Shengou: Happiness Can Be This Wild

Shengou: Happiness Can Be This Wild The joy of farming together The wildness of brewing together The depth of reading together This is a work that redefines life and practices community. Centered around the Shenggou community in Yilan, it depicts a group of dreamers living half as farmers and half as something else, navigating between city and countryside, attempting to break conventional value systems. From rice cultivation, brewing experiments, shared housing to land activism, the book interweaves scenes of action with personal transformations. Through a process of being nature-friendly, collaborating, and co-creating within the community, they continually encounter friction, negotiate, and practice a life philosophy of "abandoning mainstream societal frameworks and acting together." This is not just a story of rural revitalization; it's an exploration of how individuals can find freedom, taste, and a sense of belonging within a collective, discovering—that happiness can indeed be this wild. - "I wrote this book because I witnessed firsthand and personally experienced how a group of people on this land of Shengou are trying to forge a path different from the mainstream—a possibility for another way of life, our own. Here, we have tried and failed, and embraced surprises; we farm, we brew, we share spaces, we initiate land actions, and through repeated practice, our lives are redefined in their intersections. I want to record these fragments because they are not ready-made answers, but traces of exploration, collision, and self-transformation. This book is not here to tell you 'how you should live,' but rather to invite you to imagine together: when we choose to abandon the frameworks of mainstream society and act hand-in-hand, will we also discover—that happiness can indeed be this wild?" - Yang Wen-chuan, author of this book. - When we dare to imagine, dare to act, dare to co-create, we discover—that happiness can indeed be this wild. - Yang Wen-chuan Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning from National Taiwan University. Founder of "Liang Bai Jia New Farmer Incubation Platform." During his farming years, he served as an adjunct associate professor at Dharma Drum University of Liberal Arts and as the head of the Yilan County Government's Department of Agriculture. He has been engaged in rural planning for a long time. In 2013, to break through planning bottlenecks, he began farming in Shengou Village, Yuanshan Township, Yilan County, engaging in friendly cultivation of rice. He attempts to explore the possible development opportunities for Taiwan's rural areas in the internet age from the perspective of a farmer in a practical field. - Art Director | Wu Yu-ting Publisher | Slow Island Living Co., Ltd. First Edition, First Print | July 2025