The university professor resigned at the age of 46 and became a farmer.

My name is Jiang Mingtao, 59 years old, and I live in Marathon County, Wisconsin, USA. In the late 1980s, I went abroad from rural Shandong to study for a doctor of medicine in Canada. In the 1990s, I went to the United States to study as a postdoctoral fellow and was hired as an assistant professor by a university. I live a decent middle-class life with children, a house and a car. However, the long-term boring scientific research work in the laboratory has exhausted me physically and mentally, and even caused seasonal depression. In 2009, at the age of 46, I chose to end my scientific research and change the rest of my life. I have run a fan club, edited a newspaper and worked as an insurance salesman. By chance, I bought a piece of land in America and eventually became a farmer. My ancestral home is Shandong, 1963 was born in a peasant family in Yintan Township, Rushan, Weihai.

Let's take a look at what it's like for a university professor to resign as a farmer at the age of 46.

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My name is Jiang Mingtao (@ 个个个个个个个). I am 59 years old and now live in Marathon County, Wisconsin, USA. In the late 1980s, I went abroad from rural Shandong to study for a doctor of medicine in Canada. In the 1990s, I went to the United States to study as a postdoctoral fellow and was hired as an assistant professor by a university. I live a decent middle-class life with children, a house and a car.

For a person who came out of the countryside, I seem to have succeeded. I climbed in the ivory tower for more than 20 years, and finally became the disappointing child in the mouth of my hometown elders. However, the long-term boring scientific research work in the laboratory has exhausted me physically and mentally, and even caused seasonal depression.

In 2009, at the age of 46, I chose to end my scientific research and change the rest of my life. I have run a fan club, edited a newspaper and worked as an insurance salesman. By chance, I bought a piece of land in America and eventually became a farmer.

In recent years, people have often asked me the same question: you, a doctor who has studied medicine for more than 20 years, don't engage in scientific research to farm land. what do you think? How can I put it? To put it mildly, "the sweat that flows now is the water that entered my mind at the beginning."

/kloc-When I was 0/6 years old, I chose to study medicine not because of my original intention, but because of my career, not because of my interest. Facts have also proved that I prefer to drive a tractor to work on the farm rather than fiddling with a bunch of medicines, reagents and bottles and cans in the laboratory all day.

My ancestral home is Shandong, 1963 was born in a peasant family in Yintan Township, Rushan, Weihai. Because of his eloquence and good handwriting, his father was chosen to support the third-line construction and changed from a farmer to a national cadre. My mother is a rural woman and has only attended a few days of literacy classes. While farming, she has to support our four brothers and sisters. When food was tight, she tried to fill our siblings' stomachs with sweet potato leaves, elm money and Sophora japonica.

I am not diligent, and I was particularly fond of playing when I was a child, but because my father is away all the year round, I can only follow my mother to the production team to do farm work like an adult. Digging and leveling in the field in winter; Digging holes and planting trees on the hillside in spring; In summer and autumn, during the busy farming season, I help collect crops and play fields. On my way to school, I carried a basket and collected manure as fertilizer along the way.

Remember to attend the wheat harvest in the fourth grade of primary school. I was actively recorded four work points by the production team, and an adult male worker only had eight work points at that time. Don't praise the farm work often because it is well done. I found the special value of agriculture.

When I was in middle school, the countryside was still engaged in people's communes and learning Dazhai, and it was noisy all day. The school doesn't pay special attention to study, and organizes us to participate in labor every three days. Once when I came back from work, the class teacher looked at me sweating profusely and praised me, saying, "Jiang Mingtao, you are really good material for being a production team leader!" " "

Later, when I was working with a tractor on an American farm, I was happy to think about it. Isn't that why I want to be the production captain?

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1977, the national college entrance examination resumed. One day, I was working in the field of the production team, when I suddenly heard china national radio's news broadcast program on the village loudspeaker. I vaguely remember that "workers, peasants and soldiers who meet the enrollment conditions can voluntarily sign up and choose the best candidates" or something. In the winter of the same year, Rushan County will hold a key class to sprint the college entrance examination, and I was selected because of my good grades.

The whole class is top students selected from all middle schools in the county. In the first English class, a female classmate from a county introduced herself in English and said, "My name is XXX, and I love Tiananmen Square in Beijing!" " What? To be honest, I don't understand it at all, but it sounds catchy and enviable. At that time, I couldn't even recognize 26 English letters, so I was helpless. Rural children have no conditions to learn even if they want to.

