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Fresh air, fresh veggies at my suburban doorstep
By Wang Yong |
February 27, 2013, Wednesday
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WHEN I lived in rented apartments in downtown Shanghai from 2004 to 2012, I would travel to Hangzhou, a "ruralized" city, almost every other weekend to escape the urban crowds. But since I settled in Qingpu District, the western most suburb of Shanghai, last year, I have spent most weekends in the countryside only 10 minutes' walk from my home.
I still love Hangzhou for its natural beauty, its mixture of urban hustle with rural serenity. But my new neighborhood is like a miniature Hangzhou. Indeed, I live close to a town (also in Qingpu District) dubbed "Little Hangzhou" in the Song Dynasty (960 AD-1279) for its robust trade and abundant greenery.
That's why I have spent more time exploring the rustic area near my doorstep. And over the past two weekends, we have discovered something we didn't find in Hangzhou: a couple of farmers have invited us to their land and sold us a wide variety of vegetables, from cabbage to spinach.
For the first time in my life, I've been able to buy and eat freshly picked, organically grown vegetables not far from my home. Some of my big-city friends poke fun at my pastime in the farm fields, but this is what I want: to live close to the countryside.
In the past few decades, rapid urbanization has resulted in a massive loss of farmland. But my neighborhood area may offer a different model of urbanization - "planting" urban dwellers in the midst of farmland. In this way, farmers sell their produce more easily and urbanites eat more fresh vegetables. Recent food scares also remind us of the importance of buying locally produced food, the closer to home the better.
A beautiful China calls for farmland to be interwoven with urban neighborhoods. That's about life.
In 1934, T.S. Eliot asked: Where is the Life we have lost in living?
What the big-city dweller has today is less "life" than "living" in a concrete forest suffocated by polluted air and polluting behavior.
I still love Hangzhou for its natural beauty, its mixture of urban hustle with rural serenity. But my new neighborhood is like a miniature Hangzhou. Indeed, I live close to a town (also in Qingpu District) dubbed "Little Hangzhou" in the Song Dynasty (960 AD-1279) for its robust trade and abundant greenery.
That's why I have spent more time exploring the rustic area near my doorstep. And over the past two weekends, we have discovered something we didn't find in Hangzhou: a couple of farmers have invited us to their land and sold us a wide variety of vegetables, from cabbage to spinach.
For the first time in my life, I've been able to buy and eat freshly picked, organically grown vegetables not far from my home. Some of my big-city friends poke fun at my pastime in the farm fields, but this is what I want: to live close to the countryside.
In the past few decades, rapid urbanization has resulted in a massive loss of farmland. But my neighborhood area may offer a different model of urbanization - "planting" urban dwellers in the midst of farmland. In this way, farmers sell their produce more easily and urbanites eat more fresh vegetables. Recent food scares also remind us of the importance of buying locally produced food, the closer to home the better.
A beautiful China calls for farmland to be interwoven with urban neighborhoods. That's about life.
In 1934, T.S. Eliot asked: Where is the Life we have lost in living?
What the big-city dweller has today is less "life" than "living" in a concrete forest suffocated by polluted air and polluting behavior.
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