University professor resigned at age 46 and became a farmer

My name is Jiang Mingtao, 59 years old, currently living in Marathon County, Wisconsin, USA. In the late 1980s, I went abroad from rural Shandong and went to Canada to study for a doctorate in medicine. In the 1990s, I went to the United States to study for a postdoctoral degree and was hired as an assistant professor by a university. I lived a decent middle-class life with a son and a daughter, a house and a car. But the boring scientific research work in the laboratory for many years has made me more and more exhausted physically and mentally, and I even suffered from seasonal depression. In 2009, at the age of 46, I chose to end my scientific research work and change my lifestyle for the rest of my life. I ran a fan club, worked as a newspaper editor, and worked as an insurance salesman. By chance, I bought a piece of land in the United States and eventually became a farmer. My ancestral home is Shandong, and I was born in 1963 in a peasant family in Yintan Township, Rushan, Weihai.

Follow me to find out what happened when a university professor resigned at the age of 46 and became a farmer.

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Jiang Mingtao/Oral

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My name is Jiang Mingtao (@American ginseng farmer Jiang Bo), 59 years old, currently living in Marathon County, Wisconsin, USA. In the late 1980s, I went abroad from rural Shandong and went to Canada to study for a doctorate in medicine. In the 1990s, I went to the United States to study for a postdoctoral degree and was hired as an assistant professor by a university. I lived a decent middle-class life with a son and a daughter, a house and a car.

For a person who came out of the countryside, I seemed to have succeeded. After crawling in the ivory tower for more than 20 years, I finally became the up-and-coming child that the elders in my hometown said. But the boring scientific research work in the laboratory for many years has made me more and more exhausted physically and mentally, and I even suffered from seasonal depression.

In 2009, at the age of 46, I chose to end my scientific research work and change my lifestyle for the rest of my life. I ran a fan club, worked as a newspaper editor, and worked as an insurance salesman. By chance, I bought a piece of land in the United States and eventually became a farmer.

Over the years, people have often asked me the same question: As a doctor who has studied medicine for more than 20 years, you don’t do scientific research but go to farm. What do you think? How should I put it? To use a joking saying, "The sweat you shed now is all the water that entered your brain back then."

When I was 16 years old, I went to college. Choosing to study medicine was not my original intention. It was more for a way out than out of interest. Facts have also proved that I prefer driving a tractor and working on the farm than working with a bunch of medicines, reagents and bottles in the laboratory all day long.

My ancestral home is Shandong, and I was born in 1963 in a peasant family in Yintan Township, Rushan, Weihai. Because my father was good at eloquence and writing, he was selected to support the construction of the Third Front, and he became a national cadre from a farmer. My mother is a rural woman who has only attended literacy classes for a few days. While farming, she also has to work hard to support our four brothers and sisters. When food was in short supply, she would find ways to fill the bellies of us siblings with sweet potato leaves, elm money, and locust flowers.

I am not a diligent person, and I was particularly playful when I was a child. However, since my father is not at home all year round, I can only follow my mother to do farm work in the production team like a little adult. In the winter, I plowed and leveled the fields; in the spring, I dug holes and planted trees on the hillsides; during the busy farming seasons of summer and autumn, I helped harvest crops and plow fields. On the way to school, I carried a basket on my back and collected manure for fertilizer along the way.

I remember when I was participating in the wheat harvest in the fourth grade of elementary school, I was deducted 4 work points by the production team because I worked hard. At that time, an adult male laborer only had 8 work points. Because I am often praised for doing well in farm work, I have found a special sense of value in farming.

When I was in middle school, people's communes were still being established in the countryside, following the example of Dazhai, which was bustling and noisy all day long. The school doesn't pay special attention to study, and organizes us to participate in labor every three days.

One time when I came back from work, the class teacher saw that I was sweating profusely and praised me, "Jiang Mingtao, you are really a good material for the production team leader!"

Later, when I was working on a tractor in an American farm , I feel happy when I think of this. Isn’t it just like the teacher wanted me to become the production captain?

