Hunan couple build new lives planting rice

Xiao Lin and Xia Yan celebrated their first anniversary on Dec 6, but their wedding is still a legend in the neighborhood.

Instead of renting a Ferrari when they married in 2020, Xiao Lin took a tractor to pick up his bride. Leading the wedding fleet of six tractors, each decorated with flowers, balloons, red silk and big red bow ties, he picked up Xia Yan before parading through the village.

Explaining the symbolism behind his seemingly unromantic choice, Xiao told his wife that the tractors were the two different kinds used for transplanting and harvesting, the start and the end of the farming cycle. So, in a way, they represented the beginning and future bounty of their lives together.

The unusual choice of transportation got the couple a lot of attention. Villagers ran alongside the tractors to wish them luck, and their wedding made local headlines.

During the unique ceremony, the couple announced their vow to devote their lives to farming.

Xiao and Xia are from Anhua county in Yiyang, Hunan province. Before they returned to their hometown in Central China to become farmers, they both lived in the provincial capital, Changsha, where they had decent jobs with good incomes.

Xiao studied design at college and worked as an interior decorator, while Xia worked in an educational organization.

Wanting to be able to take better care of his parents, Xiao decided to return to the village, and Xia, who found great potential in modern agriculture, agreed to go with him.

At the end of 2019, they decided to make the move.

When he first began to plant rice, Xiao suggested automating the process. But his idea was rejected by his father, an experienced farmer who has been working the land for over 30 years.

Automation requires a combined investment of over 300,000 yuan ($47,000) to buy a seedling machine and a greenhouse, and to cultivate the seedlings.

Xiao's father, Xiao Youchu, was the first in the village to buy other kinds of planting machines, but he was opposed to investing in an automatic seedling machine because he considered it too risky.

"It's such a big investment and doesn't guarantee success," he said.

He knew of a few farmers who had invested in such machines to sow rice but had failed, losing a lot of money.

After trying to mechanize, they all went back to the traditional way of planting and raising seedlings by hand.

Xiao Lin understood his father's concerns but still wanted to try. He said he thought the automatic machines had a promising future.

He studied the technology behind mechanized seedling raising, analyzed the reasons others failed and finally won his father's approval.

His efforts paid off. In March, Xiao and Xia successfully cultivated early rice seedlings using mechanical means for the first time.

"In addition to growing our own seedlings, we can help other farmers raise and transplant theirs. With our help, they can sit at home and wait for harvest," Xiao said, talking about plans for growing their future business.

The couple was not always so confident, having experienced setbacks most farmers endure on their journey.

For example, after receiving an order for 20 metric tons of rice one year, Xiao was thrilled.

"If I could close the deal, I wouldn't need to worry about selling anything else for an entire year," he said.

But the deal fell through because the rice was to be sold in supermarkets, which required strict inspections.

Xiao realized that his rice was not branded or registered, and he didn't even have proper packaging.

He and his wife decided they would have to register a brand and conduct inspections. They also persuaded neighboring farmers to plant their crops together to scale up production, and then sell as a single producer. This was a big change from the traditional family business style of farming, where each farmer grew and sold their produce themselves, often in small amounts.

The couple own 25.3 hectares of paddies and currently make about 400,000 yuan from their share of the harvest, about as much as they earned in the city.

But they are ambitious, and as part of his New Year resolution, Xiao vowed to increase his family's income to a million yuan this year.

Zhu Youfang contributed to this story.