The Question That Has Long Troubled Working People
A Word from Foodthink
If you skip takeaway, what do you eat instead? It seems to be a question that has long troubled working people yet has never been seriously discussed. Fortunately, the wisdom of the people is boundless. This edition of Eat Well brings together tips for Eating Well shared by friends from every corner of the country, compiled into a secret guide to digging in. Come and see if any of these tricks work for you!
Start with the Simplest Meals
@南乡子 (Female, media professional): I haven’t had takeaway at all since the start of this year. I recently learned how to make claypot rice on Xiaohongshu, and it really is a method that saves time and effort while being healthy and delicious—I highly recommend it! First, buy a small claypot. Rinse one cup of rice (a portion for one person; two cups for two), then soak it in water for about ten minutes. Next, bring it to the boil over a high flame, then turn down to low. When the water is almost absorbed, drizzle a ring of oil around the edges. Lay your pre-sliced sausage and cured pork on top of the rice, put the lid on, and let it cook on low heat for another two or three minutes. Crack an egg over the top, add some vegetables and a splash of sauce, turn off the heat, and a fragrant bowl of claypot rice is done. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes, and you skip all the greasy wok fumes—truly nice.
@树懒 (Female, Shenzhen): Here are three new dishes I’ve been experimenting with recently. Free recipes, take them and enjoy!
Take a big knife and chop vegetables and meat into generous chunks, toss them all into the pressure rice cooker, add a pre-packaged braising spice mix, some vinegar and soy sauce, and in fifteen minutes it’s ready to eat—so satisfying. For the second: egg, ham sausage, a handful of greens and alkaline dried noodles, all stir-fried together—you can recreate the taste of wok-fried noodles from a street stall. Third: beat two eggs with hot water, pour into a bowl, and steam for fifteen minutes to get a mirror-smooth, silky steamed egg custard!
@Vino (Female, 34, editor, Hangzhou): I’ve stocked up on loads of semi-prepared foods—Luosifen snail noodles, Chongqing spicy noodles (xiaomian), Dingxi wide noodles, Fuzhou fish balls—and I just throw them in a pot with some fresh vegetables. No matter what, it’s tastier, healthier and more hygienic than takeaway. I’ve told my friends many times: if you want to give a gift, give food—it’s practical and solves a real problem. I don’t want things that look lovely but serve no purpose. So friends from every corner of the country send me local specialities!
@王某人 (25, Kunming): The biggest reason I stopped ordering takeaway is that it just tastes too bad. It awakened my inner Sichuanese genes—my home cooking keeps getting better, my partner loves it, and the interplay of frustration on one side and positive encouragement on the other has created a virtuous cycle. Now I find it easy to feel fulfilled and accomplished whenever I cook.
When I don’t fancy going to all that trouble but still want a nutritionally balanced meal, I combine meat, vegetables and a starch all in one dish—stir-fried rice, rice noodles, rice vermicelli or dried rice vermicelli with meat, egg and greens, for example. A few simple seasonings and it’s wonderfully fragrant and delicious. The key is to adjust cooking times according to each ingredient’s nature, and the starch always goes in last. But for tougher meats I cook them to about half-done first, set them aside, then cook the egg or vegetables separately before adding the meat and starch back in. The very practice of cooking grants a sense of truth and order in the world of good food—yet it can also easily make one dwell in a world of “Day and Night, the Kitchen and Love”.
“Cook Once, Eat for a Week”: Homemade Prepared Meals
@LTT (Female, 30, Beijing): My method is to marinate the meat the night before and pop it in the fridge, then either steam it or give it a quick stir-fry when I get home the next day. Cantonese cooking methods work really well here—there are plenty of marinate-ahead recipes to look into. Just wash the vegetables, give them a quick stir-fry, or blanch them and drizzle with a little soy sauce or oyster sauce. And if you enjoy salad greens, that’s even simpler.
@海豚妈米 (Female, 47, Beijing): I order takeaway no more than three times a year, and only when something unusual is going on at home. I once went over a year without ordering anything. When I was commuting, I’d get up early every day to cook and take my lunch to the office in an insulated container. When working from home, I do a single meat run over the weekend, make homemade prepared meals, and portion them into containers for the freezer. Dishes that freeze well for this: braised pork ribs, stewed beef, and so on.
