A Note from Foodthink With the Spring Festival drawing near, who wouldn’t want to save time and effort when putting together a grand feast for the New Year’s Eve dinner? Riding this wave of convenience, an array of pre-prepared meals have once again topped search trends across online shopping platforms.…
Foodthink Says In the final episode of the recently acclaimed drama Blossoms Shanghai, protagonist Bao Zong quotes a famous line from Gone with the Wind — “Only land remains eternal” — before retiring to the fields of Chuansha on Shanghai’s outskirts. Had his plot not been sold to Disney or…
Longtime Foodthink readers will likely already know the name ‘Grandma Kouzi’. Since 2021, this woman nearing sixty has chosen to relocate to ‘Evil Valley’ in Fujian, building her own home, tending the crops herself, carving out a sanctuary from barren land, and exploring a self-sufficient way of life. In this…
“Save our rice!” “IRRI, get out!” In October 2023, these furious chants echoed across several Filipino farmer protest rallies. The demonstrations took direct aim at the Sixth International Rice Congress, hosted by the International Rice Research Institute (hereafter IRRI). Against the backdrop of climate change and the drive to cut…
Foodthink Author Kouzi Endurance walker and farmer, village brewer. Full-time food lover, part-time farmer, amateur writer. Regular readers will likely have noticed by now: I don’t stir-fry. Yes, Evildoers’ Valley doesn’t even own a wok. Admittedly, my one-square-metre kitchen is fully equipped with appliances — a saucepan,…
Grandpa was the fourth child in his family. Born in 1933, he lost his mother in early childhood and his father in his youth, weathering famine and disaster. He was always a farmer, though he also worked at one stage as a cotton carder. In his final years, he dreamed…
I. The fruit buyers didn’t come this year On 13 December 2023, in Huichang County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province – the heartland of Gannan navel oranges – Liao Hai, a farmer born in the 1990s, and his mother, Auntie Zou, were getting ready to start the harvest. Early that morning,…
In 2016, I had a few rather unsuccessful shopping trips to Sanyuanli Market. I only recently made my way back, drawn by the exhibition and the urge to check in, only to find it had long since settled on its new identity: an art scene. Seven years on, Sanyuanli has…
Foodthink Says This October, Foodthink partnered with dozens of co-organisers across the country—including farmers’ markets, ecological farms, fermentation artisans, restaurants, publishers, and non-profit organisations—to launch the ‘Fermentation Awakening Festival’. In November, we hosted four reading sessions centred on Sandor Katz’s *The Art of Fermentation*. The guest for the first session…
In this episode, we’ll take you into the fascinating world of fermented foods—cheese—and introduce the story of Liu Yang, founder of Bleu Cheese, a master cheese artisan from China. Originally from Beijing and trained in IT, Liu Yang stumbled upon milk churning and cheesemaking while studying in France. This “incredibly…