Because of the poor foundation, I began to catch up desperately. Slowly, the results of all subjects are getting better and better, especially Chinese and physics, just like getting through the "second pulse of Ren Du", and several initial tests are the first or second in the class. It was the college entrance examination, and I made a mistake. The night before I went to the examination room, the class teacher asked me to sleep at his house because I didn't have a mosquito net. I couldn't sleep in a different environment. I didn't sleep for a while until dawn. The first math exam in the morning, I was dizzy, I didn't finish the paper, and finally I only got 65 points.

With a total score of more than 320, you can read national key undergraduate courses, and above 280, you can choose provincial key undergraduate courses. With a total score of 306, I didn't fall off the list, but I lost many opportunities to choose a school. When filling in the volunteer, the class teacher said to me, "Ming Tao, go and study medicine." I was puzzled and asked, "Is there a medical school in the university?" The teacher said, "well, yes, you have a good memory and are suitable for studying medicine." Please report this result to our medical college. "

I don't know how to answer at the moment. Before the college entrance examination, I always thought I was good at physics and liked engineering. I plan to study engineering and become a radio engineer in the future. Studying medicine is definitely a choice I never thought of. My father thinks that the doctor's profession is guaranteed by drought and flood, and he agrees to apply for this.

The joy of going to college at that time quickly diluted my loss of not choosing engineering. Besides, for a rural child aged 16, what is the interest compared with the way out? In this way, I misreported Shandong Medical College (now Shandong University Medical College) and embarked on the road of studying medicine.

1979, I came to Jinan, the provincial capital, to study in a university. The undergraduate stage of medical college was originally a five-year program, and the year I entered school coincided with the call of the state to set up a six-year English medical class. I was chosen again this time. I was surprised to ask the teacher: I got 35 points in the exam, why was I chosen? The teacher smiled, looked at me and said, yes, many talents got more than ten points in the exam.

It seems that it's my fault and others are worse. Later, I entered the English medical class and began to specialize in English and basic subjects. In this unique condition, I have laid a solid foundation of English. I was among the best in school competitions twice, and organized several competitions as a host, and my sense of language is getting better and better.

Compared with English, my medical major makes me feel a lot less fun. Studying medicine is a slow job, and the medical knowledge in the undergraduate stage focuses on laying a foundation, which is a bit of a liberal art, mainly for memory and understanding. As my head teacher in charge of high school said, I have a good memory, so I don't have the hard work of burning the midnight oil and failing the class, but I don't like this subject very much. At that time, a classmate in the class was dizzy, and the school had to allow him to change his major, which made me envy for a long time.

I have studied in English medical class for six years and will graduate in a blink of an eye. I want to learn clinical well and become a doctor in the hospital, so I applied for the clinical postgraduate in our school and began to specialize in the research of pediatric cardiology.

At that time, going abroad was popular in China. My tutor came back from studying at Stanford University in America. With his encouragement, I took the TOEFL test of 1987 and planned to study abroad. I was frightened by the result. I got 650 out of 670, ranking among the best in the country. I can't believe it myself.

1988, I came to the University of Ontario, Canada, and began to study for a doctorate in cardiac physiology. The novelty of arriving in a foreign country did not last long. After a few months, I felt depressed and depressed from time to time in the first winter. On the one hand, it is the influence of foreign culture, on the other hand, it is the trouble of local climate conditions.

I lived in Shandong before going abroad, and I am used to four distinct seasons. But Ontario is at 43 degrees north latitude, which is equivalent to the northeast. Winter is very long, even at the end of April, there is no sign of spring blooming.

Fortunately, my wife also came to Canada a year later. She is my college classmate, and we had a simple wedding before graduation. Her doctoral school was originally in the United States, and later transferred to Canada to reunite with me. From 65438 to 0995, we completed our doctoral studies together. After graduation, I worked in the University of Toronto for a while, and my wife passed the internship qualification.

It may also be a psychological problem of "you are not a hero until you reach the Great Wall". I have a feeling that I won't be able to reach the summit until I study in America. Soon after, I got the opportunity to go to the University of Wisconsin as a postdoctoral fellow, thinking that the development prospects and treatment there might be better. If my wife goes to America to be a doctor, she will have more opportunities. After weighing, our family bid farewell to Canada and came to Wisconsin in the midwest of the United States. 1996.

