地根 DiGen Fellowship

May 31-August 21, 2026

Application Due February 5, 2026

Zumwalt Acres is a land stewardship, community-building, and regenerative farming project located in East Central Illinois, grounded in Jewish values and the intersectional study of diaspora (a distance-bound relationship with an ancestral homeland). In Summer 2026, we will host an immersive fellowship for people with Chinese heritage to live, study, and steward land together. We will explore the questions, longings, and possibilities of being in diaspora in the US, and work on healing land and community relationships.

For many people of the Chinese diaspora, our roots (根) are both near and opaque.

What does it look like for us to practice, recover, and connect with Chinese tradition and ritual on land? To build relationships with our plant relatives? What does it mean for us to do so in the US (on Turtle Island)?

Where is the Chinese diaspora organizing against fascism? What are the internal and external forces driving or impeding our participation in democratic transformation?

In a time of rising US-China tensions, how do we negotiate our relationships with both places in a way that pursues justice? 

What can we learn by studying Chinese diaspora in intersection with other diasporas?

In summer 2026, you are invited to join us for an experimental, collective project of Chinese diasporic land stewardship and study. The DiGen Fellowship will bring people with Chinese ancestry together to build relationships with our plant relatives, connect with our roots (lands, traditions, ancestors, stories), and study and chart pathways for the political mobilization of Chinese diasporic communities.

地根 DiGen Fellowship Programming

The DiGen summer fellowship consists of three main components:

Farm Work

The core of our time together will be growing, tending to, and harvesting diversified vegetables and perennial crops. Some areas of the farm are cultivated for local food distribution, while other areas prioritize biodiversity, research/learning/seed saving, and food production for the ZA community.  Fellows will learn skills and work on weeding, planting, harvesting, processing produce, tending compost, tree care, and mushroom cultivation. Some specific crops relevant to the Chinese diaspora that we’ll be growing this year include: 莴笋 (celtuce)，香菜 (Chinese cilantro)，苦瓜 (bittermelon)，豆角 (long bean), 黄瓜 (Chinese cucumber)，葱 (scallions)，艾叶 (mugwort)，紫苏 (perilla)，冬瓜 (wintermelon)，香菇 (shiitake mushroom)，平菇 (oyster mushroom)，茄子 (eggplant)，梨子 (Asian pear), 雪菜 (mustard greens), 白菜 (bok choy)，芥蓝 (Chinese broccoli), and 苋菜 (amaranth). 

Community Outreach

Fellows will connect with the local community through food distribution, including the Sheldon Food Pantry, community dinners, and local markets. We will also maintain and grow ZA’s connections with other farmers in the area, other food and climate justice organizations, and participants at community events and research field days. 

In addition, fellows will:

• Begin working on building a Chinese farmer and seed distribution network in the region

• Host a Chinese ancestral arts and skills gathering at the end of the summer, inviting Chinese community members and friends to participate in meals and workshops featuring the fellowship’s themes

Collective Study

Fellows will research and practice Chinese traditions and rituals, and study themes of US/China and diaspora.

DiGen fellows’ research will include:

• Researching Chinese lunisolar calendar holidays and observing them together (e.g. 端午节, 夏至); researching and implementing traditional Chinese philosophies and ways of caring for land and crops

• Context conversations - A lecture/discussion series, led by both fellows and invited guest teachers, on topics such as: histories of Chinese plant diasporas and human diasporas, Chinese artistic practices, Chinese-American history

• Book club - We will design and conduct a book club on a topic of our choosing, related to deepening our knowledge of China and participation in the US

• Share out - We will collectively decide on a mode of sharing our learnings

As a part of Zumwalt Acres, DiGen fellows will also have the opportunity to learn about and participate in Shabbat and other Jewish traditions practiced on the farm. As a full Zumwalt Acres community, we will all put our diasporic learnings and practices into conversation.

Program Directors

About Isa Zou 邹依潇 (they/she): My roots are in 常德 (Changde)，益阳 (Yiyang)，太原 (Taiyuan)，苏州 (Suzhou),  抚顺 (Fushun), and Austin, TX, where I grew up. I spent the past two years living in 长沙 (Changsha), 湖南 (Hunan), learning about my family’s histories and connecting with many rituals and traditions for the first time. I love participating in communities working through questions of diaspora, 寻根 (seeking your roots), and decolonization and through writing, dance, and loving conversation. I was a farm fellow at Zumwalt Acres in 2022, and in 2024 and 2025, I co-organized Landing, a dance festival at the farm exploring ethical embodied relationships with land. I’m so excited to meet you and be in conversation with you!

About Eric Luu, 刘健明 (he/him): I am a farm manager at Zumwalt Acres, overseeing field production, research, and farm education. I am a 2nd-generation 潮州 (Teochew) Chinese-American by way of Vietnam, where my parents are from, and I grew up in Chicago and Wilmette, IL. I started growing edible, ornamental, and native plants at home at a young age, with a lifelong approach to always be learning. I hold a B.A. in Environmental Policy from Loyola University Chicago. I have held a variety of professional and volunteer roles in agriculture, ecological restoration, and political organizing, including as a fellow at ZA in 2021 and as a lead garden educator in the Chicago suburbs. Diaspora, plant-human relationships, and biocultural diversity are areas of study that ground me in my work.

Isa and Eric will be facilitating 地根 DiGen specific programming in collaboration with the other ZA Stewards (Gavi, Acacia, and JR) who will be living at the farm and hosting ZA Fellowships in 2026.

About Zumwalt Acres

Zumwalt Acres (ZA) is a multifaceted farm, community, and educational hub. We steward vegetables, fruit and nut trees, mushrooms, honeybees, and chickens. We also conduct climate change research and implement ecological land management practices. We host events to exchange learnings, gather community, make music and art, and celebrate Jewish and other holidays. We seek to cultivate a space for young people to collaboratively implement our vision of an abundant future. Since 2020, we have hosted 67 fellows for 3-month fellowships, and 28% of fellows have returned for multiple seasons. We are guided by Jewish agricultural wisdom, and incorporate Jewish practice into the cycle of events at the farm, but we are a multi-faith community that welcomes people of all identities, faiths, and beliefs.

Since Zumwalt Acres’ inception, we’ve been invested in the study and practice of Jewish agricultural wisdom, as our founding team was predominantly Jewish. This emerged from the understanding that learning about ancestral land-based practices is one pathway towards refusing colonial and capitalist land relations. We ask: how can rooting in ancestral wisdom support us in building just, reciprocal, spiritually-enlivened community? Over the past five years, as our Stewardship Team has grown, we’ve explored this question in conversation with other lineages and cultures. This year, Eric and Isa, members of the ZA community with Chinese heritage, will bring this question to focus in the context of Chinese diaspora. A point of convergence in both Jewish and Chinese diaspora explorations has been the conviction that stewarding our roots well is a foundational step towards building political power towards justice.

Photos by Andrew Kaplowitz

If you have any questions about the hiring process, please reach out to Acacia at zumwaltacres@gmail.com.