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In 1977, the country began to resume the college entrance examination. One day I was working in the fields of the production team. , suddenly heard the loudspeaker in the village broadcasting the news broadcast program of the Central People's Broadcasting Station, and vaguely remembered that "workers, farmers, soldiers, etc. who meet the enrollment requirements can voluntarily sign up and be admitted on a merit-based basis" or something like that. In the winter of the same year, Rushan County was organizing a key class for the college entrance examination, and I was selected because of my good grades.

The class was filled with top students selected from various middle schools in the county. When I took English class for the first time, a female classmate from the county came up and introduced herself in English, saying, "My name is XXX , I love Beijing Tiananmen!" To be honest, I don't understand it at all, but it sounds catchy and makes me very envious. At that time, I couldn't even recognize the 26 letters of the English alphabet. There was nothing I could do about it. Children in the countryside didn't have the conditions to learn even if they wanted to.

Due to my relatively poor foundation, I started to catch up desperately. Slowly, my scores in various subjects became better and better, especially in Chinese and Physics. It was like opening up the second line of "Ren Du". I was ranked first or second in the class in several preliminaries. When it was my turn to take the college entrance examination, something went wrong. The night before I went to the exam room, my homeroom teacher saw that I didn't have a mosquito net, so he asked me to sleep at his house. I couldn't sleep anymore after the change of environment, and I just squinted for a while before dawn. The first math test in the morning made me feel dizzy and I didn’t even finish answering the test paper. In the end, I only got 65 points.

Those with a total score of 320 or above can study for national key undergraduate programs, and those with a total score of 280 or above can choose provincial undergraduate programs. My total score was 306. I didn’t fail the exam, but I lost many opportunities to choose schools. When I was filling out my application form, the head teacher said to me, "Mingtao, you should study medicine." I asked ignorantly, "Is there a medical school in the university?" The teacher said, "Yes, yes, you have a good memory and are suitable for studying medicine. Let’s apply this score to our provincial medical school.”

I didn’t know how to answer. Before the college entrance examination, I always thought that I was good at physics and liked engineering. I originally planned to major in engineering and become a radio engineer or something in the future. Studying medicine was definitely an option that I had never thought of. My father felt that the medical profession was a safe one with guaranteed income despite droughts and floods, and he agreed to take this job.

At that time, the joy of being able to go to college quickly outweighed my disappointment of not being able to choose engineering. Besides, for a 16-year-old rural child, what is interest compared to a way out? In this way, by some mistake, I applied for Shandong Medical College (now Shandong University Medical College) and started studying medicine.

In 1979, I came to Jinan, the provincial capital, to study at university. The undergraduate program of medical school was originally a five-year program. The year I entered the school, the school responded to the national call to establish a six-year English medical class. This time I was selected again. I was surprised and asked the teacher: I only scored 35 points in the exam, why was I selected? The teacher smiled, looked at me and said: Not bad, many talents have scored more than ten points.

It seems that I am not the best, but others are worse. Later, I entered an English medical class and began to specialize in English and basic subjects. Under this unique condition, I have a solid foundation in English. I came top in two school competitions, and also organized several competitions as a host, and my sense of language is getting better and better.

Compared with English, I feel that the major of medicine is a lot less interesting. Studying medicine is a slow job. Medical knowledge at the undergraduate level focuses on laying the foundation, which is a bit liberal arts in nature, focusing on memory and understanding. As my high school teacher said, I have a better memory, so I don't have to work hard at night like other classmates, and I haven't failed the class, but I don't really like this subject. At that time, a classmate in the class suffered from bleeding, and the school had no choice but to allow him to change his major. This incident made me envious for a long time.

After studying in the English medical class for six years, I was about to graduate. I thought that I could become a doctor in a hospital by studying clinical practice well, so I applied for the clinical graduate program of our school and began to specialize in pediatric cardiology research.

