种地吧 | Become a Farmer
Mar. 19th, 2025 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiAs I’m sure various posts over the last year have made clear, this silly Chinese farming reality show has hit me harder than any canons I can think of in the past, except my oldest favorite books and Guardian/associated shows etc.; maybe even more so, although that may be a function of volume. The farming show has two long seasons plus alpha and two short ones, adding up to a hundred and sixty episodes (and counting, if you include season 3) and a total watching time well north of two hundred hours (for scale, long enough to watch Guardian seven times in a row and then some), and that’s not even counting associated concerts and 花絮 and vlogs and… . This also explains why it’s taken me eleven months of watching almost every single day to get through it. Here is a suitably long and 100% self-indulgent post going over it! Not sure if anyone will read it but it was fun to put together. (This post’s format inspired by sakana17’s similar one, which should be an interesting comparison; thanks to her this is an English-language fandom of two, not one, much appreciated! <3)
What the show is about:
The propaganda thing: In short, yeah, it is propaganda in some ways. Here are the details of what it looks like to me, for what it’s worth. (Caveat that all I know about China is what I’ve read and watched. If I am getting something stupidly wrong or overlooking something likewise, please let me know.)
So what is it about this show that I’ve found so addictive? After becoming aware of it thanks to mumblemumble and the episode she found where Wang Yang is a guest on the farm, I noticed “wow, there’s a lot of this” and thought it might make nice background Chinese listening practice while I did something else. Then I found I wasn’t making any progress on any of the something-else because I kept paying attention to the farming show, and then I realized I was hooked. (Also, it struck me at first as a nice low-key documentary-type thing to watch, fun and soothing, and then I got SO INVESTED that it wasn’t soothing at all, I was so concerned with whether the farmboys’ various endeavors, on and off the farm, would go okay!)
Below, the ten farmboys in detail, with photos (not very well screenshot, sorry), because I couldn’t resist.
#1. Jiang Dunhao 蒋敦豪, born in 1995, a singer from Bole, Xinjiang: Reserved, soft-spoken, self-deprecating, with a deadpan sense of humor and a long-time performer’s aplomb, along with a quiet strength of will (cultivated over a very uneven career) that sees him through everything from midwifing sheep to handling an online fan implosion, shaken but coping because, as the oldest, he understands it to be his responsibility. Da-ge to his “younger brothers,” Dundun to pretty much everyone else. He takes charge of the sheep in season 1 (which turns out to be much more traumatic than anyone expected) and handles thirty beehives and the resultant honey in season 2, making good on the name of the band where he’s the lead vocalist (旅行新蜜蜂|Trip New Bee). On stage he comes into his own, still low-key and calm but shining with the joy of singing. (Not directly relevant to the show, he‘s now actually one of my favorite singers: he has a light, grainy yet clear, distinctive voice (danmu from a concert video: “when da-ge sings it just hits different”) with a tenor’s high notes and a baritone’s darker vocal color, along with an effortless dynamic, stylistic, and emotional range.)
Song: 麦芒 (a group song, but he wrote it and he sings the solo in the last verse)
#2. Lu Zhuo 鹭卓, born in 1995, a singer from Taiyuan, Shanxi: Gregarious, extroverted, a chatterbox who talks irrepressibly with his hands. sakana17 calls him a chaos magnet and she’s not wrong; the Chinese fans have a similar term for him in 全自动闯祸几, fully-automated trouble finding machine. Things just happen to him: machines break down the moment he climbs into the operator’s seat, rain falls from clear skies, he gets lost in unlikely places, you name it. He’s always getting himself into some kind of chaos and always getting teased rotten for it (mostly by Zhuo Yuan, see #6 below), and—except when he thinks he’s causing others trouble—stays cheerful, keeps the others cheerful by playing the butt of the joke, and keeps working. He’s kind-hearted to a fault, quick to joke around but equally quick to be sure no one’s feelings are hurt, and ready to step up and provide dependable support and comfort whenever anyone else is tired or upset or in a bad way; his long-standing friendship with Zhuo Yuan is the emotional cornerstone of the whole group. He spends both seasons growing roses.
Song: 后陡门的夏 (again, a group song which he wrote [except for the rap, which is Zhuo Yuan’s] and where he sings the last-verse solo)
#3. Li Gengyun 李耕耘, born in 1996, an actor from Nanchuan, Chongqing: The only one of the ten to have some farming experience coming in, he comes off at first as prickly, dour, and intensely determined to get the work done right. In fact the former two characteristics are mostly a defense mechanism for acute shyness; once he trusts the others enough to relax, he turns out to have a goofy sense of humor and a deep well of affection. Expert at carpentry, metalwork, and artisanry in general, he does a lot of the background work making their dilapidated house into a home, including building a colorful herbaceous border and a swingset; he also raises a large family of pet rabbits and, true to his Chongqing roots, grows a forest of hot peppers. He can predict the weather, and climbs mountains for fun.
