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This week in PostMag: stories of rural resilience and the ‘aura farming’ phenomenon
We meet farmers weathering storms in Nam Chung, explore TikTok’s viral aura-boat craze, and taste Armenia’s reimagined traditions
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Have you ever wanted to pack it all away and move to the farm? I certainly have, usually around the 10th consecutive hour in front of a screen.
It’s tempting to romanticise rural life. Fewer emails. More trees. Cute farm animals. Reality, of course, is rarely so idyllic. In this week’s cover story, Joyce Yip visits Nam Chung, where Kit-ching has spent the last decade building a life as a full-time farmer. Her August was supposed to be a break. Instead, typhoons tore through the area, flattening trees and fences, and leaving her new seedlings destroyed. “You have to be the right amount of mad,” she says. It’s hard to argue with that.
Tucked away in the New Territories’ northeast, Nam Chung has become a kind of open-air experiment for Hongkongers trying to rewire their lives: academics, ex-editors, spiritualists. The village, population 30, has a temple-turned-co-living space, a vegetarian lunch club and just one minibus connecting it to the city. (I’m both drawn to and vaguely horrified by every part of that sentence.) The story prompted some introspection – could I really hack a one-minibus lifestyle?
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The rest of our issue skips around the globe. Heard of “aura farming”? If so, you’re cooler than me. I can claim to be clued in, but only by the grace of a Gen-Z colleague’s story earlier this summer where we unpacked the trending term. Aisyah Llewellyn dives even further down the #aurafarming rabbithole as she reports from Indonesia on the Pacu Jalur boat races that spread the phrase’s popularity after a viral TikTok. It’s a great read that reveals much beneath the surface of fleeting internet virality.
In Bhutan, Bibek Bhandari visits a hilltop “art shelter” built by artist Asha Kama Wangdi. It’s a work in progress, and while awaiting the final result, it’s hard not to be entranced by his vision. I was struck by one of his acolytes who’s lived on the hillside for three years, supporting Wangdi and eager to see him bring Bhutan’s contemporary art and artists to the rest of the world. “He doesn’t just teach us to be good artists but also good humans,” he says.
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Victoria Burrows lands in Armenia just as old-world tradition meets a new-world attitude. Lavash is still slapped against the walls of underground clay ovens, but there is also a Noma-influenced kitchen turning out reimagined childhood classics like medovik (honeycake) and sea buckthorn cocktails. Are you as tempted as I am?
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