Zhou’s Story — The Beekeeper Who Stays Clean
Wildbrook Village · Enshi Mountains
Zhou is the cleanest man in the village.
This spring, he broke his leg.
He hobbled into the fields on a crutch.
Still, he came back spotless. He always does, goes in clean, and comes out clean.
One afternoon, he handed me cherries from his tree. Down by the stream, his wife was beating clothes clean with a wooden stick, the way people once did centuries ago.
The sound echoed through the valley.
Zhou asks for little. His two children work in the city. “They have food,” he said. “I have land. That is enough.”
But when we talked about the cooperative, his voice grew firm. “Everyone must stay united,” he told me. He spoke of each family, one by one, worrying about how to bring everyone together.
I almost missed it. By his doorway, a few handmade wooden hives stood quietly.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Bees,” he said, smiling. “They came by themselves. I just gave them a home.”
Now he has two colonies. He built two more hives, waiting for wild bees to arrive. He always leaves enough honey for the bees. “If they stay, that’s what matters,” he said.
His wife beamed as she described him in his suit, moving carefully among the hives. “He learned it all himself,” she said, proud as can be.
I dipped my finger in the honey. The taste was rich with wildflowers—sweetness carrying the whole mountain in it.z
“You must make a sign for the cooperative,” Zhou told me as I left. “One day, this will be the mark of our village.”z
About Wildbrook Cooperative
We farm small, together. Profits flow back to village families who grow, weave, and make by hand. Thank you for helping us keep the land—and its bees—alive.