Shandong native Kouzi’s sixth winter in rural Fujian: from rocket stove kang to old granary turned warm room, from radish soup to dried pumpkin, the south’s damp cold at last gives way to ease.
In a sixteenth-century manor in western France, a 1970s hippie couple sustains self-sufficiency through work-exchange volunteers. A month with a Colombian brother and sister—undocumented workers—picking strawberries, smashing walls, making cheese: the “return to the countryside” romantic imaginings shattered by day after day of unpaid manual labour.
Grandma Kouzi at Villain’s Valley in Fujian harvested over a hundred pumpkins and over a hundred jin of beans, grains and peanuts in 2025—full food self-sufficiency except salt. A single batch of air-fryer roasted pumpkin sustains a day’s staple food.
Solvent extraction dissolves oil with n-hexane, then subjects it to two rounds of high-temperature decolourisation and deodorisation; solvent residues, trans fat and excess omega-6 are hard to avoid. Nuts, home-pressed oil and low-temperature cooking offer alternatives.
In Tacheng, Shangri-La, golden sparrow flowers must be picked before the buds open, and shepherd’s purse can only be dug up with flower scissors to hand—like eating wild mushrooms in the rainy season, eating wild edibles in spring is an instinct etched into Yunnanese genes.
Readers from Beijing, Tokyo, Guangzhou, Chiang Mai and beyond share their everyday lives with the market: hidden-gem stalls, grocery-buying tips, the warmth of exchanges with stallholders—and—squeezed by supermarkets and e-commerce—where the market goes from here.
A bottle of twenty-year-old mother brine brought from Changsha, a handful of sourdough starter passed down through several generations by a friend — in my kitchen in Berlin, these microbes reconnect me with home, friends and the four seasons.
The bran sifted out during flour milling is toasted until fragrant, ground fine, and packaged as “wheat germ flour” to be sold back at a premium. Polished rice and refined flour, having undergone excessive extraction and addition, have become ultra-processed food.
Guizhou sour broth, Shanxi Naotou breakfast soup, Kunming eggplant za, Wuyuan Qigao (Wuyuan steamed rice cake)… Fermentation most vividly reveals a region’s local flavour and customs. This holiday, follow diners’ hometown memories and seek out the tangy aroma in jars and crocks across the country.
Beyond the Xibei pre-made meals controversy, small shops that stir-fry to order are being squeezed by central kitchens, local food memories are fading, and exhausted parents and international students may well have long since become unable to do without pre-made meals.