There are many ways to imagine an agricultural student.
He may stay away from the complicated society and sow seeds in a pure land without high-rise buildings. He would watch the plants grow freely, receiving sunlight, rain and dew. The gentle and cool evening breeze blew through the leaves and his face.
And the other one is: his skin is tanned, behind him is the land waiting to be cleared, the tractor rumbling next to him, the sun shines on his face, causing some beads of sweat.
This summer, because of the latter, agriculture has once again entered people's attention.
Before Ding Xigong got out of the circle with the "enrollment stamp reduction" photo he took, he was still a first-year student at Yunnan Agricultural University. After studying Chinese herbal medicine, he wanted to make popular science videos.
So, under the blue sky and white clouds, in the school’s golden sunflower field, and in front of the fruits on the summer branches, he shared what he had learned.
The romance and fun in his videos can also be traced in the daily lives of agricultural students.
An agricultural student remembered that she drank wine in class until she felt dizzy. Another man got up after four o'clock to pollinate soybeans. I don't know whether it was due to heat stroke or gastrointestinal discomfort. He vomited twice.
[1] What are you studying in agriculture?
That day, while working, Ding Xigong was inspired to shoot this video. Unexpectedly, Yunnan Agricultural University also became a new internet celebrity university.
Netizens joked that "a hoe is enough" and "Are there people like me who just like farming?"
Ding Xigong said that he had thought about why his video became popular, "Maybe on the one hand, my skin color is different from that of the land. For example, on the other hand, college students all play games and basketball, and students from Yunnan Agricultural University drive tractors and plow the fields, which makes everyone feel different. "
When he applied for the college entrance examination, his family wanted him to stay in the province. To go to school, he went from his hometown Chuxiong to Kunming, the provincial capital two hundred miles away.
"Does studying agriculture really require farming every day?" People always ask agricultural students this question. This kind of jokes made Ding Xigong feel interesting and helpless.
His major is Chinese herbal medicine, and his courses include Chinese herbal medicine cultivation, resource development, and processing identification. Although it was not his intended major at first, one year of study made him fall in love with this subject.
When he was in middle school and high school, he often helped his family with farm work after school. The land is familiar to him.
He studied the morphological characteristics, functions and effects of Chinese herbal medicine in class. After class, he also went to the school's experimental field and greenhouse for practical operations.
And Zhou Runyu of Northwest A&F University has completed four years of undergraduate studies and will soon continue her graduate studies in this major. During her graduate studies, her major is grape and wine engineering, and her scientific research direction is cultivation, with an emphasis on agronomy.
Her university is located in Yangling District, Xianyang City. There are villages and large areas of farmland near the school. "When you get up early and pass by the wheat field, you can see several students wearing hats and holding hoes, busy in it."
Freshmen must participate in a program called " Three Xia " activities. Each person divides a small piece of mature wheat land to harvest, dry, and shell the wheat, which represents "summer harvest, summer planting, and summer management", which is the "Three Summers". This made Zhou Runyu feel the sense of ritual.
’s four-year university course is both comprehensive and complex. She has grown grapes, made wine, studied the wine market and even learned wine tasting.
During class, they have to taste wine and learn the styles and varieties of wine. Students from other colleges took notice and "retaliated very crazily." But she was not interested because she fainted after class.
[2] Acknowledge hardships, but also allow romance
Zhou Runyu’s research group is engaged in cultivation, including grape quality cultivation and grape stress resistance research.In early July this year, she went to Ningxia Xige Winery to conduct field experiments, carrying a 16-liter spray can with 32 pounds of water in it.
"When I carried it for the first time, to tell you without exaggeration, I was lying on the ground. I was really tired, and it was hot, and there were more mosquitoes there." She recalled.
Students who study crops will have a harder time. In addition to conducting field experiments, the research cycle will also be longer. "One year's results cannot explain the problem. You need to do it again next year or the year after to verify whether your experiment is reliable."
She has done experiments on detasseling and pollinating grapes. For grape flowers as big as sesame seeds, you need to remove the flower caps and use tweezers to emasculate them one by one. "The bunch of grapes you eat, each grape is a flower." A bunch may not seem big, but it takes 40 minutes to an hour to emasculate them all.
before emasculating and pollinating the grapes. Picture/The interviewee provided
after emasculating and pollinating the grapes. Picture/provided by interviewee
One of her senior students studies the impact of different altitudes on grapes. Every August, he goes to Yunnan alone, pulling a small broken car equipped with various instruments and running on mountain roads at different altitudes. Going in August and coming back in November.
