Taipei Travel

“Hensan Pear Trees & Hosui Pears” is a three-channel video work that captures the highly labor-intensive and intricate pear farming techniques of Taiwanese farmers, using a single-point perspective to split the frame into three segments reassembling the sky, land, sounds, and human activities. Nature follows its own temporal rhythm, while human actions align with a corresponding yet distinct tempo. Agricultural labor represents generations of cooperation between humans and nature, now obscured by the urban-dominated pace of life.

In Taiwan, the top-grafting sand pears are produced by top-grafting Japanese pear varieties from completely different timing and regions onto the less marketable Hensan pear trees, hybridizing more perfect products. Farmers technologically consolidate varied timelines, determining planting schedules, grafting, leaf removal, and awaiting the reawakening and growth of pear blossoms. They also handle fruit picking, refrigerated storage, transportation via sea, land and air, as well as import/export procedures and tariffs. Through the negotiation between humans and nature, and among peoples and nations, the "pear" is magically re-grown into its appearance. Pears are no longer mere food, but the time-regulation skills/ trees resulted from farmers’ crafting and lobor. The fragmented and complexly reassembled labor time and the inherent time of the pear trees ultimately converge in the city as seasonal goods on shelves, becoming an unnoticed part of the urban landscape.