Song: 无奈 (written for him by Lu Zhuo)
#4. Li Hao 李昊, born in 1997, a singer from Foshan, Guangdong: In season 1 in particular, he tends to come off as the comic relief, with his melodramatic reactions usually played for laughs, his thick Cantonese accent (“it’s a feature, not a bug!”), his habit (even more than the rest of them) of bursting into song at the drop of a lyric, and his initial allergy to hard work—it takes him much longer than any of the others to resign himself to routine, tedious, strenuous physical work all day every day. But he’s also an aspiring director who becomes extremely competent, highly professional, and very diligent as soon as he has a camera of any kind in his hands; plus he’s a natural salesman, a world-champion sweet-talker who can bowl anyone over with a barrage of flirty chatter, the more effective because he really is interested in the lives of everyone he meets. This applies to dogs as well as people: he’s the first to adopt one of the local stray dogs, keeping “Hongbao” at his side for the rest of the series.
Song: 骗你是小狗 (which he performs on stage with a dog in his arms)
#5. Zhao Yibo 赵一博, born in 1998, an actor from Changzhi, Shanxi: Originally trained as a marine engineer, he has endless intellectual curiosity and a quick, organized mind that instantly absorbs and parses complex information of all kinds (except dance steps); he’s also, as the company secretary, a gifted administrator who can run a meeting or an event with flawless efficiency. Sweet-tempered, high-strung, soft-hearted, fast-talking, fond of practical jokes and wordplay, an experienced welder and electrician with a flair for technical design, a shy introvert who also has an urge to perform that drove him right into becoming an actor. He helps with the sheep and hatches his own chickens in season 1, and builds the greenhouse watering system in season 2.
Song: 小城回忆 (one of a series of “hometown songs” each of them recorded for their own province)
#6. Zhuo Yuan 卓沅, born in 1999, a singer/dancer from Yuzhou, Henan: Chronologically and also to some extent emotionally the center of the group, keeping the others going with his cheerful good nature and endless steady energy. Probably the most involved of all of them in the agricultural side of their work, he takes the lead in their wheatfields as well as growing many strawberries along with hydroponic lettuce, tulips, and thyme. Highly perceptive, always with just the right sly or heartfelt comment in his gentle Henan drawl, quick to express frustration but invariably pushing on through to a solution; a competent cook and a born dancer and dance teacher. He and Lu Zhuo (see #2 above), whose friendship goes back seven years over their time in the boyband trenches, are inseparable and deeply reliant on each other (although their mutual affection is often shown through ruthless teasing). Both are also fond of using their own dialect of English: “太amazing了,” “somebody people,” “let me see see” and so on.
Song: 凌晨三点半 (written to feature his various talents)
#7. Zhao Xiaotong 赵小童, born in 1999, a stage actor from Qingdao, Shandong: Get you a man who can do both, and then some: carry the heaviest things like it’s nothing, grow oodles of vegetables (he specializes in kale and fancy mushrooms), cook delicious meals (including both his own produce and his hometown specialties), draw and paint with skill and passion, care attentively for a sick roommate, build a basketball court from scratch and be the high scorer on it, perform an original crosstalk routine with great flair, write song lyrics in the fluent English he learned in England, cover Cantonese songs with a perfect accent, play a bamboo flute the first time he lays hands on it, and more. His watchword is 没事儿! no problem, it’ll all work out. His big innocent eyes and genuinely serene, sincere demeanor also allow him to get away with a lot of stealth sarcasm, disguised by his gentle delivery until the zinger lands.
Song: 没事儿，真没事儿 (his theme song)
#8. He Haonan 何浩楠, born in 2000, a singer from Jinyun, Zhejiang: Xiao He holds six vehicle licenses, everything from passenger cars to excavators and drones, and he won’t let anyone forget it; he also wants to make sure they know he’s a born and bred southerner. Teasing aside, his skilled machine operation is often invaluable on the farm, along with his level head in a crisis and talent with animals (he supervises the ducks in season 1). He’s a sharp operator when it comes to money as well, early on earning the nickname of 卧龙 (sleeping dragon) or Long-ge for short (no relation to Z1L). A fashion icon (insofar as possible in an everyday context involving mud, sheep, ducks, mud, fertilizer, fish, bees, and mud), he likes to swagger in his taciturn way, but when someone else is crying he’s the first to offer a hug.
Song: 雨过之后 (in which, like many of them, he makes free of English lyrics)
#9. Chen Shaoxi 陈少熙, born in 2002, a singer/actor from Lanzhou, Gansu: The only one to come from a family of entertainers, he grew up training to be a Chinese opera singer and occasionally performs excerpts, the ethereal opera vocalization much in contrast to his height, broad shoulders, and deep bass speaking voice. He has a tendency to explode showily at regular intervals, bursting into furious declamations using vocabulary as close as he can get to cursing on camera; but he never takes himself totally seriously, sweet nature just visible underneath. He also adores dogs and acquires most of the strays that become their pets, quick to croon and cuddle with whichever one is closest. Stubborn, hard-working, and a chronic grumbler, he runs the shrimp pond in season 1 and the fish pond in season 2, undaunted by sole responsibility for a large lake (which is promptly nicknamed 熙湖 in a pun on his name and Hangzhou’s famous West Lake).
