Personal stories and production narratives of smallholders, individual farmers, and family farms.
Three months ago, a young couple who had returned to their hometown to farm in Gansu welcomed a baby, whom they named “Maizi” (Wheat). On WeChat Moments, the mother, Shi Tou, wrote: “We hope our little Maizi, born of the Shi Tou fields, will grow as resilient as our sandy…
Foodthink Says Can you still find “local produce” at the open-air markets on Beijing’s outskirts? The answer to this question lies in the hands of those veteran farmers who continue to save their own seeds. After ten years of farming at Gaia·Wosh Garden on the far fringes of Beijing, they…
Foodthink Notes Zha Shiyire, born in 1990, is a member of the Huayao Yi ethnic minority from Shiping County, Yunnan, and truly embodies the description of a “girl who grew up in a mountain village”. After graduating from college, she worked at a television station. She resigned in 2019 to…
Have you ever fantasised about fleeing the city, returning to the countryside to farm, and embracing rural life? Have you ever harboured romantic notions of a “self-sufficient” existence? Yet real life on the land is far more complex and arduous than we imagine—and infinitely more moving. Wenzizi and Changjiaoling are…
In the three months following the disaster, from anxious consumers to government officials at every level, nearly everyone posed the same question to Zhen Rui: “What is the way forward?” In the early hours of 28 July 2025, extreme heavy rainfall battered the mountainous regions of northern Beijing. Flash floods,…
Autumn harvest in North China has been disrupted by months of continuous rain, with some areas experiencing the rare occurrence of it starting as early as late August. News of unharvested corn and mouldy cobs has repeatedly topped trending lists. Foodthink visited six agricultural counties across Hebei and Henan provinces,…
I. A thousand theories pale before a single deed Sometimes, an unassuming turning point sows the seed for profound change. Take the winter of 2007, for instance. I travelled to the Northeast with Gao Tian, a volunteer photographer, to shoot a portfolio of works by disabled artists. Early one morning,…
I. Typhoon shifts south; force 12 winds lay siege to farming communities “With this typhoon, farming communities have suffered most.” In the early hours of the 25th, Hao Nan, a humanitarian disaster relief specialist and director of Zhuominxinyuan, sent a voice message to the Foodthink editorial team, speaking with earnest…
The dream of a lazy foodie is to build a self-sufficient, low-maintenance garden: a sustainable food forest that yields an abundance of produce while demanding minimal labour. Back when I studied permaculture in Taiwan, I was properly introduced to the concept of a “food forest”. I had encountered the term…
Foodthink says *Disappearing Food* is a book that explores the global crisis of food diversity, serving as a vital call to action for the conservation of local germplasm resources and the preservation of cultural heritage. On 9 July, Foodthink and Beiye Books jointly launched the *Disappearing Food* online reading group…
