Fan Pen Chen, a professor in Guilderland's community gardens

Fan Pen Chen started gardening, under her father’s tutelage, as a child in Taiwan. She later gardened in Libya and Canada. When she moved, in 2003, to an apartment in Guilderland — she teaches nearby at the University at Albany — she discovered the Guilderland Community Gardens and has been gardening there since. When Chen is gardening, she says in this week’s podcast, she doesn’t think about teaching or about her translation of Chinese texts or operas into English or her research into ancient female warriors or shadow plays. Rather, she clears her mind. “I just do a little bit and nature gives so much back to me,” she said. “Whatever happens, whatever nature wants to give me, I’m fine. I’m a Daoist gardener; I go with the flow.”

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