After the Award: Why We Make Podcasts | “Food Talk” × “Tuanli Jiegou”

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Recently, “Food Talk” was delighted to win the Annual Podcast Award in the public welfare and environmental protection category at the 3rd CPA Chinese Podcast Culture Festival. This award also led to a chance encounter. On 23 November, “Food Talk” host Xiaojing ran into an old friend at the ceremony who had won an award too – Yu Jiangang, host of the fellow podcast “Tuanli Jiegou”, who had rushed over from the chrysanthemum harvest season in Jiaxing, Zhejiang.

“Food Talk” rarely socialises within the podcast community, but this event was an unexpected chance to step outside its usual circle. Seeing a different “Food Talk” through the eyes of fellow podcasters and friends both inside and outside the community, Xiaojing feels that Foodthink should sit closer to the “Food” category. Yu Jiangang playfully quipped: We’re a lifestyle podcast – how did we end up winning a public welfare and environmental protection award?

This sparked further reflection, and so this crossover episode with “Tuanli Jiegou” was born: Why do different listeners perceive the same podcast so differently? How do hosts who have worked in the public welfare sector see the difference between “public welfare” and everyday life? What role does food play in all of this? And why choose podcasting as a medium for expression?

The hosts rarely revisit in a podcast the reasons they started making one, let alone the unexpected rewards along the way. All three hosts of “Tuanli Jiegou” care about food and sustainable living, yet each has a unique story. How did a series of happy coincidences bring together this podcast that spans all corners of the country? So come along and join our chat.

Guest Hosts

Yue Li

Sustainable agriculture practitioner, living and working in Shenzhen. (WeChat: Wutong Island Market)

 

 

 

 

Du Yue

Post-1990s half-farming, half-X lifestyle practitioner, living and working in Weihai. (WeChat: Gaoling Xiaopengyou)

 

 

 

 

Yu Jian Gang

Raises silkworms, reels silk and grows chrysanthemums; living and working in Tongxiang, Jiaxing. (WeChat: Mei He Yu)

 

 

 

 

Hosts

Xiaojing

“Food Talk” host, travelling to Shanghai for the first time on the legendary “beast-of-burden flight” – it felt quite magical.

 

 

 

 

Wang Hao

Foodthink editor, living and working in Beijing.

 

 

 

 

Timeline

00:00‍ Introduction of hosts and guests

03:04 Minor Snow solar term observations from around the country‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

09:06 Our podcast actually won an award! But why in the “public welfare and environmental protection” category?‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

19:59 Yue Li and Du Yue’s experiences before making podcasts, and how their thinking changed‍‍‍‍

26:19 Why did “Tuanli Jiegou” and “Food Talk” choose podcasting as a medium? Different starting points and ways of working‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

40:07 Understanding listeners and interacting with them – podcasting goals and where things stand now‍‍‍‍‍‍

54:28 How we’ve changed since we started making podcasts‍‍‍‍‍

63:36 Chitchat (demolition back in the village, the Harvest Festival in Guangdong at year-end)‍

Fellow podcasters gathered to receive the public welfare and environmental protection award together. But Xiaojing feels “Food Talk” belongs in the “Food” category, while Yu Jiangang thinks “Tuanli Jiegou” belongs in the “Lifestyle” category. Photo: Xiaojing
At the event in Shanghai, Xiaojing and Yu Jiangang collected their award together, attended a salon, had a coffee, and on the bustling Nanjing West Road, found a bowl of freshly made beef noodle soup labelled “no ready meals, wok-fried to order on high heat – please allow 15–30 minutes”. Photo: Xiaojing
Du Yue photographed her two flatmates growing vegetables on an empty plot – they all rent a place together in a residential complex in Weihai. One of them is Peng Yue, an intern supported by Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme.
Yue Li currently manages a rooftop farm and the Wutong Island Market at Taihua Wutong Island in Shenzhen. Before that, she worked at Wotu Farming School, organising field-school learning sessions for fellow farmers.
Yu Jiangang lives in his hometown of Tongxiang, Zhejiang. When this episode was recorded, it was the busy harvest season for Hangzhou white chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemums were once grown in every household across the village; now only his family still cultivates them. Read more about this in our earlier piece, “The Village’s Last Acre of Hangzhou White Chrysanthemum”. You can hear more of his journey back to the countryside in another “Food Talk” episode, “Twelve Years Back Home: Finding a Patch of One’s Own Between Mulberry and Chrysanthemum”. Photo: Zhang Xiaoshu

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All images in this article were provided by the guests

Podcast Creative Team

Programme music: Banong

Production and coordination: Xiaojing

Podcast artwork: Xiaojing

Contact email: xiaojing@foodthink.cn

Post editor: Wang Hao

Published by Foodthink