At that time, the trend of studying abroad began to become popular in China. My mentor had returned from studying at Stanford University in the United States. With his encouragement, I took the TOEFL test in 1987, intending to prepare for studying abroad. I was shocked when the results came out. I scored 650 out of 670 points. This score was among the best in the country. I couldn’t believe it.

In 1988, I came alone to the University of Ontario in Canada and began studying for a PhD in cardiac physiology. The novelty of arriving in a foreign country for the first time did not last long. During the first winter a few months later, I felt depressed and a little depressed from time to time. On the one hand, it is the impact of foreign culture, and on the other hand, it is troubled by local climate conditions.

Before I went abroad, I had been living in Shandong and was used to four distinct seasons. Ontario is located at 43 degrees north latitude, which is equivalent to the Northeast. The winter is very long, and there is no spring even at the end of April. Signs of blooming.

Fortunately, my wife also came to Canada a year later. She was my classmate at university. We held a simple wedding before graduating from graduate school. Her doctoral school was originally in the United States, but she later transferred to Canada in order to reunite with me. In 1995, we completed our PhD studies together. After graduation, I worked at the University of Toronto for a period of time while my wife passed the exam to become a medical intern.

Maybe it’s because of the mentality of “If you don’t visit the Great Wall, you’re not a hero.” I have a feeling in my heart that I won’t reach the top if I don’t study in the United States. Soon after, I got the opportunity to work as a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin in the United States. I felt that the development prospects and remuneration there might be better. If my wife goes to the United States to become a doctor, she will have more opportunities. After weighing it all, our family said goodbye to Canada and came to Wisconsin in the Midwest of the United States in 1996.

While I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I successfully obtained a grant from the American Heart Foundation and transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor to engage in cardiac protection research. The flagship journal in the field of cardiovascular research in the United States is called Circulation Research. In those ten years, I published three articles in this journal. It is said that in 2005, if teachers from Zhejiang University could publish an article in this magazine, they would receive a reward of 200,000 yuan for each article.

Later, one of my research results was adopted by the Journal of the American Physiological Society, and an editorial called it a "milestone discovery" and believed that I had theoretically pointed out the fallacy of the theory of myocardial protection by mitochondrial ion channels. This achievement allowed me to break my superstition on academic authority, but I also felt a sense of loss because of it.

Behind every scientific research achievement are many days and nights of suffering. Perhaps only enthusiasm can ignore the gap between high-intensity, long-term work input and unequal returns, and overcome those frustrating moments in scientific research. For me, I have ignored the key factor of "interest" when I chose my major. It can be said that I have been moving forward with patience.

The contract of an assistant professor in the United States is generally signed once a year. Starting from the second year of employment, my basic salary will be reduced by a percentage, and my income mainly depends on scientific research funds. This means that I have to achieve something every year, and the pressure is like a mountain in my heart. In addition, I often attend school affairs meetings and academic affairs meetings, and give lectures to graduate students several times a year. I dare not slack off in anything. Even when I go home from get off work, I spend most of my time sitting in front of the computer busy. It always feels like I'm running under a high load every day.

Every year in January or February, I would suffer from seasonal depression. This persisted for several years, and my mood became worse and worse, and my body began to have problems. Later, the examination revealed that it was secondary hypoglycemia caused by endocrine disorders. The more I ate, the hungrier I became, and I became restless and restless. The doctor recommended that I take a period of recuperation.

At that time, I was thinking about changing my lifestyle. I really didn’t want my life to be wasted like this anymore. Seeing how miserable I was, my wife said to me, "Since you are so unhappy doing it, then don't do it." So, I officially resigned from my university teaching position in 2007, and began to go out of the laboratory to try different jobs, and often organized Some public welfare activities in the Chinese community.

In July of that year, I saw Chinese player Yi Jianlian being selected by the Bucks, so I established the "Yi Jianlian Fan Club" in the Chinese community, so I met Mr. Xie Zhong, the chairman of the "Yao Ming Fan Club", and later He supported me in becoming the editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper "Mission Times".