Take stewed beef as an example: cook 1.5 kg at once, divide into three containers, and over the next two months you can quickly turn them into braised beef brisket with radish, braised beef noodle soup, or beef with cabbage and potatoes. Defrost the braised beef the night before, and the next morning all you need is water, salt, vegetables and an egg for a nourishing bowl of beef noodles—convenient and delicious. You can also pre-prepare beef sauce, minced pork, mushroom sauce and so on to add variety to your everyday meals. If eating at home every day feels a bit monotonous, step out for a meal from time to time to change your rhythm and enjoy a moment of ease.
@豆豆: Many people around me always assume that quitting takeaway is hard, and they wonder how I manage to “keep at it”—cooking and bringing my own lunch, never ordering in. But I don’t even feel like I’m “keeping at it”. You only call something persistence when there’s difficulty to overcome—yet in experimenting with homemade prepared meals, I’ve felt a strong sense of accomplishment, even enjoying the whole process and the results. If you decide to give it a try, I’d suggest starting with frozen ingredients that haven’t been heavily processed, or shelf-stable convenient foods. The most common options are frozen diced vegetables, frozen peeled prawns, and the ready-to-eat corn cobs that a lot of people have been loving recently. I love browsing the supermarket freezer—the ready-made dishes in there are a great reference. Well-established frozen foods have been market-tested and usually don’t taste bad; we can use them as a guide to recreate at home, right down to how they’re cooked.
Eating Isn’t a One-Person Affair
@冲冲: Besides cooking for myself, I take turns hosting dinner gatherings with friends. You really do need to find a way to live in community—cooking alone is just too hard.
@qiqi: I remember when I went to view the flat before moving in, my new roommate asked me with a grin, “Do you cook often?” She showed me the kitchen—neat and bright, with every pot, pan, and bottle of oil, soy sauce and vinegar in its own place. Even more delightful, the fridge had absolutely no funky smells; the vegetables were arranged in neat rows, as if they knew they wouldn’t be forgotten at the back.
My new roommate loves messing about in the kitchen making mantou, baozi, dumplings and all kinds of wheat-based treats. I’m often the lucky beneficiary of her bountiful spreads, which naturally motivates me to try out new dishes to share as well. In the two years since we moved in, I’ve picked up a whole repertoire of dishes I could never make before, and remarkably, I’ve barely ordered takeaway at all. Eating has gone from a problem to be solved to something I look forward to every single day.
Is the Workplace Canteen Tasty Again?
@cutedog (Male, 24, researcher): Every workplace I’ve been at has had a canteen, and because of subsidies, the food is quite affordable. After eating there long enough, colleagues often grumble that the flavours are monotonous, but it’s still far better than being forced to order takeaway. Think about it—the canteen menu is actually quite diverse: you can see the usual stir-fries, but also speciality noodle dishes, pastries, and braised items, like braised duck head and braised pork knuckle. At the checkout there are also fruits and yoghurt, so the meal pairing is fairly balanced.
@Vino (Female, 34, editor, Hangzhou): Two years ago, I was working in a big city, and there were only two restaurants downstairs from the office. I still insisted on going down to eat. Later I made a suggestion to the company, and the boss hired a cook. The salary is covered by the company, and we each chip in 20 yuan a day for the ingredients—five dishes and a soup at every meal. Bliss!
@玉阳 (Male, 29, Beijing): Joining Foodthink has probably increased my cooking frequency more than anything else. In the old desk-based days, colleagues took turns cooking for everyone. And because there were so many people, we always had at least six dishes to start. The process really honed my skills. What feels most comfortable is that whether the cooking turns out well or badly, everyone is rather forgiving—giving those with average cooking skills room to improve.
So unlike an ordinary workplace canteen, here you don’t just get a meal perk—you also build the ability and the habit of cooking, which then extends into your family life, making more dishes for the people you love. It’s been clumsy at times, and I’ve had my share of disasters, but looking back, those dishes—scallion-braised tofu, spare rib and kelp soup, spinach with crushed peanuts, qiangban tofu—were all truly made by my own two hands!