Song: 若能握住那阵风或许我们就不会被吹得太远 (known to all and sundry as “Shaoxi’s 19-character song” for its long title)
#10. Wang Yiheng 王一珩, born in 2004, a singer from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia: Only just eligible to participate at eighteen when the show started, he goes by didi (little brother) more often than by his name (when he’s not being called 小卷毛 or Little Curly for his signature frizzy hairdo). An enthusiastic and prolific singer-songwriter who wants to grow up to be David Tao, he is easy-going and happy-go-lucky, eager for new experiences of all kinds, from eating a hot pepper raw to drinking sheep milk fresh from the sheep and getting an excavator license. He also has a talent for carpentry inherited from his grandfather. In season two he takes charge of the crayfish pond, while also learning to cook delicious gourmet hamburgers, his favorite food (praised by one of his older brothers with “This family needs Wang Yiheng’s hamburgers like a fish doesn’t need a bicycle!”).
Song: 心暖暖 (a nice example of his style of R&B)
and a song with all ten of them to end with, just because why not: 我成为我的同时.
phew, 这就是一篇做大做强了的文章...
What the show is about:
As of the beginning of the show (in fall 2022), ten actors and musicians aged eighteen to twenty-seven are to spend six months running a farm on their own. The theory is that they get some name recognition and a career boost (since their careers are either struggling or not yet started), the country gets some useful propaganda about young people in farming, and the production company gets a promising show. All of which did happen, six months became two years on and off (including two road trips around the country to visit each farmboy’s hometown and explore regional agriculture), and the farmboys formed their own company (十个勤天) and became explosively popular. As of now (spring 2025), seven of them are back on the farm for a third season and the other three, while still part of the company and performing with the others at intervals, are off furthering their entertainment careers.
The actual farming content is shown in thorough, day-to-day detail. At first they have no idea what they're doing and proceed by trial and error, mostly error, with a huge amount of wasted effort (one of the first new words I learned at this point was 白干); eventually, seeking instruction wherever they can get it, they begin to figure things out and produce results. In season 1 they divide into three teams, one responsible for renovating their broken-down living quarters, one for livestock (sheep, ducks, and chickens), and one for planting (roses, hydroponic lettuce, and wheat, although all ten of them work in the wheatfields). In season 2 they focus more on individual projects, mostly plant-related apart from fish, crayfish, and bees; they continue to grow wheat and rice along with rapeseed flowers. In addition they cook for themselves, entertain various c-ent personages as guests, adopt numerous local stray dogs, collaborate with farming/charity initiatives in various regions, and give concerts.
The actual farming content is shown in thorough, day-to-day detail. At first they have no idea what they're doing and proceed by trial and error, mostly error, with a huge amount of wasted effort (one of the first new words I learned at this point was 白干); eventually, seeking instruction wherever they can get it, they begin to figure things out and produce results. In season 1 they divide into three teams, one responsible for renovating their broken-down living quarters, one for livestock (sheep, ducks, and chickens), and one for planting (roses, hydroponic lettuce, and wheat, although all ten of them work in the wheatfields). In season 2 they focus more on individual projects, mostly plant-related apart from fish, crayfish, and bees; they continue to grow wheat and rice along with rapeseed flowers. In addition they cook for themselves, entertain various c-ent personages as guests, adopt numerous local stray dogs, collaborate with farming/charity initiatives in various regions, and give concerts.
The propaganda thing: In short, yeah, it is propaganda in some ways. Here are the details of what it looks like to me, for what it’s worth. (Caveat that all I know about China is what I’ve read and watched. If I am getting something stupidly wrong or overlooking something likewise, please let me know.)
For a Chinese reality program there are not a lot of straight-up nationalist/jingoist moments, maybe two or three in two-hundred-odd hours (almost drowned out in effect by the good old capitalist-style advertising for sponsors’ products, innocuous things like energy drinks and household appliances, which is foregrounded almost to the point of parody). There is no shortage of messaging along the lines of, farming is good for the people and the country, more young people should become farmers, technology is good for farming; this part would probably not be significantly different on a similar show made in Japan or the US or Germany or wherever, and I don’t find it especially disturbing.
The part that bothers me much more is the negative space. There is absolutely no mention, ever, of Mao’s famine or anything else to do with modern Chinese agricultural history. Contemporary rural poverty is just barely touched on (possibly a little more in season 3, which is in progress?), but not in a systemic way or with any reference to the various related social issues of rural-urban and other inequity, etc. (it’s notable that when the farmboys visit rural areas the local residents tend to guess them younger than they are, emphasizing that rural people age faster). Also, while the farmboys use their name recognition to boost agricultural products from various autonomous minority areas, and when traveling in Xinjiang they stay in a Kazakh yurt, work on a Hui-run flower farm, and visit an Uyghur-owned vineyard, ethnic minorities in Xinjiang in particular and China in general are depicted only as loyal Chinese citizens and cultural local color. All of this is obviously no surprise given censorship rules; if one decides to watch the show anyway, there’s nothing to do about it except bear it in mind and try to read between the lines. (The other thing is that it’s all what the cameras show; there’s no way to know what the actual behind-the-scenes looks like, so who knows.)
