The name struck a chord, stirring up a faint memory from my childhood. I recalled my grandmother in China using Che Qian Cao<\/em> as a traditional remedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat do you use it for?\u201d I kept asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s good for digestion,\u201d one of them said. \u201cYou can add it to soup or brew it as tea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere can I find it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this, they finally looked up at me, \u201cIt\u2019s everywhere,\u201d they said, pointing to the unassuming weeds near my feet. \u201cHere, here, and here. Can’t you see?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Che Qian Cao<\/em> (\u8f66\u524d\u8349), the name in Chinese literally means \u201cgrass grown in front of carriage\u201d. Legend goes that in Han Dynasty, an stableman in army noticed the horses who were gazing on the cow-ear-shaped plants were magically cured from bleeding; Calling it a blessing from heaven, the general then used the plants to cure his soldiers from urinary bleeding and named it \u201cthe grass in front of carriage\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Curiously enough, native Americans once referred to this plant as the \u201cwhite man\u2019s footprint\u201d, as they noticed this unrecognizable plant \u2013 native to Eurasia \u2013 started to pop up along European settler\u2019s paths. Che Qian Cao, the white man\u2019s footprint, Plantago major, <\/em>or more commonly known nowadays as broadleaf plantain, thrive on disturbed lands. As settlers transformed the \u201cnewly-discovered\u201d land, these inconspicuous leaves quietly found their way in sidewalk cracks and pavement edges, lawns and wastelands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, plantain is labeled as an invasive plant<\/a> in North America. \u201cEven among weeds, it\u2019s incredibly persistent,\u201d wrote on Brooklyn Botanic Garden\u2019s Weed\u2019 of the month Blog<\/em><\/a>, \u201cMow it, step on it, weed-whack it, and this tough perennial will return\u201d. A quick Google Search of the word broadleaf plantain would result in hundreds of articles on \u201c How to kill plantain\u201d, \u201cWhat to do with wild plantain infestation in my newly seeded lawn?” — even though these little “invaders” were brought to the shore by colonizers’ footsteps in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, here on the streets of New York City, elderly women from distant lands\u2014arriving both willingly and unwillingly\u2014 pick these weeds up from the edges of the park, carefully collecting them in bamboo baskets, and bring them home to cook a bowl of soup for their family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction<\/em><\/a>, she proposed that the first cultural device in human history\u2014the first technology\u2014was not a spear, arrow, or sword, but a container. \u201cA leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.\u201d she writes, \u201cbefore the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In my class where I teach design and technology, I often ask students to read Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s as a prompt to rethink technology means before creating anything. How do we unlearn the mindset of techno-fixes or techno-apocalypses that is so embedded in our progress-driven capitalist narratives? How do we reimagine technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bags rather than apparatus of domination? Can we create projects or imagine a future that is grounded in care, cooperating, and co-becoming with other lives\uff08human and non-human)? These are questions I ask both my students and myself all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So when I saw those grandmothers roaming around the city with their baskets, I was immediately captivated. The women who carry the ancient technology on their back to survive in the seemingly most impossible metropolitan. At the same time, I felt an unexpected sense of nostalgia from these feral plants from home, who root themselves in the margin of the foreign land just as I do. I wondered if these strange grandmothers, who spoke my mother tongue, could pass down the cultural and botanical knowledge I had failed to inherit from my own ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the autumn, I took longer and longer walks in city parks and looked for trails of those Chinese women. But whenever I asked to interview them or approached them with too many questions, they would quickly walk away with caution and suspicion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDid you know that people have gotten arrested for foraging in NYC? \u201d Muggi said to me when I asked if I could speak with her grandmother, who, according to her, used to forage around the city when Muggi was growing up. Muggi and I had met while sledding in Sunset Park and found we shared a curiosity about the wild plants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a strange time,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are more and more cops walking around these days, and we don\u2019t want to get into trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She went on to explain to me that her grandma, a first generation Chinese American, used to forage out of necessity. \u201c She foraged because we were poor growing up and we needed food, not just for fun like us. It is not something