Podcast episodes, transcripts, interviews, and related content.
In August 2024, two feature films about the food delivery industry premiered. Coinciding with their release, Hangzhou witnessed two sudden incidents involving delivery riders: in August, a confrontation between a rider and a security guard sparked a collective protest by nearby couriers; in September, a top-performing rider known as a…
In this episode of Food Talk, we welcome Foodthink’s new colleague, Yuyang, as our special guest. He is not only a fresh addition to our team but also brings a unique background: he spent four months in 2021 working briefly as a food delivery rider. Though interested in the labour…
In this episode of *Food Talk*, we focus on the recent tanker truck incident that has captured widespread attention, exploring how food safety concerns impact our everyday lives. Despite numerous past food safety scandals, consumers still feel largely powerless in the face of our current food environment. This sense of…
This episode of Food Talk features Huang Guoliang, an experienced rural development practitioner. As is common among his peers, we usually refer to him simply as ‘Lao Liu’. Lao Liu has been working in rural communities for nearly two decades, having first embarked on this path in 2005. He shared…
Taking a break from a conference in Nanning, we caught up with our old friend Huang Yajun. As a seasoned rural development practitioner, Yajun, born in the 1980s, has witnessed over a decade of shifts in the countryside. From grassroots, community-led explorations to government-driven poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation initiatives,…
Which documentary once shaped the career choices of our colleagues at Foodthink, prompting us to dedicate ourselves to the food and agriculture sector? Perhaps it was this one: *Food, Inc.* Released in 2009, the documentary pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the US food industry, placing particular…
On a windy March day in Beijing, we sat down with Tang Liang, who had travelled all the way from Liangliang Farm in Sichuan, to reflect on his twelve-year journey back to the countryside at the Foodthink offices. Tang was the first in his family to attend university. After graduating…
The Spring Festival holiday has passed. What hometown flavours did you enjoy when you went back this year? In this episode of Food Talk, the Foodthink team gathers to share their culinary memories of the festivities. From Shaanxi to Hainan, and on to Harbin and Beijing, each region boasts its…
How do you tell if your fruit and vegetables are any good? Judging them purely by how neat and uniform they look? Yet why do all those irregular, “ugly” fruits and vegetables vanish the moment they reach the shelves? It isn’t a genetic mutation; it’s market selection. If consumers judge…
Near San Yuan Bridge in Beijing sits an unusual community greengrocer. Every fruit and vegetable arrives directly from local ecological smallholder farmers. Each item is individually identifiable, grown without pesticides or synthetic fertilisers, and adheres to rigorous production standards. The shop, named Jishi, is run by the Beijing Organic Farmers…
