Gift for planting vegetables awakes in spring. As the café owner Weiwei posts pictures of both vegetables and flowers growing lushly, multitudes of city dwellers seemingly have pressed the back-to-agriculture button and sought jubilation in greenery.

Typing “wo zai yang tai Zhong cai chi” into the searching engine of Douban, an online platform for people with the same interests to share and discuss, you’ll find the topic being viewed nearly a thousand million times. And the hashtag is attached with a brief introduction, mainly speaking of the sense of fulfillment stemming from sharing home-grown organic vegetables with families. Douban cannot satisfy the craze’s appetite. The Red Book, another instant messaging app for sharing life experiences, has been another battlefield for planting trends. Netizens share assorted ways of caring for seeds, how to make the best use of available agriculture resources, and quality facilities and techniques that give their baby plants more nutrients.

There is a long list of advantages of this retro phenomenon. Due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, many companies shift to telecommuting. With outdoor mobility controlled to some extent, planting vegetables at home offers fun for those struggling with psychological monotony. And the craze produces a new online interaction that is a boon for bringing people tighter and increasing more chances to undo the reluctance to socialize. Most importantly, it boosts the economy. The pandemic wreaks havoc on agriculture which speeds up its downward movement. According to an economic report released by an e-commerce platform, the sales of vegetable seeds have soared in the first quarter in Taobao and Tmall. Besides, recent three years in a row have witnessed that the number of people purchasing seeds exceeded 100 percent, which is an indication of people’s growing proclivity for planting food. There is sufficient evidence to come to the conclusion that domestic agriculture is a complement to China’s overall economic recovery amid the Omicron-ravaging spring.

Given the prospects of the frenzied fashion, we should all be aware that it is impossible to solely count on the balcony to feed us all vegetables we need and rule out greenery supply in the market. The planting activity should be viewed as one of the effective means to help us relieving of daily pressure and a substitute for wasteful and pointless social interaction after working.

Editor: Fan Wenwu