she is proud of and I\u2019d feel weird asking her to be interviewed for that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I came to understand the caution I had come across \u2013 it is not personal, but shaped by policy. The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation prohibits the removal of any plants, mushrooms, or wildlife from public parks<\/a>, making foraging technically illegal. Even though documented cases of fining are rare (Food Law Gone Wild: The Law of Foraging), these women\u2014many of them first-generation immigrants\u2014were already navigating a society where they had little access to legal or other institutional resources. The risk of being fined or confronted by an authority figure, no matter how small, was something they do not want to afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony is that almost all the plants they were gathering\u2014plantain, mugwort, and burdock \u2013 are designated by the same institution as invasive species, harmful to the local ecosystem. And yet, the act of removing them is still prohibited. It is a contradiction deeply embedded in the logic of capitalist land management: land is managed for extraction, profit, and control. Anything that does not generate such value becomes waste or weeds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Historically, the enclosure of common land laid the foundation for capitalist social relations, allowing the ruling class to accumulate wealth while pushing those who once relied on communal subsistence\u2014primarily women and marginalized communities\u2014into dependence on waged labor or patriarchal household structures (Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 2004). In “Food Law Gone Wild, The Law of Foraging<\/a>“, Linnekin traced the origin of American anti-foraging law to \u201ccontempt for the rights of those deemed by those in power to be \u2018other\u2019\u201d. Examples include laws that drove the Powhatan people<\/a> from their ancestral hunting and foraging grounds and post-Civil War restrictions<\/a> designed to prevent newly freed African Americans from sustaining themselves through foraging.Modern foraging regulations As winter lingered on and spring slowly made its way to New York, I met Zoe Yang, a second-generation Chinese American cook and forager through an article she published at Grist.<\/a> Zoe started foraging three years ago in search of new flavors, but the practice soon deepened into broader inquiry about migration, environmental stewardship and reconnecting with her cultural roots. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n With her guidance, I made my first visit to Fort Tilden, a former military base<\/a> that now turned into a mostly unmanaged land along the Rockaway coast. As we walked along the sandy trails and military ruins, Zoe asked me \u201cdid you see the mugworts?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I already learned the story of mugworts through her article. Like Plantain, mugwort is native to Eurasia, and they serve as an important culinary, medicinal and healing herb across cultures from China to Korea to Europe. It likely arrived on New York’s soil ballast \u2013 dirt used to keep the ship stable, including those that may have carried enslaved people. That soil was later dumped along the East River to extend the city\u2019s landmass \u2013 where mugworts began to make a home of their own. \u201cJust as there is no New York City without slavery, there is no New York City without this centuries-old ballast and all the foreign life it contained\u201d. Zoe wrote in her article<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If Che Qian Cao stirred only a faint thread of nostalgia, mugwort is a scent and a flavor deeply embedded in my memory. Every spring during the Dragon Boat Festival, my mom would hang a bouquet of mugworts on the door to ward off insects and bad luck. The unique aroma lingered in the stairway as the bundle dried out through the rest of season. When winter comes, my mom would put a mugwort pouch in her foot bath. \u201cIt\u2019s good for your blood circulation\u201d she would say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the things I looked forward to most on this trip was foraging mugworts for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere is it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is right there. Zoe pointed to a patch of jagged-edged leaves by the trail. \u201cThese are all mugworts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I crouched down to examine them. Their leaves, still young and tender, were deep green on one side and silver grey on the other. I reached out and ran my fingers along the textured surface, then lifted them to my nose, inhaling deeply. The scent was unmistakable, the same aroma that drew me back to the stairwell of my parents\u2019 apartment and the warmth of my mother\u2019s foot bath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I glanced up from the leaves. