High in the hills of Yang Ming Shan, under the shadow of ICRT radio's massive transmission dishes, Mr Sheng struggles with a recalcitrant hose that does not want to stay attached to the tap. Late afternoon has brought a fresh breeze, mitigating the heat of the day, but Sheng still looks hot and bothered.
Inspecting his pudgy hands with faint bewilderment, he is reminded that farm work does not come naturally to him. "Look at these blisters," he says, shaking his head. During the week, Sheng works in an insurance office, but for the last two years, he and his wife have come here one afternoon a week to live the pastoral dream.
At the moment, however, he doesn't seem to be particularly enjoying it.
"We used to come with the children," Sheng says. "But now they have grown up, they don't come with us anymore." In a plastic bag at the edge of his small plot sits his meager harvest: A couple of cucumbers and a bag full of edible amaranth. "It hardly repays the effort."
Nevertheless, he still comes back every weekend it doesn't rain.
A SLICE OF COUNTRY LIFE
City gardens were first developed in Taiwan under the auspices of the Council of Agriculture in 1994 based on the Klien Garden, a concept pushed by the German government of the 19th century to provide the residents of tightly packed tenements with a source of food and healthful activity.
It is being promoted in Taiwan for much the same reason, aiming to tap into the agricultural idyll still entertained by many Taiwanese, many of whom are little more than a generation separated from a life on the land. According to Kuo Chun-kai (郭俊開), a technical officer in charge of city farms at the Council of Agriculture, "people are lining up to get a piece of land in a city garden." There are nine such gardens scheduled for completion this year and 60 in operation around the island.
Luo Yung-ming (羅永銘) of the Hsintien Farmers Association says that although their city garden is still some months away from completion ? work has been delayed by recent heavy rains - they have received 30 applications for plots.
Even National Taiwan University is getting in on the act, hoping to open a city garden aimed primarily at staff and students in Ankeng (安坑) on the southwestern outskirts of Taipei. The land is currently being used for pasture.On a warm Sunday evening in Luotung, at the southern end of Chunching Street with its scattering of down-at-heel massage parlors and auto repair shops, the Luotung Farmers Association building does not look very inviting. But behind its concrete bulk, around two hectares of land have been given over to cultivation by local residents. Neatly arranged strips of vegetables and colorful straw scarecrows, one with the words "modern farmer" written on it, testify to the dedication of the part-time farmers at the Luotung City Garden.
"It's just that I am retired now," says one elderly man as he skillfully turned the earth and built up the banks of his vegetable plot. "So I have nothing else to do." Working barefoot, a tattered business shirt clings to his back, transparent with sweat and stained with earth; his limbs leathery from the sun, the man might have been a professional farmer.
A few strips down, another man is taking no risks with the evening sun. Shaded under a grass hat, his arms covered in sleeve protectors, he works at his melon trellis. "I'm just here for a couple of hours," he says. "In the afternoon it is simply too hot. And in the evening there are too many mosquitoes."
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