National Parks of Taiwan

Legendary Lishan Farmeress A-bao - Ten Years of Mountain Living

A-bao wanted to think as a mountain. She went to live in the mountains to learn and seek nourishments. She farmed and harvested, watching her fruit trees grow. She converses with her companions, whether they are humans, soil, plants, or animals, with all her heart. From physical observation to profound thinking, her book tells stories of how human beings interact with the land, and of their interdependence and conflicts. Foreword by Shin Wang in A Farmeress' Journal of Mountain Living

A woman most far away from the world, yet closest to her inner self, acts out her love toward the mountains. From her slim figure, we see fervent love toward the land.

Not used to be photographed, A-bao( Bao-lian Li) is actually good at photography and painting. She likes to catch daily experiences on camera. In this issue's “Brilliant People,” let us get a new angle to know this lovely and mysterious “mountain woman” through photographic records around her life.

Finally I met with A-bao herself. Unlike what I imagine a farmeress would be, she is slim, with dark but rosy skin, a tender voice, and a bookish delicacy. She is just like her book, simple but powerful.

A-bao's writing style is succinct but smooth; every word is precisely and painstakingly picked. Yet she says she prefers a hoe than a pen in her hands. “I am a person of practice.”

Even before her going up to Lishan, A-bao's travel experience was already a legend. She had spent 18 months travelling solo from Tibet to Nepal to India, by bike, donkey and her feet; she had also wandered in Northern Europe for ten months. The toils of the trip furthered her physical limit and cleared her minds. She had experienced spiritual frustration, physical exhaustion and starvation. Her spirit had yet been stimulated and abilities enhanced.

After returning home, A-bao felt she no longer yearned for a normal civilized life, but the “emptiness in spirit.” Then she suddenly realized that despite her ardent love toward nature, she had never dealt with the conflicts between human and nature.

Such realization, and the worry about the development of high-altitude land, plus the idea that“ a person should sweat and humble down for her food,” made the plan of living in the mountains take its shape.

“If I can be the manager of the land, can I perhaps make better use of it and alleviate the conflicts?”Thus A-bao put the seemingly wild idea into practice.

“Borrowing guts from God and borrowing money from people,” she came to Lishan all alone. She planned to lease an orchard, then abandon (farming) or reforest the steep slope, but maintain the basic production of the gentle slope so as to accumulate capital. When she saves enough money, she can then purchase the land, or lease another one in the same way.

A Long Journey to Realize Her Dream

A-bao chose to go up to Lishan after the 921 Earthquake shattered every bit of the place's prosperity. She leased an orchard to grow trees in it. Her neighbors were confused and her friends bewildered.

So writer Dong-li Meng said she is like the “foolish old man who would move mountains,” only she is“ recovering” the mountains. Like the old man, she strives for a dream that could remain unrealized all her life. Yet unlike him, whose perseverance moved God and made the mountains gone, A-bao's dream land, compared the developed hillside, remains meagerly small.

Walking in her first orchard, A-bao talked about the trees as about her children: Taiwan red cypress, incense cedar, zelkova, Formosan michelia, and so on. Various indigenous tree species grow amazingly among the fruit trees.

The conifers are still small, while the broad-leaved ones are already becoming a grove. Now the fruit trees here have receded to the second crown canopy since the second piece of land was bought to take the production load. This orchard now only produces “small wild pears,” which has an unadorned slight sweetness.

Ten long years have passed, and A-bao, who had been a traveler, has been staying and working on the same piece of land. She had slept in a tent for a whole year under the threat of natural calamities, been defrauded by merchants and gone up to court, and suffered from farming without pesticides …

All these trials toughened her and enhanced her capabilities; now she knows how to grow pears, plums, and peaches, and how to deal with winds and rains. Yet all she has been doing is to make her orchards gone ultimately and make forests grow instead.

“At first I did have some reformer's ambitions, but I realized later that there were things I couldn't do, so this is the best I can have now,” said A-bao, looking at Syuejian Mountain Row from the window of the bamboo hut she built on her own.

But A-bao does not feel frustrated. She finds that during the process of actual practice, “[I] obtain the significance of life and the inner equilibrium, and this is the biggest gain.”

The Eco-friendly Thinking of Yi-lan Farmers

The wide response roused by A Farmeress' Journal of Mountain Living makes A-bao see that communicating concepts is perhaps a more important task. “If we want to change current global environment, then we have to change the lifestyles and concepts of many people.”

A-bao feels that if she can earn money and expand her orchards, it means the consumer actually to some extent supports small farmers that treat land friendly.“ Actually it is the consumer that is motivating the producer and changing the world.”

Ten years of farming enables A-bao to understand the difficulties facing small farmers in Taiwan and leads her to care more about local organic agriculture. In fact, many farmers do not go organic because they are unable to go through the complicated and expensive certification process.

There are also myths about so-called organic products. Primitive forests are exploited to grow crops; veggies that are grown in green houses built with big money are never bathed in natural sunshine and breezes; some farmers import organic foods, which saves no energy at all. Is this the kind of “organic” we want?

Since this March, A-bao has had a new plan. Together with some local farmers in Yi-lan, including Qing-song Lai and You-gong Zhang, she initiated “Yi-lan Eco-friendly Small Farmers Association” and holds farmer's market twice a month.

A-bao says there is great wisdom in the word “ecofriendly.”“ Organic regulations and thinking should carry more attention to the environment instead of merely focusing on human safety. Thus she chose to use “eco-friendly” but not organic.

 

She defines their group as“ farmers who keep thinking.” For example, organic farmers prefer camellia seed dregs to kill apple snails, yet it kills other aqua creatures as well. A-bao worries that if farmers use whatever the organic regulations permit, the definition of organic will then be narrowed.

“Perhaps I will ultimately use camellia seed dregs, but this shouldn't be done without thinking.” A-bao holds that only when farmers think actively and drive consumers to do the same thing can the current situation be altered. What is it between human beings and nature, conflict or harmony? The question that drove A-bao to the mountains has been solved during her pursuit. We may not be able to follow her, yet we can examine if we have the same honesty to our life, insistence to our dreams, and love toward the land.