This is Foodthink’s “Eat Something Good” column, our sixth story collection. The theme for this edition is “the market”. What surprised us is that, in an age when everything seems to be speeding up, we still receive so many readers sharing their experiences of the market.
Compared with previous editions on themes such as “Takeaway” “Plastic” “Digital Side Dish” and so on, the emotional tone of this edition feels more positive and expansive, revealing many readers’ finely detailed, place-based observations of everyday life. Whether in a big city or a small town, whether at home or abroad, whether in the far north or the far south, people’s lives are always connected to the market in all sorts of ways. We even get to hear from a reader who grew up in the market, telling us about the market as she sees it.
Some believe the market will be the next space where the “20-Minute Theory” plays out; others think the market remains a “dirty, chaotic and run-down” place. New and old views overlap, yet neither seems able to capture the market’s full experience. And the market simply dwells in some corner of the city, woven together with the weighty reality of making a living, breathing in and out the breath of life.
The Market, Supermarkets, and E-Commerce
How Do People Buy Their Groceries?
Where do people tend to buy their groceries nowadays? This question has no one right answer—it depends on each person’s rhythm of life, even the different circumstances the same person faces on different days, as well as the spatial and infrastructural layout of the city itself.@阿猹 (female, born in the 1990s, Beijing)
Browsing the market and cooking are now how I reclaim a sense of order in my life, but I only started going to the market purely to feed myself. I used to be a proper penny-pinching overseas student—my family spent a great deal to send me abroad, so I cooked as much as I could to keep my food costs down, and I kept up the self-catering habit even after coming home. I usually do one big shop each week: some meat, staple vegetables, seasonal fruit, and a top-up of spring onion, ginger, and garlic. When I suddenly fancy cooking, I also check e-commerce platforms the day before or the same day to see if they have stock. I rarely go to supermarkets. I find that the produce in Beijing supermarkets is chicken without chicken flavour, fish without fish flavour. I’m in the middle of a move right now. Everything about the neighbourhood near my new place is great—except there’s no market.
◉ Nongguangli Market in Beijing, which A Cha frequents. Photo: A Cha@南宛 (female, born in the 2000s, Tokyo)
I’m currently studying in Tokyo. I know that in areas like Shin-Ōkubo and Kameido there are places similar to domestic vegetable wholesale markets, where prices are lower than at supermarkets. But because they’re far from where I live and on my way home I pass several supermarkets and convenience stores, I still do my grocery shopping at those.@ray
I used to order takeaway all the time, but recently I’ve gradually fallen in love with cooking—only to find that even cooking still can’t shake off takeaway in the broader sense. Fresh-food delivery platforms like Meituan Xiaoxiang and JD Qixian are so convenient that orders arrive within twenty minutes. Not that I’m making excuses—Beijing really does have few markets. The nearest one to my home is about four kilometres away on foot.◉ A picker climbing to find stock in a JD Qixian supermarket warehouse in Beijing. The convenience of “delivery in as little as thirty minutes” from fresh-food e-commerce cannot exist without the pickers’ grim survival reality of “thirty thousand steps a day, three mao per item”. Photo: He Siqi@桔子 (female, Wuzhou, born in the 1990s)
The city where I live and work is Wuxi, which doesn’t have many markets. Getting from my home to the market means taking the metro several stops, so I usually shop through e-commerce platforms (Dingdong Maicai, Xiaoxiang Supermarket) or visit nearby stores (Freshippo, Aldi). But my hometown, Wuzhou, has plenty of markets. Because the city is small, the markets aren’t far from one another, and I used to go almost every day. The nearest market is five or six hundred metres from my place—just a five-minute walk.
The Marvelous Market Guide (work in progress)
Below are some marvellous markets in different cities recommended by our readers—do you recognise any? Do you have a hidden-gem market you’d like to recommend? Leave us a comment below!@桔子 (female, Wuzhou, born in the 1990s)
I recommend Yijing Market in my hometown of Wuzhou—it’s brimming with the warmth of everyday life. Fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh meat, seafood, prepared foods, dried goods, everyday staples and sundries… there’s everything, and it’s bustling every morning. My mum runs a sundries stall in the market, so I grew up wandering its aisles. For me, groceries just don’t have the right feel unless you get them at the market.