The part that bothers me much more is the negative space. There is absolutely no mention, ever, of Mao’s famine or anything else to do with modern Chinese agricultural history. Contemporary rural poverty is just barely touched on (possibly a little more in season 3, which is in progress?), but not in a systemic way or with any reference to the various related social issues of rural-urban and other inequity, etc. (it’s notable that when the farmboys visit rural areas the local residents tend to guess them younger than they are, emphasizing that rural people age faster). Also, while the farmboys use their name recognition to boost agricultural products from various autonomous minority areas, and when traveling in Xinjiang they stay in a Kazakh yurt, work on a Hui-run flower farm, and visit an Uyghur-owned vineyard, ethnic minorities in Xinjiang in particular and China in general are depicted only as loyal Chinese citizens and cultural local color. All of this is obviously no surprise given censorship rules; if one decides to watch the show anyway, there’s nothing to do about it except bear it in mind and try to read between the lines. (The other thing is that it’s all what the cameras show; there’s no way to know what the actual behind-the-scenes looks like, so who knows.)
So what is it about this show that I’ve found so addictive? After becoming aware of it thanks to mumblemumble and the episode she found where Wang Yang is a guest on the farm, I noticed “wow, there’s a lot of this” and thought it might make nice background Chinese listening practice while I did something else. Then I found I wasn’t making any progress on any of the something-else because I kept paying attention to the farming show, and then I realized I was hooked. (Also, it struck me at first as a nice low-key documentary-type thing to watch, fun and soothing, and then I got SO INVESTED that it wasn’t soothing at all, I was so concerned with whether the farmboys’ various endeavors, on and off the farm, would go okay!)
The obvious point is that the farmboys in question are ten good-looking young men! Easy to recommend on those grounds alone, especially since they are by no means all from the same mold visually. That aside, the show does two things in terms of story-telling that are surefire for me. First, it’s very slice-of-lifey—there are a lot of comic moments and some very dramatic and moving ones, especially in season 1, but the bulk of it is made up of the ordinary everyday tasks on the farm. Second, it is EXTREMELY character-driven. Which sounds strange to say about a reality/documentary show, but part of the essential interest of it is getting to know the ten of them in detail, seeing what each one of them is like, how their lives so far have shaped them and how they react to different situations and change (or don’t change) over the series, both individually and in their interactions with one another and with other people.
Also the language-learning, or at least -encountering, opportunities go without saying! Two hundred-plus hours of (mostly) unscripted conversation among native speakers, all of it with Chinese subtitles, is not easy to come by; their speech includes everything from net slang to Mencius as well as song lyrics, jokes and puns, technical terms and chengyu. I don’t know if it’s actually improved my Chinese—my listening is not much better, sadly, but I think I do read faster (thanks, subtitles!) and have a considerably larger vocabulary (allowing for slang) compared to a year ago. I wrote once before about the various dialects used by the farmboys, which are always interesting to listen for, especially as they pick up words and accents from one another (the Xinjiang-accented “zu ba” for 走吧 becomes a family catchphrase throughout the series, the guy whose roommate is from Guangdong acquires some conversational Cantonese, the use or misuse of 儿化音 is a consistent running joke, and so on). They also throw in bits of English of wildly varying accuracy here and there, sometimes employed for bilingual puns.
Finally, most of them are musicians (and all of them sing, even the actors), and I’m a sucker for that: watching them transform at their occasional concerts from hapless but determined amateur farmers to confident, experienced professional performers who love what they do, hearing some genuinely gorgeous singing (and some which, while less musically outstanding, is still fun in context, see character-driven above), getting glimpses of their rehearsal process for group songs (and dances) and the way the songwriters among them work on new songs, watching them fall asleep to a guitar lullaby from the “oldest brother” last thing at night.
Also the language-learning, or at least -encountering, opportunities go without saying! Two hundred-plus hours of (mostly) unscripted conversation among native speakers, all of it with Chinese subtitles, is not easy to come by; their speech includes everything from net slang to Mencius as well as song lyrics, jokes and puns, technical terms and chengyu. I don’t know if it’s actually improved my Chinese—my listening is not much better, sadly, but I think I do read faster (thanks, subtitles!) and have a considerably larger vocabulary (allowing for slang) compared to a year ago. I wrote once before about the various dialects used by the farmboys, which are always interesting to listen for, especially as they pick up words and accents from one another (the Xinjiang-accented “zu ba” for 走吧 becomes a family catchphrase throughout the series, the guy whose roommate is from Guangdong acquires some conversational Cantonese, the use or misuse of 儿化音 is a consistent running joke, and so on). They also throw in bits of English of wildly varying accuracy here and there, sometimes employed for bilingual puns.
Finally, most of them are musicians (and all of them sing, even the actors), and I’m a sucker for that: watching them transform at their occasional concerts from hapless but determined amateur farmers to confident, experienced professional performers who love what they do, hearing some genuinely gorgeous singing (and some which, while less musically outstanding, is still fun in context, see character-driven above), getting glimpses of their rehearsal process for group songs (and dances) and the way the songwriters among them work on new songs, watching them fall asleep to a guitar lullaby from the “oldest brother” last thing at night.
Below, the ten farmboys in detail, with photos (not very well screenshot, sorry), because I couldn’t resist.
