Final Letter of 2025: Foodthink’s Year-End Celebration Highlight Reel

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This is Foodthink’s final post of 2025. Surprise—no year-end roundup! (The honest truth? It hasn’t been dug out of the drafts yet, so please dial again later…)

Why not take a look at the fun we got up to at the recent Guangdong Harvest Festival!

◉ Foodthink editor Yu Yang “casting spells”. Photography by Yan Qiange.

Co-Creating Climate Sci-Fi

Thanks to our annual Harvest Festival, we spent a winter solstice in Guangzhou so sweltering it felt like midsummer—hot enough that Santa would have to swap his sleigh for a camel. One has to wonder if this unseasonably warm solstice is just another footprint of climate change.

Over three days, we took the titles from hundreds of articles Foodthink has published this year on land, farmers, food, and climate. We tossed them onto a grand banquet of Cantonese cuisine, stirring them into scattered story fragments. Nearly a hundred guests—young and old alike—randomly drew word cards and played a chain-story game to piece together narratives. On the spot, they crafted eight pieces of climate science fiction that would leave artificial intelligence green with envy.

Within these tales, you’ll find the boundless culinary imagination of Guangdong residents—

  • The ultimate salvation for humanity turns out to be—potatoes, maize, beef offal, ginger milk curd, rice noodle rolls?
  • The Age of Ice… and Ocean arrives, turning the whole planet into a grand dim sum table!
  • Ginger milk curd’s CV just got a lot more interesting: departments clashed over me, even hurling char siu buns at each other… though the buns had provoked absolutely no one…
  • Rice noodle rolls dominate the airspace, and Guangdong residents transform into cosmic free-range chickens…
These eight science fiction tales were built around one steadfast creative principle: Even at the end of the world, it must still taste good. This perfectly mirrors this year’s Harvest Festival theme: A thousand techniques, one single meal.

◉ For more information on the Harvest Festival, please click the poster link.

Through everyone’s literary creations, we’ve had the opportunity to return from “words” to “reality”, to reimagine the relationship between humanity, land, climate, and food 🍚

Naturally, such brilliant work shouldn’t be confined to the Harvest Festival alone. We’ve gathered all eight short stories and published them online, stepping away from pen and paper to achieve “cyber immortality”. Furthermore, to vividly capture the distinctive state of mind of old Guangzhou locals, we’ve prepared an AIGC edition—where ChatGPT translates these abstractions into visual form

👇 Swipe to explore the AI’s imagination

*Friendly reminder: please ensure you’ve had your meal today before viewing

Tableside Verses: Guangfu Edition

Aside from joining the climate fiction relay, introverts could also settle down to blend Foodthink article titles with Cantonese touches, crafting “poems of food”. Truly Guangzhou… I’ve never tasted such a delicious collage poem! In the spaces between words, we caught the scent of the soil, savoured street-food delicacies, and exchanged thoughts.

◉ Explore: A taste of Guangzhou’s whimsy and poetic charm～

Today’sSold-Out Fare

◉ Sharing stories of vanishing foods and the memories behind them.

As familiar foods and flavours disappear, so too do our ties to the land, climate, and memory shift in quiet ways. Which dishes were once easy to find but are now hard to come by?

Green tangerines, White Rabbit candy; grandma’s pies, the rice noodles from the stall downstairs; mushroom-grilled persimmons… What did they taste like? And why have they vanished?

We hope to record these disappearing foods with you, preserving these flavour stories and fond memories.Share your own “sold-out today” pick in the comments below～

◉ What “food” is this?

It was a delight to meet so many Foodthink readers from the Greater Bay Area at the Harvest Celebration——

some travelled from Huizhou, Foshan, Shunde, and Hong Kong,

while others have been longstanding readers since Foodthink first launched in 2017.

Thank you for taking the time to meet us in person; we’ve finally stepped from the digital realm into the real world! We’re so grateful for your support from behind the screen, year after year～ We’ve also made a host of new friends, and we hope that in the months ahead, Foodthink will continue to accompany you in eating well and living well.

Forum Highlights

For the first time, Foodthink arrived in Guangzhou to meet readers, bringing the documentary 2024 Lianhe Creative Initiative-supported Whose Dining Table, Whose Pasture?.

The director ventured deep into the pastoral regions around Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact of massive imports of frozen beef and mutton entering the local market. The film lays bare how cheap imported meat disrupts local cattle and sheep farming, confronting a harsh reality: within the globalised meat supply chain, who enjoys the low prices, and who bears the cost?

◉ Poster for Whose Dining Table, Whose Pasture?

On the afternoon of the final day, we invited documentary filmmakers Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen, who focus on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, to share what they observed regarding disaster impacts during their visits to villages in Guangdong and Guangxi this year. Feng Lian, deeply rooted in Guangzhou’s agricultural scene, shared the challenges the city’s “unusually long summers” over the past two years have posed to farming. As extreme weather disrupts agriculture and rural life, what transformations are cities and our dining tables undergoing? Readers and consumers on site joined the discussion on extreme weather, confronting reality and seeking solutions.

◉ Watch: Zhao Yushun’s talk; Liao Fenglian’s talk; Audience Q&A. Photography by Ming Chun

On site, our dedicated photographer also captured many heartwarming and joyful moments.

◉ Hoping this brings a knowing smile to your face too. Photography by Yan Qian Ge
If you’re still wondering what the Fengnian Festival is, put simply, it is China’s largest offline gathering dedicated to sustainable food and agriculture, born in Guangzhou but now reaching far beyond Guangdong and Guangxi. Now in its ninth year, evolving from a humble agricultural market into a cross-disciplinary celebration blending ecological farming, arts, literature, and social issues, the Fengnian Festival remains the vital thread connecting the countryside with the city, and producers with consumers.

As the only out-of-town co-organiser for the Fengnian Festival, Foodthink seizes this annual opportunity to travel to Guangzhou and connect with our farming friends and readers down south. Here, we grow, and here we bear witness: when producers and consumers lift each other up, the simple act of eating transcends just making a living to become a matter of dignity and meaning.

BonusSection

From the images below, how many of the small-scale ecological farmers featured in our Foodthink reports and collaborations can you spot?

◉ Some give the answer away right at the top 😂. Photography by Yan Qian Ge
Happy wrap-up for 2025! May you all, after all the creative brainstorming, still find the energy to take action yourself.

2026, we’ll meet again in Guangzhou to celebrate another bountiful harvest.

“Eat well, drink well, and may everything turn out better than you hope.”

Planning: Li Ye

Editing: Kairui, Tianle

Illustrations: ZX, Li Ye

Published by Foodthink