Say Yes to Art, Say No to Life: What Kind of Wet Market Do We Need?
In 2016, I had several unsuccessful grocery-shopping experiences at Sanyuanli Market. I only returned recently, to visit and check in for the exhibition, and discovered that the market has long since found its true calling: an art event space.
Seven years on, Sanyuanli has been transformed into a glitzy spectacle: to promote its new store, a coffee brand has partnered with Hu Rui – who went viral thanks to the animated series Yao-Chinese Folktales – for a “Yunnan Tales” special exhibition celebrating Yunnan’s coffee-growing season, and it is currently running.
I must admit that when I spotted the words “Yunnan is a wonderland where vitality endures” printed on the heavy windproof door curtain, my heart skipped a beat, as though passing through that curtain might lead me to an encounter with Yunnan’s marvels. Yunnan truly is a land of culinary miracles.
The market stalls are a feast for the eyes: herbs, edible flowers, mushrooms, fruits and seafood of every kind, arranged in a rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet that makes you wonder whether the stallholders have studied window-display design.
Yet, one suspects the organisers have no idea which of the stall products actually come from Yunnan. That has not stopped them from packaging their produce stands with concepts like “single origin”, a term reserved for high-value cash crops such as speciality coffee.
Anyone with a shred of common sense knows that most vegetables sold by small-scale vendors have passed through multiple hands in the supply chain – how could they possibly be single origin? In a market like Sanyuanli, which prides itself on the sheer diversity of its produce, the claim is doubly dubious.
Sanyuanli – Beijing’s cosmopolitan culinary calling card, the gold-standard brand for old-street revitalisation, an Instagrammable art event space – yet, uniquely, it is not a market where ordinary people go to sort out their daily meals, let alone one that kindles in me any passion for cooking or for life itself. The unpleasant shopping experiences of seven years ago came flooding back.
I. Sanyuanli Goes International – But You Still Can’t Buy Good Taro
At the time, I don’t think any other market in China could match Sanyuanli for the ease with which you could pick up speciality ingredients from every corner of the globe.
But when she tried to recreate her hometown’s taro sweet soup, she ran into a taro disaster.
After tasting the cooked taro – still crunchy and starchy – she slumped in defeat and asked me, “Why can’t you find good taro in Beijing? The taro we grew in our own garden, boiled up, was powdery and fragrant.” Having tried two crunchy cobs, we decided to head to Sanyuanli and pick out a good taro ourselves.
We found a stall with an impressively wide range of vegetables, told the vendor we needed taro from Lipu, Guangxi, and insisted it had to be the powdery, starchy kind. He assured us it would be and handed over a hefty cob, still caked in earth. We lugged it home, heavy in our arms, only to cut it open and find it rotten. While we were there, we’d also grabbed a packet of okra shrink-wrapped in cling film – the layer underneath was mouldy.
Carrying the bad taro and the mouldy okra, we hunted through a row of near-identical vegetable stalls to track down the vendor who had been so enthusiastic earlier. He told us the vegetables weren’t his and it wasn’t his problem.
Resigned, we bought another taro and took it home. We cut it open, boiled it – still crunchy. We gave up entirely.
II. From Southwestern Hunan to Beijing: Inseparable from the Market
These stalls use woven bamboo trays and nylon sacks as display surfaces, spreading out loosely and freely from the liveliest, most central zone – the farmers’ market in the heart of town. The ladies who are good friends position themselves close together for easy chatting, and whenever someone strolls past, they call out casually: “Hey, love – fancy buying some veg?”
Because most of the produce is locally grown, at any one time there are only a few kinds of seasonal vegetables. Yet this simple range paradoxically reveals far greater variety.
Peppers alone come in red, yellow, green and purple; long, short, round, pointed, curled and straight; hot, moderately hot and barely hot – too many to tell apart.
It’s not that there are no non-local vegetables, but you can spot the difference at a glance – and honestly, local luffa is sweeter than the imported stuff, local coriander is more fragrant than the out-of-town kind. My mum prefers to buy from elderly vendors; sometimes, when she sees an old person struggling to sell their produce, she’ll buy up the entire lot, leaving us eating the same dish for days on end. That’s her way of showing she cares.
As someone who cannot eat all three meals outside the home, during my first few years in Beijing the wet market remained an indispensable part of my life. On weekdays, though, I mostly relied on the little neighbourhood convenience veggie stalls, and only on weekends, when time allowed, did I venture a little further to Jinsong Dingsheng Market for a proper shopping haul.
In early 2014, the ravages of avian influenza prompted Beijing to issue the Measures of Beijing Municipality on the Administration of Designated Poultry and Livestock Slaughter, banning the sale of live poultry and livestock in farmers’ markets, and half the market’s lively bustle vanished overnight.
After the large-scale crackdown and demolition of unauthorised structures in 2017, the markets were further squeezed – tidier and brighter, yes, but the old clamour was gone for good.
