Everything is fine—except it’s hard

This year seems to have been hard on vegetable growers
Whatever comes to market, prices are rock-bottom
Radishes used to sell for one yuan
This year, even selling them for pennies is hard

Cartload after cartload arrives at the market
Everyone chokes up as they talk
The old and the children wait at home
A thousand jin of vegetables won’t bring in a hundred yuan

From seed to harvest
So much money goes into growing vegetables
Wind and sun, and sweat dripping down
In the end, all we’ve harvested is a big fat nothing

Farmers keep tending their meager plots
I’m afraid “hard” doesn’t begin to describe it
Take a trip to Beijing and Shanghai
And see how people there make money