In the spring of 2024, as a city office worker with absolutely no farming experience, I began tending a plot of land in the Beijing suburbs on and off, tentatively embarking on my agricultural journey. When I told people around me, their reactions generally fell into two camps: some…
As a durian enthusiast, I had long heard that Penang in Malaysia is home to hundreds of different durian varieties. This year, I joined a durian tour group and sampled more than twenty distinct kinds, and while working alongside local farmers, I tasted the day’s randomly fallen durian “blind…
This summer, Malaysia is experiencing a veritable durian glut. Bumper harvests across major growing regions such as Johor, Penang and Perak, compounded by a recent surge in supply from mature orchards, have driven prices sharply down. According to the Sin Chew Daily, some lower-grade Musang King fruit has…
Foodthink says If the previous part took us inside the McDonald’s kitchen, revealing a high-speed mini-factory operating in 90-second intervals, this instalment will explore how that factory is managed and maintained. From price anchoring in combo meal design to ever-shrinking store footprints; from Scheduling Experts and Shared Store…
Between 06:00 on 14 July and 06:00 on 15 July, the county-level city of Dunhua City in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province—situated along the banks of the Mudan River—shattered local historical records for 24-hour rainfall. Water levels across several local rivers rose relentlessly before eventually overflowing.…
Foodthink says McDonald’s wears two faces. Once a beloved children’s playground, it is now a fast-food grindhouse for young wage earners. It is as much a small-scale factory as it is a place to dine. McDonald’s kitchens are open-plan, yet they conceal a highly precise production workflow. Within…
Over the past few years, a growing number of food companies have begun to publicise their emission reduction targets and environmental contributions, and food packaging has increasingly featured marketing terms such as ‘sustainable’, ‘recyclable’, ‘low-carbon’ and ‘climate-friendly’. These claims are designed to persuade consumers that simply purchasing the product…
Author’s Note When I first drafted this in October 2024, it was heavy with emotion. I couldn’t quite grasp how the company operated; I was angry, resentful. Revising the piece this year, after my own “baptism of fire” at another state-owned enterprise, those incidents now seem fairly unremarkable in hindsight.…
We must make hope more plausible than despair; only then can we walk the path to peace. — Raymond Williams Soon after the raid on Venezuela, on 28 February 2026, US forces struck a primary school in Iran, killing at least 175 people, the majority of…
As extreme weather shifts from ‘news’ to ‘the everyday’, we need action rooted in the land and driven by real needs more than ever. In late April this year, Foodthink officially launched the sixth round of the Lianhe Project small (action) grants. We aim to uncover locally…
