When Imported Meat Reaches Urumqi—Hear What They Have to Say

 Pastoral Livestock Farming Must Develop Sustainably

◉ Hu Jun, sustainable agriculture (livestock) project specialist, speaking after the screening.

◉ Lin Pengchubin speaking.

Herders’ Livelihood Paths Amid Social Change

“Perhaps because I have only been in the workforce for a few years and am myself a wage worker, watching the herder in the film say that all he can do is tend sheep—he cannot find any other work—made me feel profoundly sad. Workers at the bottom are pushed to such extremes. They have no right of access to the market and have been stripped of their human dignity.”—Audience member

“I took a sociology elective at university, and after watching the film I felt as though the herders had been left behind by the times. They lack the means to move to cities and build a life there. In the course of economic development, some people feel they have fallen off the pace—there is an imbalance between urban and rural development, and a tension between economic growth and environmental protection.”—Audience member

“I have found that everyone sees the issue from a different angle. Consumers, for instance, are more concerned about hormones in the beef and lamb on the market and the threats they pose to health and safety.

As a Master’s student in social work, what I see is the vulnerability of herders—communities who have lived on this land generation after generation, sustaining themselves through pastoralism. Faced with ecological degradation, the collapse of the beef and lamb market, and a whole cascade of problems, their lives have grown even harder, and even the most basic subsistence is no longer guaranteed. There is an urgent need to provide them with support across every dimension: policy advocacy and subsidies at the national level, greater public attention, care and understanding from society at large, community-level cooperation between urban and rural areas to ensure fair trade, and at the individual level, technical and vocational training and awareness-raising for these vulnerable groups so that they can find more pathways forward.”—Rexidaim, Master’s student in Ecological Social Work, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Xinjiang University

What struck me most deeply in the film, and what made my heart ache a little, was a middle-aged herder who described his life as “a great failure.” If he goes to work in the market, he is looked down upon because he never had schooling; if he sticks to herding, he cannot meet the household’s expenses. He is surely someone who works hard to provide for his family, yet under the yardstick of mainstream values he has come to believe he is a failure. It is clear just how powerful society’s dominant norms are in shaping the individual—not only in terms of income, but also in how one measures one’s self-confidence and sense of self-worth.

At the same time, with the growth of tourism, pastoral land and open rangeland have been reimagined by some urban dwellers as an ideal sense of belonging—but this, too, may not be real. For herders themselves, “wage work = status” and “modernity = status” may likewise not be real. In this context, how can we help young people make clearer choices for themselves? Whether they choose to return to herding, pursue education, start a business, seek employment, or do something else entirely—it is all valid.

My hometown is a small county town. A while ago I brought some lamb from home to share with a friend here in Urumqi for a barbecue, and they said, “It feels like a whole sheep is galloping in my mouth!” What a vivid image. It made me wonder: cities are supposed to have more abundant provisions, yet here we are both from Xinjiang, and this friend had never tasted lamb that fresh. Isn’t the city supposed to be closer to the “centre” of resources? Why has it ended up more removed from good food?

This brings us back to the film’s title—Whose Table, Whose Pasture. The distant rangelands supply the table. In my understanding, the countryside is the pasture and the city is the table, and the distance between them is in truth vast. Supply lies at one end, consumption at the other, and when the process connecting the two is severed, a great deal of truth disappears with it. If we cannot see how a piece of meat came to be, who raised it, or what it cost, we are easily swept up by the economy, by consumerism, by advertising.

As a community placemaker, I hope that through public discussions in public spaces, individuals can learn a little more about what is happening in their neighbourhood, see a little more of the truth, and then make their choices from a place of understanding.”—Wang Bingying, Wugui Placemaking Community Development Centre, Shimogou District, Urumqi

◉ Discussion at the event.

“Before today, the topic of pastoral areas and beef and lamb was completely unfamiliar to me. After watching the film and hearing everyone’s reflections, I began to understand. Before, I simply bought meat and ate it, and probably never thought about what lay behind it. Now I know that behind technological progress there are also questions of human survival.”—Audience member

“What moved me most in the film was the herder saying there are simply too many things to buy—a house, a car… before, there were not so many places that demanded money.”—Audience member

“Each of us needs to reflect on the ever-expanding desires within.”—Audience member

Meat—More Than Meat

“This was the first time I had watched an investigative documentary of this kind. Following the director’s perspective, I peeled back the layers one by one in search of answers. What appears to be a question of beef and lamb prices has led me to think about the prices we encounter daily for the meat on our plates—and about the pastoral areas and related industries behind them. I am very curious why overseas beef and lamb are so much more competitive, and the post-screening discussion gave me at least part of the answer. I have also begun to reflect on our relationship with food.”—Hewang, Wugui Placemaking Community Development Centre, Shimogou District, Urumqi

“As consumers, we have no idea where the meat comes from.”—Audience member

“Before, I simply thought of beef and lamb as part of the table. After watching the film, I realised it is about far more than the table.”—Audience member

“I am a Mongolian from Hefeng, Xinjiang. I have settled in Beijing for many years, and my long experience of city life has shown me just how profoundly diet affects the growth and development of young people.

When it comes to food, our family has always been exceptionally careful. We insist on cooking at home, rarely eat out, and never order takeaway. The beef and lamb we eat day to day is all sourced from our hometown of Hefeng, transported regularly as pristine, local produce.

