Homegrown Diversity
By Krishna Ramanujan MA'01

Tong Yan Zhang

In China, Tong Yan Zhang had a heart problem. Here, his blood pressure is down, and he feels strong and healthy. Gardening, he says, has made the difference.

Tong Yan works and exercises in his garden from five-thirty to nine every morning. From Urumqi, a city of more than one million in northwest China, he and his spouse, Yunkun Xu, came to Madison to stay with their daughter and son-in-law, who live at Eagle Heights.

"If there wasn't a garden, they would feel alone," says daughter Ying Zhang. "My husband and I don't have kids yet. They would have gone back to China."

Though Tong Yan doesn't speak English, nor had he gardened before last summer, he took on four plots last year. With the help of Chinese students and others who gave him seeds and showed him planting methods, his plots thrived. Like many foreigners who garden here, Tong Yan has been able to grow vegetables from his native country, such as Chinese beans, peppers, and gourds that are hard to find in local stores.

He says that even though he cannot converse with many people, he gets pleasure from giving his vegetables away to others.

"That's a kind of communication between people, even if we can't understand each other," he says through his daughter's translation.

She says last summer they were going to travel together around the United States, but her father said, "No, I will stay and take care of my garden."

When her parents return to China this fall, Ying says, they will tell others about time spent in the garden. Tong Yan wants to show people in China the mulching techniques he learned here. He and Yunkun even bought a camcorder to show off the gardens to their friends and relatives back home.

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