Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand

by Jeff Chu

One venerable form of Chinese storytelling orbits its subject. The story unfolds in a series of observations. Sometimes it might feel as if the details are sketchy, even scant. Digressions are common, particularly as fragments of memory emerge in the light of new information, and thus the storyteller can seem to be going in circles or meandering around their subject. Slowly, though, a body of data accumulates. You never get a thesis statement and then an array of proofs, because you’re imagining and discovering and putting the pieces together alongside the storyteller. Your conclusions will rarely be identical to theirs. But (one hopes) coherence builds. In traditional Chinese philosophy, life is seen as cyclical. We move again and again through the moon-marked seasons, again and again through the twelve animals of the zodiac, all the while recognizing that change is inevitable, perspectives differ, and only through community and conversation do we get a fuller picture. In honor of my ancestors, this book moves through the seasons, both metaphorical and literal.