Urban food life, consumption behavior, and food culture.
Foodthink Says Wet markets today appear to be undergoing a remarkable ‘restoration’: what was once nothing more than the mundane daily errand of elders lugging bags of groceries has now become a destination young people flock to—a trending hotspot, a window into the city’s character, even a ‘healing space’…
This Saturday (22 August) anthropologist and Foodthink’s longtime friend Zhong Shuru is coming to Beijing with her new book *China’s Wet Markets*! In the morning, we’ll head to a “special market” together to browse and chat; in the evening, we’ll start from “shopping for food in Beijing” and talk…
As someone born in the 1980s, before I had my daughter Shu’er at thirty, I rarely visited the wet market. I could hardly understand why my mother, rain or shine, insisted on pulling her trolley to the market, why she so relished recounting her market observations to me, or…
Foodthink Says Not long ago, through Foodthink’s ‘Eat Well’ story submission column, we received a great many fresh observations and reflections about wet markets from our readers. So, what do wet markets signify through the eyes of an anthropologist? To grasp the vitality and challenges of China’s wet…
In recent years, dining experience activities such as “flying kitchens” and “shared supper tables” have begun to gain traction. As a former cook, I was itching to jump in. Isn’t this the dream of anyone who loves to cook? You get to cook to your own heart’s content, free…
This is my seventh year living in the UK. Six years ago, I opened a roujiamo shop called Rogamo in a small town near Exeter. These days, the name has almost become the standard English term for roujiamo. Before Rogamo, I had already spent ten years in the…
Today, fresh-food e-commerce platforms such as Hema (Alibaba), Xiaoxiang Market (Meituan), 7Fresh (JD.com) and Pupu are growing increasingly popular. These platforms mean that with just a few taps on your smartphone from the comfort of your home, you can have a wide range of daily essentials delivered within 30…
Foodthink Says In January this year, a Beijing resident ordered fresh lilies via Hema, but mistakenly received toxic narcissus bulbs instead, leading to the hospitalisation of their 71-year-old mother and 12-year-old son after they consumed them. Addressing the mix-up, Hema explained that during the picking process, a packer had mistakenly…
I grew up as a girl who spent her childhood wandering through wet markets. In my day job, I’m an office worker tied to a cubicle, but when the Lunar New Year rolls around, I step in as the “second-in-command” at a market grocer’s stall.What sort of place is a…
On 4 April last year, Foodthink published a “collection of deleted articles”. Since then, each time a piece was taken down, the team would console themselves with an inside joke: “We’ve already got another ‘404ed 404’ for next year.” But the 404s over the past two years aren’t entirely the…
