LEAF-go-VSO   

Orange Farmer

Luo Huizhong

Simao born and bred, Luo Huizhong is 64 years old. His slight frame is hunched as he moves slowly among the orange trees that extend up the scrubby hillside behind his simple two-room adobe brick home. With a worn and ancient pair of rusty clippers (honed to a crisp sharpness on his trusty oilstone) he casually assesses each fruit, deftly clips it from the tree, and adds it to the wicker basket hanging from his shoulder. It’s early December, and the height of the local mandarin orange season.

Luo Hui Zhong at work in his orange grove

Luo Huizhong lives a modest life, deep in the countryside a half hour’s cycle from Simao, and alone for the most part. His wife died some years ago but his son and daughter-in-law often visit. A well, 5 minutes walk away (quite enough laden with two heavy buckets) is his water supply, and he spends his time tending his crops, feeding and cleaning out the pigs, and (when time allows) relaxing in the open shack at the side of his house. Here, with the blackened kettle simmering on an open fire at his feet, he smokes and drinks green tea. His cigarettes, Hong He brand, are inhaled through the bamboo tube water pipe beloved of most Yunnanese men his age. It’s a common misconception here that smoke breathed through water, as well as being cooled, has the “cancer” taken out! The sound of the gurgling bubbles is, I imagine, somewhat similar to the laboured breathing of lungs struck down with pulmonary oedema or worse! An alternative nicotine fix to the pipe is the wad of uncut leaf tobacco he stuffs in a clay pipe bowl and lights with a burning stick from the fire.

Luo Huizhong at rest - his water pipe is propped up beside his seat

His house, more of a substantial hut, is at the edge of the village, nestled into the dry brown hillside among the banana trees and a vibrant purple bougainvillea bush. Green beans are spread out on a tin shed roof, drying in the sun now that the winter morning mist has cleared. Loofah gourds and golden yellow corncobs hang against the burnt umber of the mud brick walls. The pigsty is bellowing and snuffling with nearly ten beasts of all sizes, and his four hens provide an egg each per day. Luo Huizhong should be well fed come Spring Festival.

The farmer is an excellent host. I’m offered tea (in lieu of the cigarette I politely refused) and later, when we return from our orange-picking excursion, the mug has been topped up with freshly boiled water. Lesley chats in her now-not-so-faltering Chinese: yes, he remembers us from last year; the children have grown, he informs us. At the market, orange prices are too low - there’s a glut, he bemoans, resigned to the fact.

       
L to R: picking oranges; loofah gourds; piglets

His land stretches up behind the house, tiered rows of orange trees, bending with impossible-looking quantities of fruit at this time of year. Chillies, the main summer crop, are planted everywhere, and higher up the slope the steeper terraces are green with wheat seedlings – feed for the pigs later in the year. There seems to be very little order to what is planted where in this wonderful wild patch of semi-cultivated land, as every-so-often a random pineapple plant, or tomato vine, or bulbous green marrow makes an appearance. Did Luo Huizhong clear this fertile red earth from the raw forest of pine, eucalyptus and bamboo with his own bare hands? To witness the calluses, lined suntanned face and lean, work-hardened (and over-worked) physique, the chances are pretty high.

We load the children, two enormous bags of oranges and a tiny one of chillies, onto the bikes and head back down the hill to Simao. I feel certain we’ll return to visit Mr Luo again one day. Perhaps to deliver some photographs for his mantelpiece.

       
They always taste better when you've picked them yourself...

Postscript: That was written at the end of 2006, after our second visit. A year later we did return, bearing gifts of photographs and tobacco. At the tail end of 2008 we were back again for our annual fix of orange grove lifestyle - but were in for a big shock. Luo Huizhong's house was empty, boarded up and overgrown. At first we feared the worst - our friend had died; but soon we discovered that he'd moved away, to Shenzhen of all places, to live with his daughter for a few months. December 2009 - Orange Grove visit #5. The orange trees have all gone, and now young tea bushes grow on the terraced hillsides overlooking Luo Huizhong's old crumbling house. A little further down the valley we find him, now living with his two sons, daughter-in-law and grandson in a new white-tiled house, with a maize field out front. He's looking well after his 4-month sojourn visiting relatives in Guangdong and Sichuan. Bayberry and lychee trees grow on the hill behind, and two fat black pigs lie snuffling in a concrete sty. Apparently we'll be invited to watch the pre-Spring Festival slaughtering in January...