I also briefly witnessed Longfusi Morning Market in the last flush of its prosperity. It was the first time I realised that within the Second Ring Road there existed such a bustling morning market: in winter at six or seven, the sky not yet light, cart after cart of Chinese yam, Chinese cabbage, sweet potatoes and scallions would be hauled in and unloaded, sold the moment they touched the ground for a few mao a jin; steamer baskets piled high, big mantou puffing out clouds of steam; and stalls selling vegetable seedlings and aromatic herbs… Aunties and uncles with full-throated vitality would sweep right in with their little trolleys and soon head home, loads piled to the brim.
In June 2016, the Longfusi Morning Market – open for over twenty years – finally made way for new commercial development. The incoming tenants, it is said, are all international luxury brands: a footnote to the times, in its way.
In a Beijing where wet markets are fading fast, the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market is, in my eyes, the last remaining light of the wet market.
III. The Last Comfort for Market Lovers
A farmers’ market is truly not your ordinary wet market. The fresh produce on sale here all comes from small ecological farms on the outskirts of Beijing.
These ecologically grown fruits and vegetables are no great beauty to look at – uneven in size and shape, bearing the marks of sun and insects – but it is precisely because nothing is forced that they carry a genuine, bracing flavour. If you are lucky, on market day you can taste fruit straight off the tree, its sweetness full and its fragrance spilling everywhere.
At the farmers’ market, you can’t pop out at any hour for whichever dish you fancy. But that very constraint teaches you the rare value of eating strictly in season: the spring chives are slender but powerfully fragrant; the cherries are here for just two weeks; it is only after the frost that the Chinese cabbage turns properly sweet.
The surge of vitality I feel when shopping at Beijing Organic also comes from the farming friends behind each stall – every one of them as lively and full of character as the produce on their table.
Take, for instance, Mr Wang Xin, the strawberry grower. The reason he simply must be honoured with the title “teacher” is that his strawberries are nothing short of the finest on earth – merely breathing in their fragrance is enough to intoxicate you; take one bite and your very soul trembles.
Strawberries are extremely demanding when it comes to nutrition. From sprouting and flowering through to fruit set, the soil must supply steady, sustained fertility. Mr Wang Xin puts to good use the soil-blending expertise he honed in Beinong’s horticulture programme – the same professional technique originally developed for preparing orchid compost – clearing away the native topsoil entirely and replacing it all with his own custom potting mix. He spares no expense; only a perfectionist obsessed with technique could manage such devotion, and this is also why his strawberries command such a premium.
I remember one market day when he brought only a few strawberries, none particularly large. It turned out his crop had been pilfered – the conventional strawberry growers nearby all know his are grown without pesticides, so they sneak in when the polytunnel covers are lifted and steal a taste. I told him he ought to be flattered – it was the highest praise from his peers.
In my eyes, the cultivated mushrooms grown by Qin Re – the mushroom man – can rival the wild mushrooms of Yunnan for umami.
The grey oyster mushrooms he grows need only a brief pan-sear in olive oil and a pinch of sea salt to become savoury beyond anything you can imagine. The oyster mushrooms at the wet market and Qin Re’s merely resemble each other in shape – they are not in the same league at all.
He has also shattered my preconceptions about many common cultivated mushrooms. The enoki mushrooms he grows are not those sickly, white, thin specimens with caps barely visible – instead, crisp golden stems crown generous brown caps, bursting with a sweet, delicate umami. His king oyster mushroom isn’t just one thick stem; it opens its cap like an umbrella, releases a faint almond fragrance, and stays crisp and tender even after long cooking.
As a Hunanese person myself, I also love the pickled beans he makes. The only trouble is they are genuinely expensive. After buying them once, I felt compelled to try pickling a jar myself. A month later, when I had finished the pot, I thought to myself: if I ever sold these, they would cost even more than his.
There are so many delightful people here: Brother Liu, who can always produce a vegetable you have never heard of; Yingying, whose smile reveals two dimples; Jin Peng, a forager and poet who roams the mossy forests; and Grassland Mountain Man, who insists on using only real ingredients for his maltose and brooks no compromise…
Beijing Organic is a place that runs warm. Shopping here, what I am buying is a pleasure that fills both body and heart, a wellspring of inspiration from kitchen to table. I learn how to cook from my farming friends, and I have picked up skills here that enrich every meal – pickling vegetables, fermenting kombucha and more – a dimension that the fastest-growing food e-commerce platforms can never touch.
Seven years on, Beijing Organic has become one of my anchors of life in Beijing. It reminds me where I stand amid the rushing tide of the times, and how far – or how near – I am to the soil.
Buying groceries is a simple yet profound bond of trust between people. The moment we take the reins over what we eat, we also seize the most solid, dependable part of our lives. A table that turns with the seasons, intimately woven to the land and those who tend it – these honest, grounded meals through every season of the year, are they not more artistic than any art?
Edited by: Ze’en