Local people, distant meat – why should we care? | Chengdu & Ningbo Screenings

· When herders on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau are feeling the impact of agricultural products from faraway Brazil, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand, how should we think about the food on our tables?

◉A flock of sheep at the home of Ni’egjia, one of the protagonists of “Whose Table, Whose Pasture.” Photo: Jiao Xiaofang

◉Follow-up visits are an important part of community video. In 2025, Jiao Xiaofang returned to the filming location to screen the documentary Whose Table, Whose Pasture for the herders. Photo: Jiao Xiaofang

This weekend, there are three screenings in total, across Chengdu and Ningbo. After each one, we’ve invited experts and scholars familiar with the issues to join us in discussion:

 – Synopsis – 

*Whose Table, Whose Pasture* is an investigative documentary. With support from Foodthink’s Lianhe Creative Fund, the director travelled deep into the pastoral regions surrounding Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact that mass imports of frozen beef and mutton have had on local markets.

Through visits to frozen wholesale markets and cold chain warehouses in Xining, and footage of local herding families, butchers’ shops and fattening farms, the film lays bare the impact of imported meat’s price advantage on local beef and mutton. The direct consequences are a sharp drop in the price herders receive for their cattle and sheep, reduced incomes, difficulty servicing loans, and razor-thin margins for local meat traders struggling to stay in business.

The camera pushes deep into the imported beef and mutton market around Qinghai Lake, probing a stark reality: in the globalised meat supply chain, who benefits from low prices, and who pays the price?

Jiao Xiaofang｜Documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist, with a long-standing focus on local knowledge, ecological ethics, and women’s experiences in western China and the coastal regions of Southeast Asia. Her work combines ethnographic observation with poetic expression, centring on the relationship between people and nature and the emotional landscapes of everyday life. Her documentary Whose Table, Whose Pasture (2025) was selected for the 5th World Nomadic Film Festival and the 6th Chinese Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival.

Qiong Wu · Dan Zeng｜Tibetan community filmmaker and activist, long dedicated to ecological conservation and visual education in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau region. He previously served as coordinator of the Rural Eyes Tibetan-region project in Yunnan and as central-region representative of the Alxa SEE Three Rivers Source project. He is currently head of the Human–Bear Conflict Project at the Qinghai Xuejing Eco-Education and Research Center. Over the past decade, he has promoted herder video training and community ecological projects in Yushu, Aba, and other areas, supporting herders in using video to document their own environments and cultures. His work spans film, ecology, and public education, dedicated to building understanding and coexistence between people and nature.

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