During the few years of studying agriculture, students kept a low profile. Zhou Runyu believed that this was because the research cycle of land-related majors was particularly long and “there was no way to be high-profile.”
On July 6, Achuan experienced the daily life of agricultural students for the first time. , got up at around 4 o'clock to pollinate soybeans. I don't know whether it was heatstroke or gastrointestinal discomfort, but he vomited twice. Over the course of a week, he carried soybeans, sorted seeds, and went to the fields to do hybridization wearing a straw hat. "I don't get up very early every day, just after three o'clock. I have realized the good habit of going to bed early and getting up early every day." Achuan joked.
His research direction is crops. This year, he was admitted to Northeast Agricultural University as a graduate student. The admission notice has not yet arrived, but he has already started working in the fields.
He always laughs at himself: "Tomorrow is from 6 pm to 12 pm, and it will be around 12 pm when I get back, which is not very late. Then I can rest for two or three hours, and then I can go crossbreeding again. You can see how fulfilling it is."
He also I will carefully photograph a snail and a small flower I find while working and put them on social platforms. For him, agriculture involves hardships that he is still unable to adapt to, but it is also mixed with a sense of joy in hardship and occasionally a little romance.
The little flowers photographed by Achuan. Picture/provided by the interviewee
Achuan previously studied electrical engineering for four years at a secondary school in Liaoning. After graduation, he went to Tianjin to find a job with a monthly salary of more than 4,000 yuan. He initially did not choose to take the postgraduate entrance examination because he felt that his academic qualifications were enough to give him a try. After working for a year, I found that I was defeated by reality.
This year he was admitted to Northeast Agricultural University as an undergraduate. He said that he took the postgraduate entrance examination because he wanted to go to graduate school, and that's how he came across agriculture.
[3] Studying agriculture is just a choice
Achuan described himself as "jumping from a bottle into a bucket." After passing the exam, he did improve his academic qualifications, but now he is confused, "The previous goal has been achieved, what about now?"
When it comes to his future and destiny, Ding Xigong, who was born in a rural area, has a natural advantage. He has just finished his first year at university and is already working on innovative and entrepreneurial projects with his seniors. They process Chinese herbal medicine into products and sell them to specific people in need.
"If I go back to teach you how to grow Chinese herbal medicine in the future, then I can process what I grow myself, and then mass produce and sell it. Compared with simple farming, its added value is higher." He thought, You can also go back to your hometown to do planting in the future.
In his spare time, Ding Xigong is also slowly exploring photography and making short videos. He thought that if he returned to his hometown after graduation to help develop his hometown, he would also need to know how to market and promote it.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Xiao Wei chose to take the postgraduate entrance examination and left agriculture.
During the college entrance examination, Xiao Wei was a little behind the undergraduate line, so he went to a junior college to major in flight attendant. Unwilling to accept it, three years later, he passed the junior college to undergraduate and was admitted to Anhui Agricultural University .
After completing all the four-year university courses in two years, Xiao Wei found that he was not interested in agriculture, but in medicine.
"At our age, many people don't know what their dreams are from childhood." He was eventually admitted to genetics , which is "somewhat related" to medicine.
Regardless of the choice, for Xiao Wei, the two years of studying at Anhui Agricultural University are still of great significance. In the past five years, from junior college to undergraduate to graduate school, he has been working hard on the regrets he had in the college entrance examination.
When Xiao Wei first applied for Anhui Agricultural University College of Plant Protection , he went for the name.
"Other majors, such as gardening, sound like planting trees, cutting flowers , you sound like a skilled worker, but you know what you will do after just hearing the name." But plant protection is different, " It's very general, and the name is also very catchy. Plant protection, there are so many plants, who do you protect?"
After truly learning, Xiao Wei's beautiful imagination gradually disappeared. This time last year, he was still working in the endless fields of farmland. Spray different chemicals into different zones and measure the effects. Xiao Wei felt that during those days, the people he came into contact with were very simple, and his mood was not that complicated, but he felt very tired physically.
In Xiao Wei’s opinion, Ding Xigong’s video expressed the pain points of agricultural students in a possibly humorous way. "Although I feel that some places are exaggerated, I think the core of what he said is right and can be empathized with and understood."
(Achuan and Xiaowei are pseudonyms in the article)
Jiupai News reporter Wu Feifei
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