Call of Nature
Escaping polluted air, unaffordable housing and the consumerism inherent in urban life, one Chinese couple has started a self-sufficient community in a small county in Eastern China, in a tale reminiscent of the great American naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau.
Tired of urban life, 29-year-old Tang Guanhua, whose family runs a design company, and his wife, Xing Zhen, a former securities manager in her early 30s, resigned from their well-paid white-collar jobs seven years ago, first moving to a village on Mount Laoshan in the east coast province of Shandong.
The couple lived five years in their self-built hut, eating what they were able to grow and raise. They learned a variety of skills from master craftspeople, including brewing beer, soy sauce and vinegar and making soap and cooking utensils.
Tang calls the move a “Self Sufficiency Laboratory.” In 2015, support from a social foundation enabled the couple to launch a new experiment – a self-sustaining community on 33 hectares of land in a village in East China’s Fujian Province.
Tang’s community has attracted like-minded people from home and abroad from different professions, including young engineers, artists, architects and volunteers. There are eight longterm residents and more than 200 temporary guests.
These back-to-nature pioneers live a simple, minimalist but creative life, eating food they grow, making their own daily necessities, and producing artwork and handicrafts for sale to support the community.
“Our experiment is neither a promotion of an ascetic lifestyle nor a manifesto to antimodernization. We just hope to explore an alternative way for those who can’t fit into modern urban life,” Tang told Newschina.