Why I Still Buy Greens From Roadside Grandmothers, and Why My Friend Stopped

At six in the evening, at the entrance to the residential compound.

An old woman squatted by the roadside. An old woven plastic sack lay in front of her. On it were a few bundles of greens, a few cucumbers, a small pile of muddy potatoes. The vegetables were not neat. Some leaves had insect holes. Damp soil clung to the roots. She did not call out. Now and then she looked up at passersby, then looked down and smoothed the leaves one by one.

I stopped, crouched, and picked two bundles. There were vegetables in the fridge. I might not cook tonight. I still scanned the code and paid one yuan extra. She said, “That’s enough, that’s enough, you gave too much.” I said, “It’s fine, the greens are good.” She smiled, put them in a plastic bag, and handed it to me. The bag left a red mark on my fingers.

Carrying the greens home, I felt something loosen. It was like getting a bargain. It was like buying good greens. Neither was quite right. The feeling was small and hard to name. I had done one right thing that day. The thread between me and the world, frayed, had been tied back.

Then the question returned: Was this kindness, attachment, or self-congratulation?

I grew up in the countryside. We grew vegetables.

Behind the house was a garden. My mother picked vegetables before dawn. Long beans hung from bamboo trellises. Eggplants shone purple. Peppers hung in clusters. The leaves had insect holes and dew. We brought them in and stir-fried a plate at noon. They tasted sweet in a way I cannot name. Later I moved to the city and lived in a grid of steel and concrete. Supermarket vegetables were neat, clean, uniform, wrapped in plastic, labeled with origin and price. No mud. No insect holes. None of the breath of soil.

So when I see an old person at a roadside stall selling vegetables they grew, I think of my mother, the garden, those mornings before dawn. I know their vegetables may not be better than the supermarket’s. They may not be cheaper. They may not even be homegrown. I still buy a little. Those bundles hold more than vegetables. They hold a bit of longing for home, land, my parents’ generation.

Some call this a nostalgia tax. You spend a few yuan to confirm you have not forgotten where you came from. You buy the illusion that you are still connected to the land. It sounds harsh. It is not wrong.

Buying from an old person by the road mixes kindness, attachment, and self-congratulation.

The kindness shows up. You want the old person to sell out sooner, go home earlier, earn a little more, suffer less wind and sun. That kindness is not grand. It is ordinary sympathy between people.

The attachment shows up too. You come from the countryside, or your parents did. An old person squatting by the road looks like your grandmother, your mother. You are buying an emotional projection. You are moving guilt toward home and tenderness for elders onto a stranger at a stall.

Self-congratulation can creep in. When buying a bunch of greens becomes moral proof, when it makes you feel kinder than people who walk past, when you know the vegetables are poor or the scale is rigged but stay silent because “the old person has it hard,” kindness starts to sour. The other person becomes a prop for your conscience.

Buying from a roadside stall is not automatically hypocritical. But you have to be honest: Am I buying for them, or for me?

A friend heard this and smiled. He used to do the same thing, buying greens from old people’s roadside stalls. Now he does not.

Why?

He had been cheated too many times. Short weight. Rotten leaves tucked inside. Vegetables sold as homegrown that came from a wholesale market. Once he took his child for a spring walk and passed a vegetable plot. Several old people were throwing chemical fertilizer and pesticide onto the crops. They were not thinking about health. They wanted bigger, better-looking vegetables that would fetch a higher price.

He said, “Maybe there are simple, honest, kind old people. But I don’t have the energy to be careful and scrutinize everything just to buy vegetables. For my family’s health, and to lower the chance of being cheated, I buy from licensed stalls or pre-washed vegetables in supermarkets. Price aside, most of it has been inspected.”

I was silent for a while.

We equate roadside stall with natural. Old person with honest. Poor with good. Reality is messier. A roadside stall is not organic. An old person can cheat. Poverty is not moral superiority. Supermarket vegetables are not zero-risk either. They have inspections, traceability, complaint channels. Choosing the supermarket is not cold. It lowers risk and puts family health first.

So what are we buying when we buy greens from an old person by the road?

The transaction looks like vegetables. It also buys a story about returning home. City life separates people from land. Every day is office towers, subways, takeout boxes, phone screens. The old person and her vegetables are a small hand the land extends into the city. Buying a bunch of greens, we grab that hand. We keep a faint connection to a rural world moving away.

But the old person is not a symbol of home. She is a person with calculations, difficulties, limits. We are not saviors. We are consumers. Help can be a fair transaction: do not haggle, do not be picky, do not buy the rotten ones, stick to one or two trusted vendors, bring them more customers. If you want to do more, support community elderly care, public canteens, rural social security. Do not put all the moral weight on a bunch of greens.

Good intentions need results. If kindness is always cheated, drained, let down, it turns into indifference. Rational choice gives kindness a shell. With the shell, kindness does not break so easily. Protect yourself first. Then you can be good to others without forcing it.

Now I still occasionally buy greens from old people by the road. I have rules.

Buy only a little, an amount whose loss I can bear. Do not haggle, but do not buy obviously rotten or bad ones. Stick to one or two trusted vendors, not every one I see. Wash carefully, blanch, peel. Do not imagine “homegrown” equals organic. Do not treat buying vegetables as charity. Do not feel noble because I bought some.

If one day I do not want to buy, I go to the supermarket without guilt or explanation. Buying or not buying can both be kind, as long as you do not lie to yourself.

The evening breeze blew. I carried the bag of greens home. Mud on the leaves. A green smell through the plastic. These bundles might not be better than supermarket greens. They might not help the old woman much. Today I needed them. I needed the smell of soil, the small connection to land, the tiny peace of mind.

But peace of mind cannot be proved by a bunch of greens. It comes from clear choices, kindness with boundaries, and an ordinary mind that neither worships nor looks down on anyone.

Buying a bunch of greens, you buy greens and a little something on your mind.

That something can be set down. It does not need to be exaggerated.