At the same time, I also did insurance investment for a period of time, learned to deal with people from different industries, and finally shed the scholarly skin.

In 2009, my wife was hired as an attending physician at a hospital in Wausau, Marathon County, and our family moved here together. Wausau is the county seat of Marathon County. Wausau is an Indian word meaning "Far Away Place". It was originally because the Wisconsin River flowed here, attracting early immigrants to live and settle here. This period of more than a hundred years of history touched me very much. The United States is such a fertile land, and immigrants from all over the world have gathered to develop it. Why can’t we Chinese do the same?

I often joke with my Chinese friends. You said that since the Ming Dynasty 800 years ago, Zheng He has made seven voyages to the West. If he had been bolder at that time, maybe the United States is now saying this. In Chinese, it is not certain who is a “foreigner”! I thought of the history of the older generations of Shandong people who "traveled to Guandong" to make a living. My idea at that time was: Since I have already "sailed to the West", why not also expand my territory here?

The person I should be most grateful to during that time was my wife. After she became an attending physician, she gave me the opportunity to choose financially. After I resigned, I no longer had to worry about the bread and milk in front of me and could let go. Use your hands and feet to find the poetry and distance in your heart. When I first arrived in Marathon County, I often walked around the surrounding fields and mountains. I smelled the fragrance of the land, forests, flowers and grass, and became more and more obsessed with the feeling of being close to nature.

It happened that I learned about vegetable greenhouses on the Internet, and I came up with the idea of ??building a solar greenhouse. I wanted to learn from the experience of growing vegetables in Northeast China and grow some cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. Some friends at home and abroad know that we have moved to Marathon County and often ask me to help them buy American ginseng, a local specialty. I think it should be a global industry. It’s all about farming anyway, so it’s better to just plant American ginseng.

As the saying goes, every other line is like a mountain. I understand this truth deeply. In Marathon County, American ginseng is mostly a family business, and the experience of growing ginseng is passed down from generation to generation and is generally not passed on to outsiders. What's more, as a "foreigner", it is very difficult for me to make a living in the ginseng cultivation industry, which is dominated by white farmers.

At the beginning, I only did marketing work related to American ginseng. Even so, when such a Chinese face suddenly appears among the local ginseng farmers, I can often feel some curiosity and even strange looks.

Once I went to pick up goods from a ginseng farmer's cooperative. When I left, I put the check on the manager's desk. Maybe he didn't see the check. Originally, this was a small problem that could be solved by calling and asking, but he directly sent a strongly worded text message, saying that he would sue me through a lawyer, which made me feel obvious hostility.

Although I experienced some unpleasant things in the early days, I was lucky enough to meet noble people. One of them was David, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and had been to the front lines in the Middle East three times. Retired colonel. David is the third generation descendant of the Monk Garden family. His family comes from England and has been growing ginseng in Marathon County for more than a hundred years. It was David's appearance that opened the door for me to delve into the American ginseng industry.

After we met, the more we chatted, the more we became more and more speculative, and soon we started talking about cooperation. I took advantage of the large network of domestic classmates and friends to help them participate in the exhibition and open up the Chinese sales market. I also reached a cooperation intention with a well-known Chinese medicine hospital in China and obtained trademark authorization.

In those years, the domestic economy was developing rapidly, and the American ginseng market was also very hot. In 2009, I met a buyer from a domestic business locally. He said that the market is so good now, let’s grow American ginseng together, and I will buy your products in the future. In this way, I started my entrepreneurial journey with the mentality of "the ignorant are fearless".

From buying a farm to learning to drive a tractor, grow American ginseng, and manage the farm, my enthusiasm was out of control, and I dreamed of transforming myself from a scholar into an American version of a production captain. Regarding my choice, there was an uproar in my circle of friends. Some people praised me, and some expressed confusion, but these were not important because I found my interests.

