Back Home to Farm and Build a New Countryside

Whenever Wei Guo gazes up at the city's gray sky, he thinks of the persimmon tree back home, laden with "red lanterns," and the smoky aroma of firewood and cured meat that used to fill the air. It makes him put down his trowel without hesitation and return to the village he has dreamed of, even though everything has changed.

"Red persimmons hang like lanterns high, but the child who stole them is nowhere in sight." Beneath the tree, only memories and weeds remain. His heart aches, and he resolves to bring back the flavors of the countryside that have vanished. He repairs the abandoned old stove with his own hands and smokes cured meat over pinewood; he searches the hills and fields for the most authentic wild mushrooms and mountain fruits; he clears wasteland to grow vegetables, following only the most traditional natural farming methods. There are no online livestreams, only the stars and moon jostling in the back of his three-wheeler before dawn, and the stall he sets up earliest at the city market, the one that draws a crowd the fastest. "This tastes just like when I was a kid!" His customers' delighted exclamations are the finest reward.

Drawn by this taste of "homesickness," people drive out to visit, and smoke from cooking fires and laughter return to the little village. Children begin running beneath the persimmon tree again. Wei Guo tends his stall of mountain produce, and at last, the flavors of his childhood and that warm "lantern" light the way home.