Many friends and family members who have tasted the beef and lamb from my hometown have fallen in love with its texture and quality, often asking me to help them source some. That is what planted the idea: why not share the natural, wholesome, premium beef and lamb from Xinjiang’s pastures with more people across inland China? So I resolved to return home and start my own business, hoping to bring this healthy, grassland-grown produce to family tables up and down the country. Drawing on the exceptional natural advantages of my hometown, I want to bring pristine, safe, and healthy beef and lamb to the inland market, so that more people can taste the wholesome flavours of the open steppe.”—Dai Rui, return-to-Xinjiang entrepreneur

◉ The audience watching Whose Table, Whose Pasture together at the event.

“In inland China, we use loads of spices when cooking meat—star anise, cassia bark, bay leaf, Sichuan peppercorn—layered one on top of the next, as though without them we could not mask that hard-to-describe gaminess. But meat from Xinjiang is a different experience altogether. Boiled in plain water with a pinch of salt, or even with nothing at all, you take a bite and taste the grasslands—the wind, the sunlight.

I had never heard of pastoral areas before, never given a thought to where cattle and sheep come from. After watching the film and hearing so many voices, I realised that behind every cut of meat stands a herder, a stretch of rangeland, and a precarious livelihood. Have the herders been left behind by the times? The grasslands are degrading, modern industrial farming is surging forward—yet that closeness between people and nature, that flavour which needs no seasoning to reveal itself, is something modern farming simply cannot provide.

Yet meat from outside is pouring in. Overseas frozen meat arrives at ports container by container, then flows into supermarkets, restaurants, and the refrigerators of ordinary homes. The price is low, the supply steady, the packaging neat. Consumers never stop to ask where a piece of meat came from, how it was raised, whether behind it lies a degrading rangeland or a worried herder. The market only wants cheaper, more convenient. And so cattle and sheep from the pastoral areas can no longer be sold, and herders’ livelihoods grow ever harder.

We long for lamb that needs no seasoning, yet we reach for the cheaper frozen meat on the shelf. Desires are growing, grasslands are shrinking, and the herders wait. Every one of us needs to look inward.”—Cheng Guojingmei, first-year undergraduate in Chinese Language and Literature, College of Liberal Arts, Xinjiang University

The Grasslands: More Than Pasture—A Unique Culture and Way of Life

When I buy beef at the supermarket, I don’t give a second thought to the price of 90 yuan a kilogram. But after watching the documentary today, learning just how low the prices are that herders receive for their lamb and how convoluted the trading process is, I am deeply struck by the hardship of their lives, and my heart aches.

Another profound reflection concerns ecology: cattle and sheep are, after all, part of the rangeland ecosystem. If herders abandon grazing because beef and lamb prices fall too low, the impact on the grasslands could be unpredictable. In my view, herders are not merely users of the grasslands but guardians of the pastoral ecosystem. Returning to the question the documentary poses—Whose Table, Whose Pasture?—my answer is: our table, our pasture.”—Xiaomai, Xinjiang Ecological and Environmental Protection Project Management Committee, SEE Foundation

When I was doing my placement, I spent some time in a pastoral area, and the meat I ate at herders’ homes truly tasted different from what I get in Urumqi. The meat from herders’ homes has no gaminess; the beef carries a milky aroma—you can still smell it on your fingers after you’ve finished eating. I absolutely love the boiled beef and lamb prepared at herders’ homes. No unnecessary seasonings—just two pinches of salt—and you taste the very essence of the food itself. It was the first time I had ever eaten meat like that.

The elderly herders told me that once, one meal of meat, a bowl of tea, and some naan would keep you going a whole day without feeling tired. Now, even after eating meat and naan, you are hungry again in no time. Today’s cattle and sheep get so many injections—I dare not buy beef or lamb sold outside; I only eat what comes from our own home. The old people’s words are really a reminder to us: times are changing, the food we eat is changing, and the power of food is far more than simply calories.”—Huang Qianqian, Master’s student in Ecological Social Work, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Xinjiang University

“Us young people, for some reason, simply assume that things from abroad are better—we buy European cosmetics, Japanese and Korean clothes… Now everything is developing so fast, tower blocks everywhere. The arrival of tourist resorts will only hasten the disappearance of nomadic culture. In ten years, in thirty years—will nomadic culture still exist?” —Audience member

Film Introduction

Whose Table, Whose Pasture is a field-research documentary. The director delved deep into the pastoral areas around Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact of vast quantities of imported frozen beef and lamb flooding into local markets. Through visits to frozen wholesale markets and cold-chain warehouses in Xining, and by filming at herder households, butchers’ shops, and feedlots, the film gives a truthful account of the shock that cheap imported meat delivers to local beef and lamb. This has directly driven down the purchase prices herders receive for their cattle and sheep, slashed their incomes, made loan repayments a struggle, and left local butchers with razor-thin margins struggling to stay afloat. The lens moves through Qinghai Lake’s imported beef and lamb market—pressing a brutal question: within the globalised chain of meat, who enjoys the low prices, and who bears the cost?

Director Biography

Event Planning

Foodthink

Chinese-language Communications Working Group of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (abbreviated IYRP Chinese Group)

Xinjiang Ecological and Environmental Protection Project Management Committee, SEE Foundation

Shenzhen One Foundation for Public Good

Xinjiang Shanshui Centre for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development

Candle Rescue Team

Venue Support

Yonghe Alley Community, Jiefang South Road Sub-district, Tianshan District, Urumqi

*Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the Xinjiang Shanshui Centre for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development

*Due to limited on-site documentation, some speakers’ names and identities could not be fully recorded. Those whose names and affiliations have been confirmed are credited individually; the rest are listed as “Audience member”.

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