Master led me in. Cultivation is personal. After sitting in the laboratory for decades, suddenly going to work in the fields was a big challenge for me. From soil preparation, piling, sowing, pulling up awnings to repairing farm tools and tractors, you have to learn from scratch. In addition to sweating, sometimes you will also bleed.

Every time I open a new base, I will inevitably be hurt. The level of becoming a monk on the way can’t keep up with the childlike skills of American farmers. To be honest, I really don’t accept it. I thought that when I was a teenager, I could do half the male labor force. What’s wrong now?

The most strenuous work of growing ginseng is probably the work of setting up an awning after sowing every year. 168 15 cm thick wooden stakes must be driven into each acre of land, and then more than 300 meters long and weighing a total of One ton of steel wire ropes are used to form a frame to secure the light- and rain-permeable awning. A piece of wood weighs more than 50 kilograms, and I carry it all by myself. After a busy day, your body will be very tired, but your mood will be very comfortable.

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Farming often depends on the weather, and the same goes for growing ginseng. I remember one autumn, I rented a piece of virgin land on the recommendation of a friend. According to the website of the United States Department of Agriculture, the soil here is sandy loam, which is particularly suitable for growing American ginseng, so I quickly planted it. Unexpectedly, when they sprouted the next spring, many ginseng seedlings had yellow rust spots on their roots, indicating that the soil conditions here were very poor.

Logically speaking, I should stop losing money and give up. Unfortunately, the investment in the first year was too high, so I couldn’t bear it and kept the ginseng seedlings. In the third year, the situation worsened, and 30% of the ginseng seedlings froze to death in the cold weather of late spring. In the fourth year, the situation could not be changed, so we had to find ways to make up for the losses and harvest some organic ginseng leaves to make tea. The price was that the yield during harvest was only the usual. 1/3 of the total, which can be described as a heavy loss.

I experienced a painful lesson in those years. I was soaked in the ground and exposed to the wind and sun every day, and I also tanned a lot, but my mood and body were getting better and better. Breathing the fragrance of the land in the farm every day, contacting the farmers who do their jobs, and going in and out of the fields, mountains, and American ginseng business circles in various places made me feel that my life was full of color, and my depression was gone forever.

The help from strangers has also made my mentality a lot better. When I communicated with some old ginseng farmers around me, they told me that originally no one believed that a doctor of medicine came to work as a farmer. He must have some intentions, right? After contacting me for a long time, they found that I was quite down-to-earth and a rough guy like them, so they gradually became willing to help me. This feeling is like what we call "human touch" in our country.

Once I wholesaled 80,000 US dollars of American ginseng and shipped it to California. I originally promised to pay back in a month, but later the other party did not pay back in time. When the time came to deliver the payment, I only had 40,000 on hand. Dollar. The owner of the warehouse helped me advance the remaining 40,000 yuan to prevent me from breaching the contract. I had only known the owner of the warehouse for more than three months at that time, which shows that our previous cooperation experience made him feel at ease with me.

These friends are different from the intellectual groups I have come into contact with in the academic circle before. They are academics when they don’t open their mouths, and they are ideal when they talk. They are more pragmatic and easier to be satisfied, so it is easy to be happy and there is no psychological burden at all when getting along with them.

Among my local friends, there is a "strange man" named Bob. He is not highly educated and is mainly engaged in breeding, hunting, and gathering ginseng. When we first met, he offered to decorate my office with a rare peacock model, which moved me very much. Later I found out that it was because the peacocks he raised were frozen to death, so he had no choice but to make models and ask people like me to pay for them. Later we became close friends, and I often teased Bob about this, and he brought me bear meat, mink skins, bear skins and other good products every year.

From Bob, I saw the shrewdness and ability of American farmers and learned a lot about life. One time, Bob saw that the brakes on my car were skewed. Without saying a word, Bob climbed under the car and solved the hydraulic oil leakage problem on one side with a nail. This scholar like me was dumbfounded. These are practical life skills that I could not have learned in the laboratory in the past.