#1. Jiang Dunhao 蒋敦豪, born in 1995, a singer from Bole, Xinjiang: Reserved, soft-spoken, self-deprecating, with a deadpan sense of humor and a long-time performer’s aplomb, along with a quiet strength of will (cultivated over a very uneven career) that sees him through everything from midwifing sheep to handling an online fan implosion, shaken but coping because, as the oldest, he understands it to be his responsibility. Da-ge to his “younger brothers,” Dundun to pretty much everyone else. He takes charge of the sheep in season 1 (which turns out to be much more traumatic than anyone expected) and handles thirty beehives and the resultant honey in season 2, making good on the name of the band where he’s the lead vocalist (旅行新蜜蜂|Trip New Bee). On stage he comes into his own, still low-key and calm but shining with the joy of singing. (Not directly relevant to the show, he‘s now actually one of my favorite singers: he has a light, grainy yet clear, distinctive voice (danmu from a concert video: “when da-ge sings it just hits different”) with a tenor’s high notes and a baritone’s darker vocal color, along with an effortless dynamic, stylistic, and emotional range.)
Song: 麦芒 (a group song, but he wrote it and he sings the solo in the last verse)
#2. Lu Zhuo 鹭卓, born in 1995, a singer from Taiyuan, Shanxi: Gregarious, extroverted, a chatterbox who talks irrepressibly with his hands. sakana17 calls him a chaos magnet and she’s not wrong; the Chinese fans have a similar term for him in 全自动闯祸几, fully-automated trouble finding machine. Things just happen to him: machines break down the moment he climbs into the operator’s seat, rain falls from clear skies, he gets lost in unlikely places, you name it. He’s always getting himself into some kind of chaos and always getting teased rotten for it (mostly by Zhuo Yuan, see #6 below), and—except when he thinks he’s causing others trouble—stays cheerful, keeps the others cheerful by playing the butt of the joke, and keeps working. He’s kind-hearted to a fault, quick to joke around but equally quick to be sure no one’s feelings are hurt, and ready to step up and provide dependable support and comfort whenever anyone else is tired or upset or in a bad way; his long-standing friendship with Zhuo Yuan is the emotional cornerstone of the whole group. He spends both seasons growing roses.
Song: 后陡门的夏 (again, a group song which he wrote [except for the rap, which is Zhuo Yuan’s] and where he sings the last-verse solo)
#3. Li Gengyun 李耕耘, born in 1996, an actor from Nanchuan, Chongqing: The only one of the ten to have some farming experience coming in, he comes off at first as prickly, dour, and intensely determined to get the work done right. In fact the former two characteristics are mostly a defense mechanism for acute shyness; once he trusts the others enough to relax, he turns out to have a goofy sense of humor and a deep well of affection. Expert at carpentry, metalwork, and artisanry in general, he does a lot of the background work making their dilapidated house into a home, including building a colorful herbaceous border and a swingset; he also raises a large family of pet rabbits and, true to his Chongqing roots, grows a forest of hot peppers. He can predict the weather, and climbs mountains for fun.
Song: 无奈 (written for him by Lu Zhuo)
#4. Li Hao 李昊, born in 1997, a singer from Foshan, Guangdong: In season 1 in particular, he tends to come off as the comic relief, with his melodramatic reactions usually played for laughs, his thick Cantonese accent (“it’s a feature, not a bug!”), his habit (even more than the rest of them) of bursting into song at the drop of a lyric, and his initial allergy to hard work—it takes him much longer than any of the others to resign himself to routine, tedious, strenuous physical work all day every day. But he’s also an aspiring director who becomes extremely competent, highly professional, and very diligent as soon as he has a camera of any kind in his hands; plus he’s a natural salesman, a world-champion sweet-talker who can bowl anyone over with a barrage of flirty chatter, the more effective because he really is interested in the lives of everyone he meets. This applies to dogs as well as people: he’s the first to adopt one of the local stray dogs, keeping “Hongbao” at his side for the rest of the series.
Song: 骗你是小狗 (which he performs on stage with a dog in his arms)
#5. Zhao Yibo 赵一博, born in 1998, an actor from Changzhi, Shanxi: Originally trained as a marine engineer, he has endless intellectual curiosity and a quick, organized mind that instantly absorbs and parses complex information of all kinds (except dance steps); he’s also, as the company secretary, a gifted administrator who can run a meeting or an event with flawless efficiency. Sweet-tempered, high-strung, soft-hearted, fast-talking, fond of practical jokes and wordplay, an experienced welder and electrician with a flair for technical design, a shy introvert who also has an urge to perform that drove him right into becoming an actor. He helps with the sheep and hatches his own chickens in season 1, and builds the greenhouse watering system in season 2.
Song: 小城回忆 (one of a series of “hometown songs” each of them recorded for their own province)
#6. Zhuo Yuan 卓沅, born in 1999, a singer/dancer from Yuzhou, Henan: Chronologically and also to some extent emotionally the center of the group, keeping the others going with his cheerful good nature and endless steady energy. Probably the most involved of all of them in the agricultural side of their work, he takes the lead in their wheatfields as well as growing many strawberries along with hydroponic lettuce, tulips, and thyme. Highly perceptive, always with just the right sly or heartfelt comment in his gentle Henan drawl, quick to express frustration but invariably pushing on through to a solution; a competent cook and a born dancer and dance teacher. He and Lu Zhuo (see #2 above), whose friendship goes back seven years over their time in the boyband trenches, are inseparable and deeply reliant on each other (although their mutual affection is often shown through ruthless teasing). Both are also fond of using their own dialect of English: “太amazing了,” “somebody people,” “let me see see” and so on.
