On a mid-river island that flourishes with the waters yet is swallowed by them, how do melon farmers come to terms with an increasingly erratic climate—or are they destined only to be forgotten, to be displaced? ◉A path on the river sand, November 2022 What lies…
I loved cooking — I’d say I was fairly good at it — and I was always keen on having friends round for dinner, preparing a whole table of dishes for them myself. After I left my job, I had plenty of time on my hands. Every day I’d…
1 Who’s doing gig work? When Zhang Dandan, a professor at Peking University, said that ‘flexibility itself is a benefit,’ I was deep in the remote forests of the Greater Khingan Range, struggling forward with a group of gig workers picking pinecones. Their job was…
Foodthink Says In the box-office hit <em>Ox Come</em>, Ox Come and Bao La are close friends who grow up side by side. But deep in the Taihang Mountains, in the habitat of the Chinese leopard, the relationship between leopards, cattle and people is far more complex. Thanks to the…
We seem to love talking about wet markets more than ever before. Visiting the wet market has become an essential part of travel. Wet market photography and guided market tours are trending on social media, while cafés, florists and stand-up comedy acts are moving into newly renovated…
Foodthink says Mashu Town, Qiaojia County, Yunnan Province, is the country’s second-largest summer strawberry-growing base. The area was only recently removed from the list of deeply impoverished counties. The author of this piece met a strawberry worker born in the 1990s here — unusual among the mostly middle-aged and…
Food safety news has once again dominated trending searches, with a blogger reporting that someone was found dipping Chinese cabbage in formaldehyde. On 22 August, the People’s Government of Kangbao County, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, issued a public notice stating that, following preliminary verification, the reports were confirmed: a buyer…
Foodthink Says Wet markets today appear to be undergoing a remarkable ‘restoration’: what was once nothing more than the mundane daily errand of elders lugging bags of groceries has now become a destination young people flock to—a trending hotspot, a window into the city’s character, even a ‘healing space’…
Foodthink Says In *Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant*, Shen Teng plays a Chinese chef who rallies a dozen or so kids into a makeshift troupe, setting up a grand feast in a foreign land. Stir-fried, deep-fried, braised, slow-simmered in a cast-iron pot — you can almost smell the wok…
This Saturday (22 August) anthropologist and Foodthink’s longtime friend Zhong Shuru is coming to Beijing with her new book *China’s Wet Markets*! In the morning, we’ll head to a “special market” together to browse and chat; in the evening, we’ll start from “shopping for food in Beijing” and talk…
