A former programmer interned at two family farms in Pidu and Meishan – tilling soil, making compost, sun-drying pastes, packing vegetable boxes – and glimpsed the true face of returning to the land through the daily labours of Hu Xuemei and Chen Ying.
Through nearly 100 articles, 13 podcast episodes and more than 40 events, Foodthink recorded ordinary people’s food struggles during the pandemic and ecological smallholders’ climate adaptation practices, and sent its first cohort of young interns to 12 farms – leaving solid traces amid uncertainty.
Foodthink colleagues sat together in the office, chatting about the seven days of lockdown in 2022, the cooking skills they unlocked – kombucha, pickled vegetables, and more – and dreaming of an open 2023.
Yu Jiangang resigned in Beijing, returned to the village to raise silkworms and make silk comforters. Over twelve years, he watched two generations of young returnees drift further apart between ecological ideals and commercialisation, and ultimately concluded that true labour on the land is itself home.
After the lockdown lifted, quilts, cured provisions and pickled vegetables lined every street in this small town in the Anhui region north of the Yangtze; the family followed Mother’s seasonal rhythm — frying meat balls, curing pork — drying out all fear and darkness, and met Grandfather’s passing too.
Since 2014, Ma Lan—head of the Forest Kindergarten at Friends of Nature Gaia Nature School—has led city children through the whole farming year, from loosening the soil to cooking, helping them rediscover food and themselves through stomping on fallen leaves, playing with stones and sowing seeds.
Once the grain corridor was disrupted, Ukrainian grain surged by rail, road and the Danube into southeastern Europe, sparking farmer protests in Poland, Bulgaria and beyond – yet Somalia and other nations most reliant on Ukrainian grain gained little. Around Odesa, farmers are forced to rebuild the entire sales chain.
A filmmaker who films in the southwest countryside yet always feels far from the land, she spent under a month at Tang Liang’s ecological farm in Niujiao Village, Jintang County, weeding and calling it a day with the eleven-person family. Back home, a whiff of ginger leaves – instantly familiar.
Foodthink is collecting feedback from event participants for the first time. The 5 most constructive responses will receive a set of Douban Nature Series tableware, to improve the quality and experience of our future events.
Jianwen takes us back to his mother’s hearth and his uncle’s herb garden, unveiling the food wisdom behind over a hundred varieties of wild greens and heritage pigs that take two years to mature – a Lisu family living in symbiosis with the mountain.
