Bringing city dwellers back to nature and human warmth through the simple act of dining | One Pot Shi Tai’s Little Dining Table
Editor’s Note
As an alternative to the solitude of ordering takeout alone, The Little Dining Table offers a healthier, more sustainable, and warmer way to eat. In today’s economic downturn, these dining buddies purchase ingredients directly from farmers, creating a collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship between production and consumption. Through this project, Xia Lili hopes to lead more people in building a more resilient life-support system.
This miniature community canteen is the culmination of the first half of Xia Lili’s life spent “getting to know food”; it is also one of her active attempts to participate in social development and find a way to improve it.
Because of her talent for creating a variety of interesting delicacies using just a single pot, Xia Lili is called “Master Yi Guo”. She is also a nature educator and a researcher and practitioner of community building. A passionate cook since childhood, she has always been dedicated to creating a sustainable relationship between “people, food, and nature”. She is also a writer, having previously penned the “Solar Terms Table” column for Foodthink. Moving forward, she will evolve this series into “Master Yi Guo’s Little Dining Table”, unfolding vivid stories centered around the diners, cooks, farmers, and the food itself.
This is the first piece in the “Master Yi Guo’s Little Dining Table” column. Using a narrative that overlaps time and space, Master Yi Guo describes the past and present of the project, slowly unfolding her deeper reflections on The Little Dining Table.
When living in the city, the changes in daylight are subtle and time often feels blurred. Fortunately, I now live in the Yulin-Fangcao area of Chengdu—a cluster of old residential neighbourhoods at the junction of the first and second ring roads in the south of the city. This area is a hotspot for community building and urban renewal in Chengdu, allowing me to perceive the changing solar terms by observing the local flora and attending the monthly Chengdu Life Market.
Because of The Little Dining Table, I visit the market every month to source ingredients for my dining buddies. This allows me to catch up with the farmers and save on delivery costs, while reducing the labour and material waste associated with couriers.
Chengdu’s rain has been “considerate” this year, falling sporadically since *Gu Yu* (Grain Rain), allowing crops to grow well and fill their grains, and prompting the ripening fruit to leave their homes. The loquats on the tree by the Yulin Kindergarten wall have had their fill of water these past few days; their skins are beginning to burst and the fruit is dropping to the ground.
I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if the kindergarten could make use of these loquat trees—bringing the children here throughout the seasons to observe, pick, and learn how to make jam or toss a salad.
Nature education must first focus on the immediate surroundings; labour education must be relevant to daily life. This is my belief, and it is my practice.
I. “Humans must grow up amidst nature and human connection”
Looking back, I feel truly fortunate that in an era of industrial farming full of artificial tricks and additives, my child could grow up slowly on food grown by ecological small-scale farmers using environment-friendly methods. He has visited many farms, even spending time working on some in exchange for room and board, spending the first decade of his life learning about the production and daily rhythms of these farming friends.
Those ten years have shaped him into a child who loves food, possesses an adventurous palate, and knows exactly what he wants to eat. When ordering at a restaurant, he chooses dishes he rarely gets to try; when accompanying me to the market, he asks where the produce originates; and on the occasional supermarket trip for snacks, he scrutinises the ingredients on the label.
The wish that my child would grow up amidst nature and human connection was one I first harboured during my pregnancy. Now that it has become a reality, I am grateful to the internet for introducing me to this circle of farming friends and organisations that care about food. I am indebted to the farmers for their steadfast cultivation of the land, and even more so to the partners in symbiotic ecological agriculture for their mutual encouragement and support throughout this journey.
The golden loquats look truly tempting, reminding me of the courtyard at the Simple Abode where I once lived in Mingyue Village. There, as Yumi Hayakawa wrote in “The Life of Farming and Eating“—”not living by one’s own clock, but living a life centred on the rhythms of plants”—I spent a time living as neighbours with the loquats.
In the second year of my neighbourhood with the loquats, during a bumper harvest, I gathered a few village children in my kitchen to prepare a loquat feast.
I still remember that day. The children arrived at the courtyard at the appointed time, using fruit pickers to gather the loquats from the trees. They then placed the fruit in basins to wash, peel, and pit them, tearing the flesh into pieces and layering it with rock sugar in jars before sealing them. That jar of sugar-preserved loquats has stayed with me, moving from that first courtyard to the Earth Kitchen at Lemao’s home. It is a keepsake for a special purpose and a vibrant piece of decoration, and thus it has always held a central place on the kitchen prep table.
I can never bring myself to use them up; I only occasionally add a tiny bit to braised pork belly to enhance the flavour.
Several years have passed. Some of the children who joined in the labour back then have already entered high school or university, leaving Mingyue Village to see the wider world. But the laughter and joy they left behind in that courtyard during their childhood, along with the loquats, are preserved forever in that small glass jar in the kitchen.