When I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin, I was successfully funded by the American Heart Foundation and transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor to study heart protection. The flagship magazine in the field of cardiovascular research in the United States is called Circulation Research. In those ten years, I published three articles in this magazine. It is said that in 2005, if teachers of Zhejiang University can publish articles in this magazine, an article can get a reward of 200,000 RMB.

Later, one of my research results was adopted by the Journal of the American Physiological Society, and an editorial called it a "landmark discovery", arguing that I pointed out the fallacy of the theory that mitochondrial ion channels protect myocardium in theory. This achievement made me break the superstition of academic authority, but I also felt a sense of loss.

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

The contracts of American assistant professors are generally signed once a year. From the second year of employment, my basic salary will decrease by percentage, and my income mainly depends on scientific research funds. This means that I have to make some achievements every year, and the pressure is like a mountain. Besides, I often attend school affairs meetings and educational affairs meetings and give lectures to graduate students several times a year. I dare not slack off on anything. Even when I come home from work, I spend most of my time sitting in front of the computer, always feeling that I am running at a high load every day.

Every year from January to February, I have seasonal depression. After several years, my mood became worse and worse, and my health began to have problems. Later, it was found that endocrine disorders led to secondary hypoglycemia, and the more you eat, the hungrier you get, and your mood is restless. The doctor advised me to rest for a while.

At that time, I was thinking about whether to change my life. I really don't want to waste my life like this anymore. Seeing my pain, my wife said to me, "Since I am so unhappy, don't do it." So, in 2007, I officially resigned from the university, started 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 that China player Yi Jianlian was selected by Bucks, so I set up Yi Jianlian fan club in the Chinese community, so I met Mr. Xie Zhong, the chairman of Yao Club, and later he supported me as the editor-in-chief of China newspaper "Mi Cheng Times". At the same time, I also made insurance investment for a period of time, learned to deal with people from different industries, and finally faded the scholar skin.

In 2009, my wife was hired as an attending physician in a hospital in Wosso City, Marathon County, and our family moved here together. Vosso is the county seat of Marathon County. Wausau is an Indian language, which means "faraway place" (that is, faraway place). At first, because the Wisconsin River passes through here, it attracted early immigrants to live and settle here. This history of more than 100 years has deeply touched me. The fertile land of the United States brings together immigrants from all over the world to explore. Why can't we in China do it?

I often joke with my friends in China. You said that China started from the Ming Dynasty 800 years ago, and Zheng He made seven voyages to the West. If he had been bolder, he might have spoken Chinese in the United States now, and it is not certain who is a "foreigner"! I think of the history of the older generation of Shandong people "going east" to make a living. The idea at that time was: since I have "sailed west", why not open up territory here?

During that time, my wife was the most grateful person. After she became an attending physician, she gave me the opportunity to make economic choices, so that I no longer had to worry about the bread and milk in front of me after I resigned, and I could let go of my hands and feet to find the poems in my heart and the distance. When I first arrived in Marathon County, I often walked up and down the surrounding fields and hills, smelling the fragrance of land, forests and flowers, and I became more and more obsessed with the feeling of being close to nature.

Just at that time, I learned about vegetable greenhouses on the Internet, and I came up with the idea of being a solar greenhouse. I want to learn from the experience of growing vegetables in Northeast China and plant some cucumbers and tomatoes. 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. Anyway, it's all farming, so it's better to plant American ginseng directly.

As the saying goes, interlacing is like a mountain, and I have a deep understanding of this truth. In Marathon County, American ginseng is mostly a family-owned industry, and the experience of planting ginseng is passed down from generation to generation, and it is generally not passed on to outsiders. Besides, as a "foreigner", it is difficult for me to compete for a meal in the ginseng planting industry dominated by white farmers.

At first, I only did marketing work related to American ginseng. Even so, I often feel a little curious, even strange, about such a face of china who suddenly appeared among the local farmers.

Once I went to the farmer's cooperative to get the goods, and I left my check on the manager's desk when I left. 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 strong-worded short message saying that he would sue me through a lawyer, which made me feel obviously hostile.