Song: 凌晨三点半 (written to feature his various talents)
#7. Zhao Xiaotong 赵小童, born in 1999, a stage actor from Qingdao, Shandong: Get you a man who can do both, and then some: carry the heaviest things like it’s nothing, grow oodles of vegetables (he specializes in kale and fancy mushrooms), cook delicious meals (including both his own produce and his hometown specialties), draw and paint with skill and passion, care attentively for a sick roommate, build a basketball court from scratch and be the high scorer on it, perform an original crosstalk routine with great flair, write song lyrics in the fluent English he learned in England, cover Cantonese songs with a perfect accent, play a bamboo flute the first time he lays hands on it, and more. His watchword is 没事儿! no problem, it’ll all work out. His big innocent eyes and genuinely serene, sincere demeanor also allow him to get away with a lot of stealth sarcasm, disguised by his gentle delivery until the zinger lands.
Song: 没事儿，真没事儿 (his theme song)
#8. He Haonan 何浩楠, born in 2000, a singer from Jinyun, Zhejiang: Xiao He holds six vehicle licenses, everything from passenger cars to excavators and drones, and he won’t let anyone forget it; he also wants to make sure they know he’s a born and bred southerner. Teasing aside, his skilled machine operation is often invaluable on the farm, along with his level head in a crisis and talent with animals (he supervises the ducks in season 1). He’s a sharp operator when it comes to money as well, early on earning the nickname of 卧龙 (sleeping dragon) or Long-ge for short (no relation to Z1L). A fashion icon (insofar as possible in an everyday context involving mud, sheep, ducks, mud, fertilizer, fish, bees, and mud), he likes to swagger in his taciturn way, but when someone else is crying he’s the first to offer a hug.
Song: 雨过之后 (in which, like many of them, he makes free of English lyrics)
#9. Chen Shaoxi 陈少熙, born in 2002, a singer/actor from Lanzhou, Gansu: The only one to come from a family of entertainers, he grew up training to be a Chinese opera singer and occasionally performs excerpts, the ethereal opera vocalization much in contrast to his height, broad shoulders, and deep bass speaking voice. He has a tendency to explode showily at regular intervals, bursting into furious declamations using vocabulary as close as he can get to cursing on camera; but he never takes himself totally seriously, sweet nature just visible underneath. He also adores dogs and acquires most of the strays that become their pets, quick to croon and cuddle with whichever one is closest. Stubborn, hard-working, and a chronic grumbler, he runs the shrimp pond in season 1 and the fish pond in season 2, undaunted by sole responsibility for a large lake (which is promptly nicknamed 熙湖 in a pun on his name and Hangzhou’s famous West Lake).
Song: 若能握住那阵风或许我们就不会被吹得太远 (known to all and sundry as “Shaoxi’s 19-character song” for its long title)
#10. Wang Yiheng 王一珩, born in 2004, a singer from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia: Only just eligible to participate at eighteen when the show started, he goes by didi (little brother) more often than by his name (when he’s not being called 小卷毛 or Little Curly for his signature frizzy hairdo). An enthusiastic and prolific singer-songwriter who wants to grow up to be David Tao, he is easy-going and happy-go-lucky, eager for new experiences of all kinds, from eating a hot pepper raw to drinking sheep milk fresh from the sheep and getting an excavator license. He also has a talent for carpentry inherited from his grandfather. In season two he takes charge of the crayfish pond, while also learning to cook delicious gourmet hamburgers, his favorite food (praised by one of his older brothers with “This family needs Wang Yiheng’s hamburgers like a fish doesn’t need a bicycle!”).
Song: 心暖暖 (a nice example of his style of R&B)
and a song with all ten of them to end with, just because why not: 我成为我的同时.
phew, 这就是一篇做大做强了的文章...
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Date: 2025-03-20 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 03:02 pm (UTC)🎶Tale as old as time🎶
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Date: 2025-03-21 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-21 12:33 pm (UTC)It is, you know, a big time commitment, but it's easy to get hooked. You could look at some of the songs I linked, especially the ones with live performances, and see what you think to start with... ;)
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Date: 2025-03-23 03:10 pm (UTC)The propaganda aspect is most fascinating. My first thought about the Farmboys show has always been whether the whole thing is meant to imply that sending young intellectuals out to forced farm labor in the 60s was a good idea. Three years in they'll break even and all is well. (Have they made profit yet? I only know they did not in season 1.)
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Date: 2025-03-23 05:00 pm (UTC)The part that bothers me much more is the negative space.
Yeah. A lot goes unmentioned. Not surprising given censorship, as you say, but it's something a viewer has to consider.
Without getting too spoilery, I'll say that season 3 shows some more village reality without directly confronting the policies, system, or history that create the reality. I don't know if any viewer would fail to be struck by the contrast of these attractive young men in their trendy clothes arriving in the village and mingling with and working with the (usually much-older) locals. But also, no one (the show, the locals, the farmboys) pretends the reality is different than what it is. Like, when they're visiting a northern village and everyone's explaining that the young people/whole families have gone to the south to find work, that's the reality.