It was also that year that I planted mint and lemon balm in the courtyard. Plucking a few leaves and sprinkling them over the loquat flesh that the children had peeled and pitted, then adding some freshly picked raspberries or mulberries—and sometimes some nuts—and giving it a gentle toss, created a summer fruit salad loved by adults and children alike.
As time passed and my child grew older, we began living a hundred kilometres apart. Consequently, my interest in making such snacks and desserts waned. Now that I have started my “Little Dining Table”, my daily weekday thoughts have shifted towards what to prepare for my eating buddies.
II. The Spark: An Alternative to Takeaways
I hoped to use food as a medium to help more parents refocus their children’s education on the rhythms of daily life—getting to know the local environment through vegetables and fruits, and inheriting rural culture through every bowl of porridge and grain of rice. I was delighted to find that these courses were warmly received by many urban families, and I have since run several sessions during weekends and school holidays.
In every session, the adults and children I met loved exploring the vegetable markets and eating at my office on Yulin North Street. Vegetables grown by farmer friends using ecological methods in relatively clean soil simply have a bolder flavour and are naturally more nutritious than the conventional produce found in markets. Children who usually have to be coaxed and pleaded with to eat at home often found themselves eagerly asking for second helpings.
Whenever I saw those expressions of joy and satisfaction on the children’s faces, I felt I should do more. I wanted more children to understand where their daily food comes from, the vital importance of eating in season, why there are so many fermented foods locally, and how buying from our farmer friends benefits both our bodies and the environment…
Alongside the nature writing studio, I helped operate a nearby bookstore. For a while, I was on duty there two days a week. During my shifts, I noticed that the shopkeepers and staff on that street relied on takeaways for almost every lunch and dinner.
I worried about their health and felt that the sheer amount of packaging waste produced by takeaways was utterly unsustainable.
After bringing in home-cooked meals for the bookstore staff a few times, the idea for a “Little Dining Table” began to take root. The bookstore’s storeroom had once been a private restaurant, so the pots and pans were already there. All I needed to do was invite fellow shop owners nearby to pool their funds to buy produce from farmer friends; I would handle the prep and the cooking. This would give people who previously had no choice but to eat takeaways access to clean, healthy, home-cooked meals, while slightly increasing the sales for our farmer friends. For me, the Little Dining Table was a way to connect production and consumption, hone my culinary skills, and reduce my own living expenses by exchanging labour for meals.
I decided to dive straight in. I immediately began mapping out the system in my head. From whom should I buy the rice and mixed grains? Who should I order the vegetable packs from? The market is open once a month, so I could bulk-buy staples and root vegetables then, but how should I procure leafy greens and gourds on weekdays? Should I share this latest life experiment with everyone on my public account?…
However, plans rarely survive contact with reality. After the Spring Festival, the bookstore’s operations were restructured, and my shifts were no longer required. The storeroom was also about to be sublet. Thus, the Little Dining Table of Rainbow Street remained a mere concept, circling through my mind without ever manifesting.
That path was blocked, but I hadn’t given up.
III. Gathering the “Eating Buddies”
I had first met Ms Jiang two years ago when I was invited to the mountains of Ya’an to provide consultancy for a nature camp. During a break in the meeting, as we were stretching in the sunlight and discussing health, Ms Jiang gave us a demonstration on correct abdominal breathing, which left a deep impression on me.
Ms Jiang had previously run a café, worked at a nature camp, and been involved in healing courses such as somatic movement. She had a strong understanding of the healing power of ecological agriculture, healthy food, and regular routines. When we met again and I mentioned the Little Dining Table plan, my ideas resonated perfectly with her. She was thrilled and immediately offered to become my flatmate.
By becoming flatmates and sharing the cost and consumption of food, we could not only strengthen our collaboration and friendship and reduce utility bills, but more importantly, the Little Dining Table could rescue her from the daily dilemma of “not knowing what to eat”, freeing up more time for her to explore her interests.
After successfully teaming up with Ms Jiang, I went downstairs to introduce her to a brother and sister who run a plant shop. I told them the Little Dining Table had launched and invited them to join. As they were also struggling with meal planning, they were delighted with the proposal. After I explained the philosophy behind it, we discussed the best time for them to collect their meals and how much each person should contribute monthly to cover costs. Thus, version 1.0 of the trial Little Dining Table went live.
Now, I want to use communal eating as a way to lead my eating buddies in getting to know their food. Once again, focusing on the radius of one’s personal life, I aim to organise those around me into a peer-learning community. I hope the Little Dining Table can find new paths for connecting production and consumption, and I look forward to discovering new expressions of a “beautiful life” in the company of my farmer friends and eating buddies.
