Urban food life, consumption behavior, and food culture.
Qin Xianrong, a 1990s-born returnee, has farmed 60 mu of sloping land in Dadu’gang, Xishuangbanna, for four years—growing pineapples, passion fruit and macadamia nuts almost wild, no chemical fertiliser, pesticide or watering. Amid rubber plantations and tea gardens, he explores a way of reconnecting with the land.
Director Liu Taifeng of Another Day Full of Hope says riders’ “zero-cost onboarding” is really just debt for equipment and rent upfront; engineers under KPIs dare not question the system; restaurant owners must pad reviews — all strata are bound by the same algorithmic logic.
Foodthink chats with director Liu Taifeng and producer Zhu Tong about their in-depth research into delivery riders before filming, and about riders and programmers being equally trapped in the system – and how to find our footing when faced with platforms.
Apollo Go in Wuhan leaves drivers with nothing but remote fire-fighting; Bianlifeng locks store managers’ experience outside the algorithm; Meituan’s system turns the time riders save by running red lights into new standards — power is accelerating toward the platforms.
Going Against the Flow has its programmer protagonist fall to become a delivery rider, yet ends with his return to a major internet company; it reduces algorithmic oppression of labour to a technical fix and sidesteps the collective struggle actually taking place among riders.
During the summer of 2021, Yuyang spent four months as an Ele.me dedicated rider in Zhongguancun, navigating between the delivery station, merchants and customers, contending with order dispatch, complaints and attendance tracking – making a decision almost every minute and second.
At Meet Farm in Meishan, Chen Ying replaces pesticides and chemical fertilisers with rice-duck pest control and kitchen-waste composting. Across forty mu, she grows and raises everything herself – the only food that needs to be bought in is salt.
In Yulin, Chengdu, Xia Lili has set up a community small dining table with traceable, farm-direct ingredients, giving a group long reliant on takeaway a reason to pick up their rice bowls again. Some have regained their appetite; others, their motivation to get up on time.
From the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, cooperatives have connected members at both consumption and production ends for 180 years. Foodthink gathers cooperative practices in food and agriculture worldwide, tracing this movement’s paths to health, fairness and sustainability in the ‘food empire’s’ gaps.
Hu Xuemei, a Pidu District farmer, went from water-protection volunteer to turning her family’s fields into a diverse, finely tended ecological farm and setting up farming-based arts-education classes with an art teacher. After half a lifetime passively running a household, she became the master of her own life.
