe, the mountains, discovering the mysteries of agriculture. This, is her hidden world, a great environment, for her, to ready, to become stronger, before, she strikes out on her own.
So, from this article, you can see the effects of being closer to nature has on someone’s life, this young woman lived simply, with her mother, and, they’d stayed true to the core values of organic planting, and, made the produce even safer to consume, and this young woman is, passing the values she’d picked up from interacting with the nature environment she grew up in to others, through her writing.