◉ Yijing Market on the morning of 28 November. Photo: Juzi Mama@阿努比斯 (female, Hangzhou, born in the 1990s)
I’m currently living in a rural part of northwestern Yuhang District, Hangzhou, where the town centre has a market. I’d recommend Pingyao Farmers’ Market and Huanghu Farmers’ Market—they’re usually busier at weekends, with lots of stallholders setting up. It’s about a twenty-minute bike ride from my home to the market.
@一碗鱼 (female, born in the 1990s, Kunming)
I recommend Fengdeng Farmers’ Market, where they have delicious pickled garlic and pickled vegetables, plus little bunches of mint, chillies, houttuynia (fish mint), and other herbs grown at home for fun, set out on the window ledges.
@溜达卓 (female, born in the 1990s, Deyang)
I live in Guanghan, Sichuan. If you’re visiting, I’d recommend Weitotang Market, the closest market to my home—it stands on the site of a former temple. Inside you’ll find both vegetable sellers at stalls and farmers or gardening enthusiasts selling what they’ve grown themselves. Beyond the basic fruit and vegetables, rice, flour, grain, and cooking oil, as well as seasonings are all there. Sometimes people sell herbs—dried and fresh alike. Sometimes there are flowers, and sometimes something quite unexpected. All in all, it’s more than enough for everyday life!@笋加鲜 (male, born in the 1990s, Shenzhen)
I’ve visited markets in many places—Shaxi in Dali, Duyun in Guizhou, and Mangshi, for instance. Shenzhen doesn’t have many markets, but it’s not too hard to find a good one. If you live near Taoyuan Xuefu Road in Nanshan, I’d recommend Dabanqiao—five minutes from my front door. You can get seafood, siu mei, and vegetables from all sorts of regions.
◉ Produce—lotus root, mushrooms, lettuce, corn and more—at a market in Duyun, Guizhou. Photo: Sun Jia Xian@菲 (female, born in the 1980s, Guangzhou)
Every district in Guangzhou has its own distinctive market. I’d particularly like to highlight Shayuan Market, in western Haizhu District, comprising three sections including the Shayuan Agricultural Products Market, with over 1,000 shops and stalls. The range of goods is astonishing and prices remarkably fair: Beibei squash for just 10 yuan per 2 kg, Zhanjiang oysters at seven yuan each—it all lets visitors experience the quintessentially Guangzhou ideal of “ping liang zheng”: affordable, attractive, and authentic.
◉ Shayuan Agricultural Products Market in Haizhu District, Guangzhou. Image: Yiding, Suyuan, Guo Yuan@南乡子 (female, born in the 1970s, Beijing)
Living in Beijing, there’s a good spread of markets. Near Xixiaokou, to the north is Sanqi Baihui Market, with an extraordinary range of produce and plenty to browse in the fish and meat hall; to the south is Yongtai Comprehensive Market, which not only has fresh vegetables but also speciality prepared foods and a well-regarded tofu shop; to the southwest there’s Qinghe Market, also well stocked. None of these are far from home—about a ten- to twenty-minute e-bike ride.
@晔酱
I’d heard before that temples have long served as centres of faith and community activity in Tainan, and that markets selling fresh food and everyday goods gradually sprang up nearby. Shuixian Temple is a market that’s gone viral online, yet it still retains the feel of a traditional Tainan market. Taiwan’s sea harvest is incredibly rich, so you’ll find many stalls selling seafood and seafood products, with many making fish paste and fish balls fresh on the spot. Under the gaze of the Water Immortal, I bought a few fish balls. The cuttlefish balls were explosively good—bouncy, juicy, the best fish balls I’ve ever tasted.