ETA: I forgot this, though: Season 3 has a lot more direct interviews with the locals about their personal stories and conditions. Again, nothing that confronts the system directly, but realistic about stuff like "there was a project to do x but it didn't help me with y."
The actual farming content is shown in thorough, day-to-day detail.
This continues to be true in season 3 and is, I think, one of several reasons to visit villages: to show in detail other aspects of farm life that the guys haven't experienced on their farm.
Also, it struck me at first as a nice low-key documentary-type thing to watch, fun and soothing, and then I got SO INVESTED that it wasn’t soothing at all, I was so concerned with whether the farmboys’ various endeavors, on and off the farm, would go okay!
THIS! This was me. Exactly the same process! (I regret nothing. :D)
but part of the essential interest of it is getting to know the ten of them in detail, seeing what each one of them is like, how their lives so far have shaped them and how they react to different situations and change (or don’t change) over the series, both individually and in their interactions with one another and with other people
This is a wonderful description. Because I was once deeply fannish about a Kpop group, that's the comparison I often make in my head, and it boils down to this description. Absolute catnip to me.
I wrote once before about the various dialects used by the farmboys, which are always interesting to listen for, especially as they pick up words and accents from one another
I'm very grateful for your talent for hearing the different dialects and accents! At the beginning, the only one I heard as sounding different was Li Hao. Over time (and helped by the teasing of the others!), I could hear that He Haonan pronounced some things differently. And I could tell that Li Gengyun used more 儿, etc. But that's about as far as I've gotten in being able to hear the differences. Although when they visit different regions I usually can tell that the locals have different accents.
全自动穿祸几, fully-automated trouble finding machine
LOL! I love it. Accurate description!
plus he’s a natural salesman, a world-champion sweet-talker who can bowl anyone over with a barrage of flirty chatter, the more effective because he really is interested in the lives of everyone he meets
Li Hao. ♥ I'd add that he develops a surprisingly good business sense, thinking through various ideas to get to the core questions of "why would someone be interested in [event/product/etc.]" and "would the cost of [event/product/etc.] be worthwhile, if not for short-term gain then for long-term business relationships."
I don't think it's spoilery to say that Zhao Xiaotong adds to his repertoire of abilities in season 3! :D
这就是一篇做大做强了的文章...
I see what you did there. XD
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Date: 2025-03-23 05:43 pm (UTC)The economics of the farm and "profit" is a very interesting question...
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Date: 2025-03-24 11:59 am (UTC)It's an interesting point; I'd second sakana's response in general. My feeling in general is probably not, for the following reasons: it doesn't seem directly relevant to the show's target audience (young people inside China) or goals (getting young people more interested in and involved with farming). You could say that in that sense it's distantly implied that forced rustication (is that what it's called? did I make that up?) must have been a good thing based on similar logic/Party ideology etc., though my impression is that when Chinese media wants to send a political message it is not subtle about it (and in this case there is no actual reference to that part of history in the show at all, zero). I don't really feel the situations are comparable except in the very broadest of strokes.
That said, I just don't have the sociocultural/political/educational/economic awareness of what actually goes on in China to say anything definitely. Hard to know.
(Have they made profit yet? I only know they did not in season 1.)
You know I don't know? I don't think it comes up much in season 2. I suspect they have at least paid their debts via their farm produce, concert tour, clothing line etc., given their now huge popularity, but I couldn't say for sure.
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Date: 2025-03-24 12:10 pm (UTC)I'll say that season 3 shows some more village reality without directly confronting the policies, system, or history that create the reality. ...But also, no one (the show, the locals, the farmboys) pretends the reality is different than what it is. ...Again, nothing that confronts the system directly, but realistic about stuff like "there was a project to do x but it didn't help me with y."
I'm looking forward to watching this, and it's very interesting. (No worries about spoilers, I don't think I'll be bothered by knowing anything in advance!) It's kind of the same thing one wonders about with some dramas--to what extent are they doing it deliberately/with awareness? where do the lines of what's okay to show fall? (sorry, terrible syntax) what do we need to know to read between the lines? and so on.
I enjoy listening for accents/dialects, but I can't really hear that much either, especially not tones--a lot of it is guesswork and assumptions! But it's fun to try and figure out. (I wonder if there are any good materials in English about dialect code-switching within China...).
全自动穿祸几
I got it slightly wrong! Fixed now in the post above--it should be 全自动闯祸几, sorry. (and yeah, it's a very satisfying term ;) )
I'd add that he develops a surprisingly good business sense, thinking through various ideas to get to the core questions of "why would someone be interested in [event/product/etc.]" and "would the cost of [event/product/etc.] be worthwhile, if not for short-term gain then for long-term business relationships."
I feel like for Li Hao in particular that's solid professional good practice, given that a director is more likely than an actor or singer to be running their own projects, budget included. Good for him.
I don't think it's spoilery to say that Zhao Xiaotong adds to his repertoire of abilities in season 3! :D
Look, at this point the only thing that would surprise me would be finding something that Xiaotong couldn't turn his hand to...
I see what you did there. XD
I don't think my grammar is right but I couldn't resist ;)
<3 <3 <3
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Date: 2025-03-24 02:17 pm (UTC)Oh, wow. :o I knew the show was long, but I never thought about just how it would compare with a typical drama. That's an amazing amount of content! Especially for language-learning, like you said, with the dialogue being unscripted and casual and in such a range of registers and accents.