Although I experienced some unpleasant things in my early days, I was fortunate to meet some distinguished people. One of them is David, who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is a retired colonel and has been to the Middle East front three times. David is the third generation descendant of the monastery. His family comes from England and has been planting ginseng in Marathon County for more than 100 years. It was the appearance of David that opened a door for me to go deep into the American ginseng industry.

After we met, we talked more and more speculatively, and soon began to talk about cooperation. I used a lot of personal resources of my classmates and friends in China to help their families participate in the exhibition, explore the domestic sales market, and reached a cooperation intention with a famous Chinese medicine museum in China, and obtained the trademark authorization.

Those years were catching up with the rapid development of domestic economy, and the American ginseng market was also very hot. In 2009, I met a buyer from a domestic merchant. 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 the road of entrepreneurship with the mentality of "ignorance and fearlessness".

From buying a farm to learning to drive a tractor, planting American ginseng and managing a farm, my enthusiasm is out of control, and I look forward to changing from a scholar to an American version of the production captain. For my choice, it caused an uproar in the circle of friends. Some people praised me, others said they didn't understand, but none of these matters, because I found my interest.

It is also a great challenge for me to lead me into the door and practice in person. After sitting in the laboratory for decades, he suddenly went to work in the fields. From soil preparation, piling, sowing, pulling awnings to repairing farm tools and tractors, we have to learn from the beginning, except sweating and sometimes bleeding.

Every time I open up a new base, I am inevitably injured, and the level of becoming a monk halfway is not as good as that of American farmers. To tell you the truth, I really don't accept it. I thought I could support half of the male labor force at the age of ten. What's going on now?

To say that planting ginseng is the hardest work, it should be regarded as the work of setting up a sunshade after sowing every year. Each acre of land should be marked with wooden stakes with a thickness of 168 15 cm, and then a steel wire rope with a total weight of 1 ton with a length of more than 300 meters should be used to build a shelf and fix the sunshade that is sheltered from light and rain. A piece of wood weighs more than 50 Jin, and I have to carry it myself. After a busy day, my body will be very tired, but my mood will be very comfortable.

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Agriculture often depends on the weather for food, so does planting ginseng. I remember one autumn, I rented a virgin land on the recommendation of a friend. The website of USDA shows that the soil here is sandy loam, which is especially suitable for planting American ginseng, so I quickly planted it. Unexpectedly, when the seedlings germinated the next spring, yellow rust spots appeared on the roots of many ginseng seedlings, indicating that the soil conditions here were very poor.

It is reasonable to give up stop loss, but the investment in the first year is too big to lose seedlings. In the third year, it was worse. In the cold weather in late spring, 30% of the seedlings were frozen to death. In the fourth year, the situation could not be changed, so we had to find a way to make up for the loss. The cost of harvesting some organic ginseng leaves to make tea was only 1/3 of the usual yield at harvest, which caused heavy losses.

In those years, I experienced a painful lesson. Soaking in the ground every day, I get a lot of sunburn, but my mood and body are getting better and better. Breathing the fragrance of the land on the farm every day, touching conscientious farmers, and going in and out of fields, Shan Ye and American ginseng business circles all over the country make me feel that life is full of colors and my depression is gone forever.

The help of strangers has also made my mind a lot better. When talking with some old farmers around me, they told me that at first, everyone didn't believe that a doctor of medicine came to farm as a farmer, and there must be some attempt. Contact for a long time, they found that I was honest, in fact, like them, a lout, and they were willing to help me slowly. This feeling, in the words of China, is "human".

Once, I wholesaled 80,000 dollars of American ginseng and sent it to California. I promised to pay back the money after one month, but the other party didn't pay back the money in time. By the time of delivery, I only had $40,000. The warehouse owner helped me pay back the remaining 40 thousand yuan and prevented me from breaking the contract. At that time, I only knew the warehouse owner for more than three months, indicating that our previous cooperation experience made him feel at ease with me.

These friends are different from the Kochi groups I contacted in the academic circle before. Not opening your mouth is academic, and opening your mouth is ideal. They are pragmatic and easy to satisfy, so it is simple to be happy and there is no psychological burden to get along with.