◉ The master at work making fish balls. Photo: Ye Jiang
The Market as the “Neighbourhood”
The market is a local thing. It uses food as a medium to weave people into the neighbourhood around them, exhaling and inhaling the everyday life of a city. There is food there, and there is feeling. That feeling sometimes crystallises a memory of the past, and sometimes it flows through new relationships. All told, the market may not be without its flaws, but compared with supermarkets and fresh-food e-commerce platforms, it is arguably the likeliest place for genuine human connection.◉ At the market, close exchanges and conversations rely on the two most direct forms of communication: the spoken word and body language. Photo: Juzi Mama@Renso (female, born in the 1990s, Chiang Mai)
I live in Chiang Mai, and half my friends are people I met at the market. The locals here are mostly kind-hearted and unpretentious. When I shop, I often can’t tell one vegetable from another—the ones that sprout like little green belts along the roadsides—so I ask the stallholders what they are, and after a few back-and-forths we get to know each other. I joke that the Chiang Mai market is my Thai-language classroom.
Chiang Mai has permanent markets, as well as “pop-up” markets that appear only on Mondays or at the start of each month. Every month I look forward to the start-of-month market. There’s a grandma there who makes the most exquisite egg-yolk pastries, and another auntie who grows her own fruit and vegetables, all wonderfully fresh. Her home-raised honey is excellent, and she once showed me her beehives and her farm. All in all, going to the market is a survival need—and a social one.
@菲 (female, born in the 1980s, Guangzhou)
The pork stall I used to frequent had moved, and I couldn’t find any message from the stallholder, so I left, crestfallen. The next time I came back, I was sure there was no way such a good meat stall would have closed for good. I wandered over to a newly opened stall, hoping my luck might turn. From a distance I spotted the familiar figure of the stallholder! I hurried over to say hello, and as it happened, they’d only just been talking about me—worried I might not be able to find them. Truly, if you never stop holding something in your heart, the world answers back!◉ The Dongshan Meat and Vegetable Market in Guangzhou, a favourite haunt of Fifi’s. Photo: FifiTung@阿猹 (female, born in the 1990s, Beijing)
There was one stall that only sold tomatoes. I bought from it every single time—the owner remembered me and always gave me a discount. Those were the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. When I went to other markets afterwards and bought the same variety, none of them tasted as good as his, and I’ve never stopped thinking about them.
Then there’s another memory that still stings. Last winter I found some white strawberries at the market—sweet and beautifully fresh—and I fought my way through a bank-transfer note just to add the stallholder on WeChat, because I wanted to get some for my grandfather, who was fighting cancer. But the very next day, before I’d even finished packing for the New Year trip home, Mum phoned to say Grandpa had died suddenly. I rushed home for the funeral, and those white strawberries were never bought. Even now, the thought fills me with regret.
@晔酱 (female, Heilongjiang)
I love browsing the morning market! Even as a child in winter, I had to be up before dawn—tossed out of bed at six to go to the zaoshir with Grandma and Grandpa. Bundle into a big padded coat over a second pair of padded trousers, stuffed round as a ball, and off we’d go. Heaps and heaps of “picked-this-morning garden greens”, several cartloads of corn, Chinese cabbage and potatoes, freshly stir-fried peanuts, sunflower seeds and walnut kernels, and stalls selling flowers and potted bonsai. As a child, out of pure curiosity, I’d try talking to the chickens and pigeons in their cages, and Grandma would promptly snatch me back by the arm: “What a mess you’re getting into!”◉ The morning market in Daqing, Heilongjiang (in authentic northeastern dialect, the “shi” in “zaoshi” must always carry the -r suffix). Photo: Ye Jiang@Singharaja
I’ve visited markets many times this year. My most recent trip was in summer, when I went home to China and found an old market in Chengdu. The lanes were narrow, the stalls packed tight, and the air hung heavy with the mingled scents of spices, cooked foods and damp earth—the kind of place I’ve known since childhood. I wasn’t in a hurry to buy. I just wanted to wander, listen to the vendors calling out, watch people haggle. To me, a market is everyday society in miniature, and there you can see a city’s true pulse: an old man buying a few scallions while counting out his small change; a vendor peeling bamboo shoots while chatting with regulars; life proving itself again and again in these small, layered sounds.@road
Compared to the regular markets, I feel far more drawn to the grand market fair before the New Year. I love this place called a “ji”—everyone arrives bearing their own needs, resources and wits. They haggle, test each other’s mettle, trade if the terms suit, part amicably if they don’t. No one is compelled, and no one needs to flatter for a deal. With the New Year ahead, everyone lets go of a little more calculation and makes room for a little more grace. That’s what a “ji” is—a place to see off the old and greet the new.
