Cha Guo Stories, Part IV: The Dragon Fruit Farm

This is the fourth in a series of stories looking at the protagonists in Cha Guo, an upcoming documentary by Daphné Mandel and Guy Bertrand that focuses on the people of Kwu Tung North. Read the previous stories here.

At dawn the day holds little promise. Heavy rain falls from dark, threatening clouds, soaking the soil, where row upon row of lettuce, cucumber, aubergine and choi sum have been planted in regimental lines; four varieties amid the multitude of vegetables and fruits planted and harvested across the year’s seasons. By mid-morning, the deluge has diminished to intermittent showers. Gradually the rain passes and the heat of the sun begins to dry the mud-baked path up at the back of the farm buildings.

There, a sow on her side snuffles on the damp concrete of her sty, cool in the shade. A peacock looks through the bars of a large cage as his peahen struts behind.  Groups of black goats stand and sit together. A couple of mongrel dogs roam more freely and in their midst a woman with a ponytail and gum boats grins and waves by a shed with plastic sheeting covering the curved roof.

Yan Fuqin — better known as Qin — started her 70-hectare organic farm in Kwu Tung just south of the border with Shenzhen in 2009. Looking up around the farm there are soft, round green hills. But close by is the development of the Northern Metropolis and Qin hopes that the construction work won’t pollute the water and earth that give her fruit and vegetables their organic status.

Inside the shed she plucks a dragon fruit — a beautiful specimen — from the cactus stems that curl up concrete pillars, leaving space on the ground for other crops to grow. She cuts the fruit in half. The flesh is a rich, intense red with a sweet taste.   The fruit is thought to have originated in Central or South America, and is a part of the flowers which only open at night on the cactus. These days, Vietnam is the main producer of dragon fruit, which is known as pitaya in its region of origin, but whose Asian moniker reflects its tough, scaly skin that evokes that of a Chinese dragon.

“When I decided to start the organic farm, I realised that if I just did vegetables, there would be a lot of competition,” says Qin, speaking in her native Putonghua, as we wander up to a small hall. She bought some dragon fruit seeds from a Taiwanese vendor who taught her the basics of growing the fruit, which she nurtures from June to September. “He taught me how to disperse the pollen at night,” she says, and how to only use organic fertilisers, not chemical ones. The goats are fed the leftover leaves and stalks, and in turn provide the rich manure used to fertilise the next lot of vegetables.

Over the years, Qin has become accustomed to Hong Kong’s changing climate and its vagaries. In the summer, she gives her dragon fruit water and fertilisers when the flowers are blooming. When October comes and the nights become cooler, the flowers shrink and the plants go into hibernation. Then it’s time for Qin to plant her winter vegetables.  

Part of the farmland belongs to her husband’s family, but the rest is rented from local landlords. It’s not an easy business. The farm was wiped out by Typhoon Hato in 2017. “The vegetables, fruit, equipment, we had to rebuild everything,” says Qin. But for her, organic farming is as much a passion as it is an economic venture. Groups of schoolchildren come to the farm to learn about organic farming, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Want to eat? The children cook their lunch themselves with Qin supervising them in her semi-outdoor kitchen. The city children see how their food originates as they make their food from scratch.  

Qin was already out in the fields with her parents growing rice, wheat and sweet potatoes, when she was just three years old. She grew up on their farm in a village outside Chongqing. It was a struggle and Qin headed to Dongguan in the 1990s to work as a saleswoman of Velcro products to help support her family. There she met her future husband, whose family had a pig farm in Kwu Tung. They married in 1997. They speak both Cantonese and Putonghua at home. Their older son is an architect, the younger a chef who is making noises about joining them on the farm. Qin would prefer that he continues to draw a salary as a chef for a few more years. 

While dragon fruit is the main product and the one from which the farm takes its name, it also produces dozens of other fruit and vegetables throughout the year. Bright red chilli peppers reach for the sun; purple aubergines hang low under the leaves. In the summer there are melons; in the winter, strawberries. Qin and her husband manage the farm with about three workers. Along the pathway, one man till the earth, while three women with heads covered from the sun, crouch and tend to rows of lettuces.

At the hall, Qin has eight types of workshops throughout the year – among them, schoolchildren and other visitors can learn how to make soap, kimchi and the Cantonese snack cha guo. Outside at the back of the large kitchen is a small yard. At the one end is a large stack of firewood and in front a wood-fired three-drawer metal steamer where the glutinous rice snack cha guo is steamed inside. To make the snack, dough is separated into little circles and filled with peanut or sesame. “We steam it like soup dumplings,” says Qin. “Then afterwards we use banana or lemon leaves to wrap them.”

It’s midday and time to leave after a morning in a rural pocket of Hong Kong surrounded by major development and change. And yet staring at the peaceful reflection of the trees in the large pond, or the green rounded hills, this is a world that feels very different to what is under construction nearby. Qin has a few pumpkins available today for sale to her visitors before they leave, and her husband returns from selling vegetables at a market. He opens the boot of his car and inside is a pile of lush, green, organic lettuce, ready for his resident customers – the goats.

All photos are stills from Cha Guo, courtesy of Guy Bertrand and Daphne Mandel

Public Screening of Cha Guo Stories at the Hong Kong Arts Centre – 3 December 2024. For more information visit here