Among my local friends, there is a "stranger" named Bob. He has a low education level and is mainly engaged in farming, hunting and ginseng collection. When I first met him, he offered to decorate my office with a rare peacock model, which moved me very much. Later I learned that it was because his peacock froze to death that I had to make a model to save money from people like me. Later, we became close friends, and I often made fun of Bob for it. He brought me bear meat, mink and bearskin every year.

From Bob, I saw the cleverness of American farmers and learned a lot about life. Once Bob saw that the brakes of my car were off-center. Without saying anything, he climbed directly under the car and solved the problem of hydraulic oil leakage on one side with a nail, which made me dumbfounded. These practical life skills were impossible for me to learn in the laboratory in the past.

Besides staying on the farm, I often take part in various local outdoor activities. For example, during the wild ginseng collection season, which starts on September 1 every year, many farmers around will go into the mountains to collect ginseng, and I am no exception. In the United States, state and federal laws have clear regulations on collecting ginseng in the mountains, which will stipulate how many sizes are not allowed to be collected; All collected ginseng can't be bought or sold privately, and must be collected and registered by a broker.

Collecting ginseng, a seemingly insignificant activity, may actually kill you, because American law stipulates that collecting ginseng is not allowed anywhere except national forests and parks, and private territory is also not allowed to enter. Two brothers went into the mountains to collect ginseng and disappeared. We guess it is very likely that they stole ginseng from someone else's site and were killed.

To be on the safe side, I will hire an Indian "boss" as a guide to take me every time I enter the mountain. I call him "Boss Ken". Besides being a tour guide, Boss Ken is also an artist. He lives a free life and never saves money, which often causes him to make ends meet. After the divorce, he was put in prison three times because he couldn't pay child support. Every time this guy writes to me for help. In July this year, I went to prison to help him pay $967, and helped him get a job opportunity again.

In winter, Wisconsin, where I live, will hold a ten-day deer hunting season with shotguns, which is a local tradition for 100 years. Generally, men, women and children go into battle together, and grandparents are responsible for teaching hunting skills to their children and grandchildren. According to the data released by the State Department of Natural Resources, there are about two or three million deer in Wisconsin, and it is estimated that about 200,000 deer are allowed to be legally hunted every year to maintain ecological balance.

In order to experience hunting activities at close range, I also applied for a deer hunting license and received several hours of training in gun use and safety courses. I got up before 6 o'clock that morning. I should wear a striking fluorescent orange coat as required to prevent being accidentally injured as a deer by other hunters.

Deer have a keen sense of smell. I didn't use shower gel in the shower the night before, for fear that the deer would smell it and scare me away the next day. Unfortunately, I returned empty-handed. I tried many times in the following years, and with more experience, some unlucky deer would point a gun at me. It feels good to be an "old hunter"

In addition to participating in these outdoor activities, I also insist on doing public welfare. 20 17, there are many seeds left after planting. I think it's better to distribute all the remaining seeds to everyone. In fact, many poor mountain people all over the United States can't afford to buy seeds, and some don't even have bank accounts. That year, I sent seeds worth nearly 654.38+10,000 yuan and helped hundreds of mountain people.

In the past five years, I distributed120,000 American ginseng seeds to Qianshan residents for free. According to the rough calculation of ten-year survival rate 10%, it will bring at least about 5 million dollars in the future.

These seeds can continue to reproduce, continue to reproduce and affect future generations. A mountaineer said to me seriously, "Dr. Ming, will my grandson come to your grandson to sell wild ginseng in the future?" Then everyone laughed happily. Needless to say, maybe this vision can really be realized in a few decades.

A popular word in the United States is "red neck", which describes a white farmer whose neck is red by the sun. There is a kind of lout in it. Now I am a typical "yellow neck". My life is very simple and I have made some achievements in my favorite field. At first, I only had $20,000 in start-up capital and a shovel. Now it has developed five planting bases, 1 processing plant and its own American ginseng brand.

Everyone who grows ginseng knows that ginseng tastes bitter. Generally, it blooms in three years and bears fruit in five or six years. Flowering is easier than fruiting. Life is like ginseng, whether it is accumulation or survival, it must be deeply rooted, and only through those difficult days can we truly appreciate the happiness of the result.

There is a saying that "the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, followed by now". I feel very satisfied that I can do what I like and spare no effort to give back to the society. I am glad that I chose to go out of the study and return to nature before 13. This root-seeking trip has opened up a world for me and found my own paradise.

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