◉ Roasted chestnuts tumbling through the air at the pre–New Year’s grand market fair in Shenyang. Photo: road@Ling
Two weeks into moving Mum to Singapore, she had barely left the flat and seemed to find little interest anywhere. The one thing that made her eyes light up and prompted her to say she wanted to go was the pasar (the Malay word for “market”)—what locals call their wet market. Only here could she fall back into the familiar choreography of a home shopping trip: rummaging through piles of vegetables for ages, chatting with stallholders of her own age about everyday things, and, as if by muscle memory, nudging the price down a notch. Even after the produce had been weighed and bagged, she’d toss an extra handful of coriander onto the scales—though for now Mum still holds herself back out of awareness of being a foreigner, rather than saying to the stallholder, as she always would back home, “Throw in that bunch of coriander as a freebie, shall you?”
The pasar’s fruit and vegetables are all wrapped in plastic bags and shipped in from Malaysia, Indonesia, China and elsewhere—no earthy fragrance, no local provenance, and nothing like the morning markets back home, where farmers sell produce straight from their own gardens. And yet the pasar still weaves a daily web with food as the warp and human warmth as the weft, with buyers and stallholders alike building their lives on a sure hand, a sharp eye, and a nose for a fair deal.
◉ Ling’s mum, deep in her expert vegetable-picking routine. Photo: Ling@溜达卓 (female, born in the 1990s, Deyang)
I bring my own bags when I go to the market, so we can get through with fewer plastic ones. Whenever a seller asks me why, I never say it’s for the environment—that always sounds like something far removed from their daily life. I just tell them I’m helping save a plastic bag, and the stallholder is always delighted; sometimes they’ll even throw in a bunch of spring onions for me!@桔子 (female, Wuzhou, born in the 1990s)
I grew up helping Mum tend the shop at the market. We sold a bit of everything—oils, sauces, vinegar, and all manner of loose-weighing ingredients, with multiple brands in a single category, so much that I couldn’t name it all in a day. The little shop was always frantic with business. People would finish their fresh shopping, heft their bulging bags and bundles, then come back through for their cooking essentials.
◉ The Juzi family’s condiment shop. Photo: Juzi MamaDuring the New Year I always go back to help mind the shop. The customers who come to buy don’t just grab and go—they ask all sorts of questions: “What sort of flour do I need for this kind of pastry?” “What can I cook with yellow bean paste?” “Are your century eggs any good—have you tried one?” And so on. I’d usually blurt out, “Of course our century eggs are delicious!” and the old auntie would push back: “Pah—of course you’d say your own eggs are the best! Have you actually tasted one or not?” “Well… Mum’s had one.” I really am hopeless with words. In the end Mum always came to the rescue. She’s remarkable—she can field every question without a pause, from pastry recipes to a clear account of the pros and cons of every brand of seasoning on the shelf. To run a good stall at the market, you need genuine warmth and rock-solid products. After all, the market thrives on repeat custom. Once people take something home and find it good, they naturally come back. I love that honest exchange between people, and I always enjoy my time behind the family stall at the New Year.
