Good Farmland Lies South of the Mountains and North of the Waters

The moment torrential rain sent a mountainside crashing down, 28-year-old agricultural research assistant Su Qinghuan tumbled into a remote, impoverished village in the Great Zhao dynasty. She possessed the body of “Su Ahe,” a 16-year-old who had fainted from hunger. Barely free of her adoptive mother’s abuse, she stumbled into the bamboo shelter of Shen Yan, an orphaned hunter.

In this poor mountain village, where desertification had taken hold, the fields could barely yield a handful of rice. Su Qinghuan pulled out the crumpled remnants of Qi Min Yao Shu in her pocket. Her eyes lit up as she gazed at the dark soil in the valley, tinged with green. “We can grow potatoes here.”

When Shen Yan offered her half a cold flatbread, he never imagined that this girl, who was always crouching in the fields and digging through the soil, would bring the whole mountain back to life. She made ridges, spread wood ash, and channeled spring water from the mountains. Three months later, bright green potato shoots emerged from the sandy ground, and the autumn harvest yielded three times as much per acre! The village elder trembled as he held up the new rice. “Ahe is our village’s living Bodhisattva!”

Just as life began to warm up, Shen Yan covered his slightly rounded belly, his ears turning red. “Qinghuan, I... I’m pregnant.” Under the old superstition that a pregnant man brings his wife bad luck, Su Qinghuan clutched her modern pregnancy handbook and laid down the law: “We’re getting you checked! We’ll ask Granny Wang to deliver the baby, and I’ll learn nursing. We’ll make sure our child comes into the world safe and sound!”

From then on, a new sight brightened the morning mists of Xinghua Village: the lady of the house crouching on the field ridges to teach the villagers how to judge the soil, the master carrying a medicine basket and learning about herbs, and the aroma of chicken soup simmering for the expectant father drifting from the kitchen. Aunt Zhou opened a tofu shop, Madam Liu started a village school, and even the county magistrate’s wife rode over with Hu sheep. Su Qinghuan’s farming know-how was leading the whole mountain toward prosperity.

(Female-dominated world · farming · growing together | Watch a modern agricultural scientist use a single potato to unleash the power of women in a female-dominated world.)