Foodthink Says Can you still find “local produce” at the open-air markets on Beijing’s outskirts? The answer to this question lies in the hands of those veteran farmers who continue to save their own seeds. After ten years of farming at Gaia·Wosh Garden on the far fringes of Beijing, they…
Seeds are the vital carriers for the continuation of plant species. Human survival and flourishing are equally inseparable from them; every food we eat, whether grains, flours, oils or vegetables and fruits, begins as a tiny seed. Different seeds yield crops with distinctly different flavours. The reason we can no…
I. Summer Pasture: The Last Pastoral Song Early autumn around Qinghai Lake already carries a distinct chill. On that September afternoon, as daylight gradually faded, our group drove on, relying on directions from passersby and wending deeper into the mountains one stretch at a time. None of us could say…
Foodthink Notes Zha Shiyire, born in 1990, is a member of the Huayao Yi ethnic minority from Shiping County, Yunnan, and truly embodies the description of a “girl who grew up in a mountain village”. After graduating from college, she worked at a television station. She resigned in 2019 to…
Weeds are not the ‘other’; weeds are us. — Michael Pollan, Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants Since last year, I have visited over a dozen ecological farms across the country with the Foodthink team, travelling from Beijing to the coastal cities of the Yangtze River Delta, and…
Let’s begin with a quick test: what happened on 2 July 2024? Without reaching for your phone, take a moment to recall. I guarantee that the vast majority will have forgotten. When I searched online on this date in 2025, I found not a single reference to the tanker truck…
I. Crash Behind the Black Box In the summer of 2024, on the second day of my return to my hometown in Northeast China to research agricultural drones, a machine in the neighbouring village crashed mid-operation, catching on a power line. Crashes are commonplace, affecting not just agricultural drones…
Over the past few years, work commitments have meant I always leave Beijing just as the crabapples are about to bloom, and return by the time the poplar catkins have finished drifting. Though I miss Beijing’s spring, I gain Shangri-La’s in return. Nestled at the junction of Yunnan, Sichuan and…
Foodthink Says This marks the sixth instalment of story submissions for Foodthink’s “Eat Something Good” series, themed around “wet markets”. What has surprised us is that, in an age of relentless acceleration, we continue to receive a wealth of personal accounts from readers about these spaces. Set against earlier themes…
Have you ever fantasised about fleeing the city, returning to the countryside to farm, and embracing rural life? Have you ever harboured romantic notions of a “self-sufficient” existence? Yet real life on the land is far more complex and arduous than we imagine—and infinitely more moving. Wenzizi and Changjiaoling are…