In addition to staying at the farm, I often participate in various local outdoor activities. For example, the wild ginseng collection season starts on September 1 every year. Many surrounding farmers will go into the mountains to collect ginseng. exception.

In the United States, state and federal laws have clear regulations on ginseng harvesting in the mountains, which stipulates the size of the ginseng that is not allowed to be collected; all ginseng collected cannot be sold privately and must be received by a broker and registered and certified.

The seemingly inconspicuous activity of collecting ginseng may actually cost lives, because US law stipulates that collection is not allowed in places other than national forests and parks, and entry into private lands is also prohibited. Two brothers once disappeared after going into the mountains to collect ginseng. We speculate that they were probably beaten to death after stealing ginseng from someone else's territory.

For the sake of safety, every time I go into the mountains, I hire an Indian "boss" to guide me. I call him "Boss Ken". In addition to being a guide, Boss Ken is also an artist. He lives a very free and easy life and never saves money, often making ends meet. After the divorce, he was thrown into jail three times because he couldn't pay child support, and each time this guy wrote to me asking for help. In July of this year, I went to the prison to help him pay $967 in fees and helped him regain a job opportunity.

In winter, my state of Wisconsin will also hold a ten-day gun deer hunting season. This is a local tradition that has lasted for hundreds of years. Generally, men, women and children go into battle together, and grandpa and dad are in charge. Teach your children and grandchildren the skills of hunting. According to data released by the state Department of Natural Resources, there are approximately two to three million deer in Wisconsin, and it is estimated that about 200,000 deer are allowed to be legally hunted each year to maintain ecological balance.

In order to experience hunting up close, I also applied for a deer hunting license and received several hours of gun usage and safety tutorials. He got up before 6 a.m. that day and set out, and he was required to wear an eye-catching fluorescent orange jacket to prevent other hunters from mistaking him for a deer.

Deer have a very keen sense of smell. I deliberately did not use shower gel when I took a shower the night before, for fear that the deer would smell it and scare them away the next day. Unfortunately, I still came back empty-handed. I tried it many times in the next few years. As I gained more experience, some unlucky deer would bump into my gun. The feeling of being an "old hunter" was still good.

In addition to participating in these outdoor activities, I also insist on doing charity. In 2017, there were a lot of seeds left after planting in the field. I thought it would be better to give the remaining seeds to everyone. In fact, there are many poor mountain people across the United States who cannot afford seeds, and some do not even have bank accounts. That year, I gave away seeds worth nearly 100,000 yuan per day, helping hundreds of mountain people.

In the past five years, I have distributed 12 million American ginseng seeds for free to thousands of mountain people. Based on a rough calculation of a 10% survival rate after ten years, I can bring at least about 5 million US dollars in benefits in the future. .

These seeds can continue to multiply, multiply, and influence generations to come. A mountain villager said to me seriously, "Dr. Ming, would it be good for my grandson to come to your grandson to sell wild ginseng in the future?" After saying this, everyone laughed happily. Needless to say, maybe this vision can really be realized in a few decades.

There is a popular term in the United States called "red neck", which describes those white farmers whose necks are reddened by the sun, and has a connotation of being big and rough. Now I am a typical "yellow neck" who lives a simple life and has made some achievements in the field I like. At first, I only had a starting capital of 20,000 US dollars and a shovel. Now I have developed 5 planting bases, 1 processing factory, and my own American ginseng brand.

Anyone who grows ginseng knows that ginseng tastes bitter. It usually takes three years to bloom and five to six years to bear fruit. It is easy to bloom but difficult to bear fruit. Life is like ginseng, whether it is a matter of accumulation or a disaster, it must be rooted deeply and go through those difficult days before you can truly appreciate the happiness of the results.

There is a saying that "the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, and the second best time is now." Being able to do what I love and having the energy to give back to society makes me feel very satisfied. I am very glad that I chose to leave the study and return to nature 13 years ago. This journey of finding my roots allowed me to carve out a world and find my own paradise.

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