The Quiet Rise of the Community Canteen
@Road: There’s a community canteen near our residential compound. It’s mainly for the elderly in the neighbourhood, but they’ve explicitly stated it’s open to all age groups. There’s a wonderful variety of dishes, priced between 7 and 15 yuan. I don’t actually have high standards for flavour diversity—what really makes me feel at ease is how clean and refreshing the dishes taste, without heavy oil or salt, and without that stale, off smell you get when food sits in a plastic container. Most importantly, compared with the dry, undercooked rice you get from takeaway, the rice here is so good that I could eat an entire bowl plain. Sometimes I feel the biggest difference between eating at home and eating out is simply that one bowl of steaming-hot rice! This community canteen gives me exactly that feeling. But I do have to say, it’s still unfriendly to working people—dinner is only available until about six, yet many of us don’t get home until after seven.
@lislie: The first time I ate at a community canteen was at one set up near a renovated wet market that was held up as a model. It had an open kitchen where the cooking was visible to diners. The menu wasn’t much wider than a typical pick-and-pay canteen, but each dish looked fresh and clean, with meat, fish, soups, vegetables and grains all covered. The space was generous, you could order à la carte, and there was a discount notice for delivery riders hanging beside the rice station. The lunch crowd came in two waves: elderly neighbours, and office workers (I gathered that many employers have set up accounts there for their staff).
Beyond government-run community canteens, I’ve also eaten at a privately run community eatery. Every day the owner posts lunch and dinner set menus in a WeChat group: a Yunnan-style starch, plus a dessert (you can also add a house-made wine or drink the owner makes that day), for around 40 yuan. Anyone wanting a meal simply adds their name to the group’s sign-up list, then walks to the kitchen to collect their food and find a seat. Once you’ve finished, everyone tacitly carries their dishes back to the kitchen. The owner told me that at first people came just to check it out, but gradually it became mostly familiar faces—she could name every regular. Most of them were small groups of young people, who’d greet the owner on the way out or exchange little gifts. A warm, comfortable atmosphere hangs over the place.
Finding Affordable Eateries That Taste Great
I used to work near Zhongguancun. The so-called premium fast-food joints for working people were out of my budget, but there was one little weigh-and-pay restaurant on the ground floor beneath our office. The name was as random as the place was tiny, yet at lunchtime it was packed. I ate there every single day, and I still think about it often. On my last day before leaving the job, I went back for one final meal—a little send-off to myself. Now, if I happen to be in the area on errands, I still make a point of popping in. Every time I see it open, still bustling with customers, it fills me with joy. This is a small act of defiance and a quiet form of guardianship. A megacity should have room for a humble fast-food joint—and for all its ordinary people.
@不想做美食达人: No takeaway? Then just walk downstairs to one of the little neighbourhood shops. I’m not sure whether deciding to order less takeaway made me discover all these little places nearby, or whether it worked the other way around. Either way, once you decide to walk or cycle to a shop in the neighbourhood for a meal, you start noticing them: dumpling places, stir-fry shops, noodle houses (one of them serves what might be the most authentic roujiamo in Beijing)… Three Chongqing noodle shops, no less, and they’re all frequently recommended on Xiaohongshu. When I was ordering takeaway, I completely ignored them—I had no idea what they sold, assumed they were just dodgy backstreet stalls. Then a couple of times I actually walked past and realised—they’re not hole-in-the-wall joints at all! They’re spotlessly clean, bright little shops. The thrill of finding a tasty, affordable little gem like that is even better than stumbling on some “Best xxx in the city”—because you can visit a place like that once a month at most, whereas the little shop round the corner can actually sort out your everyday meals.
Finding a Wet Market Near You
Recently I discovered a wet market near my office. You can buy exactly as much meat as you want, sliced to order—thin slices, fine shreds, whatever you need. I never knew this was an option! If I fancy cooking something but don’t know which cut to pick, I just ask the stallholder directly—no more scrolling back and forth on my phone. It makes life so much easier: I get home and straight into cooking, no more worrying about thawing. I’ve been a bit of a wet-market regular lately—I wander the aisles after work and realise these places really have everything. As a southerner, spotting a vegetable I used to eat all the time as a child here in a northern wet market—well, that’s one more point for being deeply moved. A wet market is what-you-see-is-what-you-get; keep wandering and you’ll always find something.
@噬可可 (Female, 28, researcher, Tianjin): There are plenty of breakfast shops near my home, and Tianjin’s largest wet market is right there too. On weekend mornings I often cycle to the early market for fresh, affordable ingredients. Later I came across Green Footprint, a community in Tianjin that runs a sustainable market, and through them I connected with a few small-scale organic farmers nearby, so I could get a weekly veg delivery. Once the vegetables started arriving at my door, the barrier to cooking dropped even further. A colleague at work shares the same values, so we split deliveries and swap cooking tips and food inspiration.
