I. Plastic as the Framework of Modern Life Could a modern person get by without plastic? When an American female author prepared to take on the challenge of avoiding plastic for a full day, she soon realised: modern life is virtually impossible without it. Within ten seconds of waking up,…
Foodthink Says 5 June is World Environment Day, and Foodthink continues to monitor the link between global meat consumption and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Early in 2024, a joint investigation by the *Hong Kong Free Press* and the non-profit *Repórter Brasil* found that four trading companies in Hong Kong…
Summer arrives, and with it, another season for watermelon. Watermelons are inseparable from summer, just as the farmers behind the fruit evolve alongside their crop. Wherever there is land, you will find the watermelon farmers of Taizhou. Their history of enterprise dates back to the 1980s, forming another chapter in…
Foodthink Says Since this spring, Shaanxi has experienced its most severe drought since 1961. Combined with extreme weather such as high temperatures, strong winds, and sandstorms, these compound disasters have seriously threatened agricultural production and rural livelihoods. In May, with the support of the Oxfam Hong Kong Beijing office, Foodthink…
I am someone who succumbed to pressure; I couldn’t keep playing this game of racing between skyscrapers. Now, I write my story in the hope that as a “failed player” still in flight, I can identify from those past “failures” the things that truly made me feel lonely and depressed,…
In the first decade of the 2000s, repeated food safety scandals prompted a growing number of Chinese consumers to seek out better farming practices and produce. Across the country, a new generation of farmers began pioneering organic agriculture. One such pioneer is this episode’s guest, Cao Xiaohong. In 2008, concerned…
I. The Early Blooming Flowers On the morning of 3 May, in Jinqu Town, Meixian County, Shaanxi, Xu Yuanlin spotted the messenger flowers in his own vineyard. He was taken aback. The messenger flower is the first spike to bloom in a vineyard, acting as a herald to remind growers…
The delivery market clash between JD.com and Meituan is in full swing, with the most conspicuous battleground being the strategic tug-of-war over riders’ social security. On 19 February 2025, JD.com was the first to announce it would cover the full social insurance and housing fund contributions for its full-time riders.…
Foodthink Says “Is science oriented towards human needs even possible?” In a modern society that equates science with progress, this ought not to be a question. Yet one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that science, which could have been wielded to help humanity eradicate poverty, hunger, disease,…
The film *Nei Sha* opens with an immediate explanation of its title. On the banks of a reed bed in winter, Teacher Tang, an organic farmer, explains to a visiting professor: this is the mouth of the Yangtze River, where shifting sands have deposited over time to gradually form islands.…