The part that bothers me much more is the negative space.
Ah. I feel like this is often the case in dramas, too -- some things just conspicuously don't get said. And of course reading between the lines can be difficult if you don't have enough background knowledge about what's being glossed over, which I feel like I often don't.
thought it might make nice background Chinese listening practice while I did something else. Then I found I wasn’t making any progress on any of the something-else because I kept paying attention to the farming show
Hah, fandom in a nutshell right there. XD
Interesting to read your comments on the show being both slice-of-life (which was clear from the Wang Yang episode, and surprisingly interesting and amusing to watch) and also character-driven, which isn't something I would have really predicted, although I guess when I think about it, a lot of reality shows do rely on the strength of character of the contestants/participants. But that was something I definitely didn't pick up as much from the one episode I watched (well, except for Li Hao, whose personality seemed pretty irrepressible XD).
Neat to see your descriptions of all the farmboys, and also where they're all from. I just recently went through a deck of Anki cards for learning all the Chinese provinces, so I'm enjoying that I can now actually visualize how spread out all the places they came from are! Also neat to hear that several of them write their own songs -- I was under the impression that that was pretty rare in Cpop, but maybe that's a trend that's changing.
"Needs [X] like a fish doesn’t need a bicycle" is a great phrase. XD
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Date: 2025-03-25 06:24 am (UTC)LOLOL, I have a screencap of this same moment! (And a reciprocal one of Zhuo Yuan watching Lu Zhuo's performance.)
I wonder if there are any good materials in English about dialect code-switching within China...
A quick search finds some academic journal articles, including ones about code-switching between Mandarin and English and between Mandarin and Cantonese. This one in an open-access journal seems promising. Also this one but it's paywalled. (I can see if I can acquire a copy for free through my workplace.) Oh! There is a book: Language Attitudes and Identities in Multilingual China : A Linguistic Ethnography.
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Date: 2025-03-25 12:40 pm (UTC)<3 <3 <3
and ooh, thank you very much for the links! Sorry, I didn't mean to sit back and make you do the heavy lifting. Those look fascinating and I am going to see if I can get my hands on that book.
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Date: 2025-03-25 01:24 pm (UTC)SAME. Sometimes I don't even know where the lines to read between are, and other times I don't know if I'm reading the right things between them...
and also character-driven, which isn't something I would have really predicted
I don't know if I chose exactly the right word, but I guess I mean the interest of getting to "know" each of them so that relatively ordinary events/actions are fun to watch because you can think "yeah, he would say that," or conversely notice how someone who started out withdrawn is now more affectionate with the others in passing, and so on.
(and yeah, "irrepressible" is an excellent word for Li Hao!)
I just recently went through a deck of Anki cards for learning all the Chinese provinces, so I'm enjoying that I can now actually visualize how spread out all the places they came from are!
that sounds like a fun deck! and yeah, they are pretty widely spread in origins. (I have to say I put up Jiang Dunhao for coming from Bole, Xinjiang, the hinterland's hinterland, and making a name for himself in the east...).
"Needs [X] like a fish doesn’t need a bicycle" is a great phrase. XD
Isn't it? It's funny how these things slip through the language barriers; Li Hao can also be heard saying 世界上没有免费的午餐!
update: reading
Date: 2025-03-28 03:55 am (UTC)I was also able to get a copy of the paywalled article, but it wasn't quite as informative as I'd hoped. It was more of a dry summary of survey results than explanation/context/hypothesis. However, in that same issue of the journal (Journal of Asian Pacific Communication volume 26, issue 1) there were several other interesting articles.
Re: update: reading
Date: 2025-03-28 01:12 pm (UTC)Nice! I looked at the table of contents via your link and it looks terrific, keep me posted. Added to my list for the next time I do a book order. Will also keep the journal cited in mind <3
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Date: 2025-03-29 09:02 pm (UTC)FWIW, I don't feel an anti-intellectual strain in the show,
That makes total sense, it's just my own personal pet peeve, but it would not make sense for them to even go there.
I've also wondered, since learning that a lot of sent-down youth became Communist Party cadres later, about any behind-the-scenes political support/influence for the show.
Yeah, that sounds surprising on the surface, but it must be psychologically stringent somehow. It does remind me of 1984 (the novel/movie).
The documentary (Weina) I watched by the woman whose parents fled to Austria also had a large portion about her grandfather, who was sent down and had ptsd for the rest of his life, and still had only good things to say about the party. People like that exerting pressure behind the scenes absolutely makes sense.
from nnozomi's response:
my impression is that when Chinese media wants to send a political message it is not subtle about it
Ha omg that is very true. I realize that I'm just projecting my own pet peeve. It really doesn't make sense for the show to mention it or even think it. They have other goals, you're right.
given their now huge popularity, but I couldn't say for sure.
Right! They weren't popular in season 1, but they are now. That should make a big difference.
Thank you both for answering my question!
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Date: 2025-03-30 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 12:47 am (UTC)These are some exceptionally lovely farmers.
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Date: 2025-04-01 01:33 pm (UTC)oh yes, lolol, that's absolutely perfect!
These are some exceptionally lovely farmers.
Glad you think so <3