Why Should We Care About Local People and Distant Meat? | Screening Preview: Chengdu and Ningbo

· When herders on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau also feel the shock of produce from faraway Brazil, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand, how should we understand the food on our tables?

◉ The flock of Niang’e Jia, one of the subjects of Whose Table, Whose Pasture. Photo: Jiao Xiaofang

◉ Follow-up visits are a vital part of community video. In 2025, Jiao Xiaofang returned to the filming locations to screen the documentary Whose Table, Whose Pasture for the shepherds. Photo: Jiao Xiaofang

This weekend, there are three screenings in total across Chengdu and Ningbo. After each screening, we have invited experts and scholars familiar with the subject to join us in discussion:

 – Film Synopsis – 

Whose Table, Whose Pasture is an investigative documentary. Supported by Foodthink’s Lianhe Creative Programme, the directors ventured deep into pastoral areas around Qinghai Lake to document the impact of large quantities of imported frozen beef and mutton flooding into local markets.

By visiting Xining’s frozen-food wholesale market and cold-chain warehouses, and by filming local herder families, butchers and feedlots, the film vividly reveals how imported meat, with its low-price advantage, strikes a blow against local beef and mutton. This has sent procurement prices for herders’ cattle and sheep plummeting, cutting their incomes and making it hard to repay loans, while leaving local meat traders with razor-thin margins and an increasingly unviable business.

The camera delves into Qinghai Lake’s imported beef and mutton market, pressing a harsh question: in the globalised meat chain, who enjoys the low prices, and who bears the cost?

Jiao Xiaofang | Documentary director and researcher in visual anthropology, with a long-standing focus on local knowledge, ecological ethics and women’s experience in western China and coastal Southeast Asia. Her work blends ethnographic observation with poetic expression, exploring humanity’s relationship with the natural world and the emotional landscapes of everyday life. Her documentary Whose Table, Whose Pasture (2025) was selected for the 5th World Nomadic Film Festival and the 6th China Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival.

Qiongwu · Dainzen | A Tibetan filmmaker and community activist, long dedicated to ecological conservation and visual-education work across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. He formerly served as coordinator of the Tibetan-plateau project at Yunnan’s “Rural Eye” and as regional representative for the Alashan SEE Three-River Source Project Centre. He is currently head of the “Human-Bear Conflict Project” at the Qinghai Xuejing Ecology Education and Research Centre. Over the past decade, he has promoted herder video training and community ecology projects in Yushu, Aba and other areas, helping herders use film to record their own environment and culture. His work weaves together visual media, ecology and public education, committed to building understanding and coexistence between people and the natural world.

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