@管老师 (Male): I stopped ordering takeaway for two reasons. First, during spells without work travel, I got into the habit of cooking for myself. Vegetables arrive straight from a nearby organic farm—fresh doorstep delivery, and I mix and match as I please. Starches and grains come from local growers at my work location or from an organic platform—everything kept simple. After cooking for myself long enough, I’ve even cut back on salt (I’ve had a tub of soybean paste from the Beijing Organic Farmers Market that still hasn’t been finished after two years). Second, when I’m away on business trips I can’t cook, but I get a wonderful chance to explore local flavours. Small-town eateries and farmers’ markets may not flaunt organic or eco credentials, but the ingredients are clean and the cooking is honest and unpretentious. Now, every time I visit a new place I love wandering through the farmers’ market. If something catches my eye—a local speciality—I add the stallholder on WeChat so I can order remotely later, and we chat about the region’s produce and traditional methods of making.
@泡泡熊: In 2018, while I was on a visiting fellowship in the US, I discovered that a park not far from the university hosted a Farmers’ Market every week. My mum was travelling with me at the time and was dying to check it out—in her words: “I simply must go and see for myself—whether their market’s any good compared to ours back at Xintianzhai, Zhongpo Babatou.” We bought okra, tomatoes, pumpkin, green beans and aubergine—the selection was mostly vegetables. Most stallholders had already weighed and portioned their produce into neat little boxes; once you’d picked what you wanted, you tipped it all into a bag and off you went—quick and breezy, very much the American South.
One day after we were back home, Mum told me she’d spotted a little organic food shop while browsing a shopping centre—on the lower ground floor. The girl in the shop was wonderfully warm and even gave her two bunches of slightly wilted pak choi. A little wilted, yes, but no bother—just soak them in water and they perk up. That evening Mum stir-fried the pak choi, and it was clean, sweet—exactly the taste from when I was small. Truly lovely. The next day I rushed off to check out the shop, and it turned out to be called Jishi Tang—a hub linking the various organic farms around Beijing, selling farm-gate direct produce and hosting the Beijing Organic Farmers Market every week. I became a Jishi Tang member, watched the little shop move premises, and even volunteered there for a while. It’s been nearly seven years now.
From Field to Table
On the ninth day of the Lunar New Year, I found an ecological farm near my home and, together with ten others, we rented out a greenhouse. I have roughly sixty square metres of land inside it where I’ve planted a few vegetables, hoping for a decent harvest. I wouldn’t dare think long-term, but within half a year I doubt I’ll order takeaway again.
@扣子 (Female, 60, farmer): If I’m at my own home, I could go without takeaway forever. I’d like to recommend maifan to everyone here—a staple common throughout northern China, called zhengcai (steamed vegetables) in Henan. As the name suggests, you simply toss vegetables in wheat flour and steam them to eat. In my home province of Shandong, the Jiaodong dialect word “ba la” (to toss and mix) reveals the ultimate secret of maifan: toss the vegetables with flour, steam them in the basket, then toss again with seasonings before they go into your mouth.
Although spring offers the richest variety of vegetables for maifan, it can actually be made in every season. Whenever I go to the village market, I always beg a handful of discarded outer cabbage leaves and carrot tops—these humble, everyday greens are perfect for the dish. Slightly tougher carrot tops, paired with grated carrot and flour, all tossed together and steamed, are even better. Compared with baking, boiling, pan-frying, deep-frying or stir-frying, steaming maifan preserves more nutrients and keeps the natural flavour intact. It delivers both carbohydrates and vegetables, accepts any ingredients you have to hand, is low in difficulty, has no barrier to entry—and is especially welcoming for those with no cooking experience at all.
Related Reading
Our vegetables and grains all come from organic-minded growers. Clean, healthy soil rich in organic matter produces crops that not only taste wonderful but are packed with trace elements essential to wellbeing. Cooked simply and eaten with care, they have a gentle, restorative effect on the body. After six months of the shared table, the health and spirits of our dining companions grew steadily better. Before long, they developed a genuine physical need for those wholesome vegetables—and even for the ritual of “collecting your packed meal on time”. Especially after a weekend spent “just grabbing something” at home or “feasting without restraint” at a restaurant, they’d look forward to the various vegetables in their shared-table lunch box with intense anticipation.
Editing: Yuyang