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by a sea of mugworts; their leaves swayed lightly in the wind\u2014flashes of green and silver flickering across the ground into the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mugwort is a fierce settler. It propagates all year-round and is willing to put up with all kinds of environmental messes humans make, \u201ccolonizing\u201d lands as it goes. Even though I had already learned about this from Zoe\u2019s article, it was still jarring to witness it in person\u2014to see this grassland, once rich with diverse native species<\/a>, overtaken by waves of mugwort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also learnt earlier how much mugworts are hated here \u2013 even more so than plantain \u2013 as invasive species that \u201caren’t pretty, have little use, crowd out other native plants and make soil less stable<\/a>\u201d. But standing there in front of the waves of mugworts, I had to admit, I was simply happy to see them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHello old friend, I am glad you also made your way here and found a way to survive. \u201d I said quietly in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I see the mugworts, I cannot unsee them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I started to notice Mugwort colonies lining the paths of the park where I walked every day. They spread across vacant lots near Atlantic Avenue, clustered along the Hudson River. Soon, I found myself stopping by these patches with a paper bag in hand, gathering mugwort leaves for cooking and decoration. And of course I am not alone. I would encounter Chinese aunties from time to time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t pick up the small ones.\u201d A lady stopped by and offered advice. \u201cPick the big and strong ones like this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t forage here in the park. You might get in trouble.\u201dAnother auntie with a giant bag of mugworts told me,\u201cYou can go foraging in the construction area right across the street. No one will catch you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I asked what she was gonna do with all these mugworts, she hesitated, but eventually told me she was gonna sell them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I began to look for women selling mugworts on the street. And once I started to pay attention, they are really hard to miss. On the busy sidewalks of the Lower East Side, they sat behind makeshift tables made with stacked plastic crates. On the \u201ctables\u201d are neatly bundled mugworts, mugwort by-products, plantains, along with a few other feral herbs. I bought a Qing Tuan (handmade mugwort mochi) from one lady. It is a traditional holiday dessert in China I had been craving for years yet struggled to find in the city. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we think of New York City, we think of Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, the Broadway; we think of the story of Hamilton, Great Gatsby, the American Dream; we also think of stories of slavery, industrialization, displacement\u2026Those are stories we are familiar with, stories about progress and conques at the expense of other human and non-human lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mugworts do not fit into the story. The Chinese ladies who forage mugworts do not fit into the story. They are neither the hero who conquers, nor the victims who get killed. Their names do not even show up in the footnote of the story. They are just weeds that accidentally stick to the hero\u2019s shoes, left out in the conquered land, and stay invisible in the margin between words. They are hard to notice \u2013 I have been living in the city for 7 years and only now I started to see them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet in the margin they see each other; their life entangled for survival. On this land that buried violence, displacement, and trauma, the \u201cunwanted\u201d humans and the \u201cunwanted\u201d plants, both adapting to the new world, forged an intricate relationship with each other, long way from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The entanglement of living between the feral plants and their foragers in New York City tells an unfamiliar story, one that is easy to overlook because it does not align with the promise of progress. It is a story not about saving or destroying the environment but coexisting with an already damaged one; it’s not about extracting new resources but collaborating with other species for collective survival. Their story offers a way of imaging our world beyond capitalistic extraction and the modern conceit of progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I returned to Fort Tilden a month later, the baby mugworts that I had to crouch down to touch had grown to my shoulder-height. It was a sunny day with a cool spring breeze. I was there with Zoe again, shooting a documentary<\/a> about her and her foraging practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n2.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Broadleaf](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/plantago-asiatica.jpg\")
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3.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/s>are built upon this legacy. The cautious glances and hurried footsteps of those immigrant women in the NYC parks are echoes of this history\u2014a history in which survival and sustenance have long been dictated by laws that were never made to serve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n4.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Hand](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/chen-huiyi-foraging-1024x768.jpg\")
5.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/chen-huiyi-foraging-2-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n6.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n