Market Survival Guide
Having read this “Market Survival Guide” penned by a few seasoned market-goers, even a complete market novice might just find the confidence to give it a try and discover the joy of browsing a wet market!@丁丁 (female, born in the 1980s, Xi’an)
My approach is to walk a full circuit first, compare, and then pick whichever stall looks fresher and more reasonably priced. Avoid produce that’s been sprayed with water. For spinach, go for the short-stemmed, thick-leaved bunches; for baby Chinese cabbage or regular napa cabbage, look for the looser, yellowing ones.
@阿猹 (female, born in the 1990s, Beijing)
Be clear about what you want before you arrive. If you’re not, the vendor will nudge you into buying things you have zero interest in just because they insist they’re “delicious”. Keep a close eye on the weight—hold them to it. Handle the produce naturally; don’t daintily pinch each leaf for fear of dirtying your fingers, or you’ll look like a complete novice no matter what you say. Give a little feedback along the way—”A friend sent me here”, “Auntie said your [whatever] is amazing, can I try some?”—and some vendors will clock that you know what you’re talking about. They’ll hand you the freshest stock or tell you a better way to cook it.
◉To a market novice, the whole place might look like one endless sea of green. But to a seasoned market-goer, each vegetable has its own shape, pattern, and scent. Photo: Acha@菲 (female, born in the 1980s, Guangzhou)
If you’re visiting a market for the first time, watch for where the crowds cluster, or simply follow the local grandmothers as they shop—that works too. Also, stallholders place their freshest, finest produce in the most visible spots, so keep an eye out. When it comes to vegetables, favour local and seasonal ones—as the old saying goes, don’t eat what’s out of season; let the solar terms guide your choices.@溜达卓 (female, born in the 1990s, Deyang)
I tend to seek out the farmers who grow their own produce, because I feel growing veg is just so much backbreaking work. Especially when it comes to seasonal leafy greens—you can pick up a huge bundle for a pittance, but think of all the sweat, labour and hours behind it. My advice is to choose fruit and vegetables grown locally or in the surrounding areas as much as possible. They won’t taste bad, the prices are fair, and produce shipped in from afar tends to cost more. So when you’re buying from a vendor, do ask where the crop came from.◉Many farmers set up makeshift stalls just outside the market’s perimeter, selling the vegetables and fruit they’ve grown themselves. Photo: Ye Jiang@Vivek (female, born in the 1970s, Dali)
You don’t really need a script at all. Every veg seller hopes to meet someone who knows good produce. And if a shopper is confused, fussy, and haggling over every penny, they’ll spot an imposter pretending to be an expert a mile off.@桔子 (female, Wuzhou, born in the 1990s)
Once you’re inside the market, don’t be intimidated. Chat and make small talk with the stallholders. If someone’s prickly, just move on; if you hit it off, buy from them. If you’re worried about being overcharged, check the going price for whatever you’re after beforehand—compare against the prices on a supermarket mini-program, or visit a few stalls and weigh up freshness against cost before you commit. At least you’ll walk away knowing you got a fair deal.
When it comes to picking your veg, look at the cut end at the base: if it’s still glossy and moist, it’s fresh; if it’s dried out and discoloured, it’s probably past its best. For tomatoes, go for the ones with six leaves at the stem—sweeter and juicier than the five-leaf kind. Of course, the best method by far is simply asking the stallholder. They’ll be more than happy to teach you.
◉A stallholder and a customer in the middle of a chat. Photo: Yuyang
Hidden Delicacies of the Market
Unlike supermarkets, wet markets are deeply intertwined with local food culture. If you’re travelling to a new city and eating your way through it, never overlook the hidden delicacies tucked away in its market. If your hometown boasts its own absolutely extraordinary local specialities, we’d love to hear you call out the names in the comments!@イイϵ( ‘Θ’ )϶
If you visit a market in Yunnan, do try the cold-sliced beef from the Hui Muslim vendors—dipped in a spicy broth sauce or salt-and-pepper, it’s absolutely sublime!
@晔酱
I adore the breakfast spread at the morning market! There’s baked naan, savoury bean-paste flatbreads, tofu pudding, little wontons, and egg burgers. The youtiao stall always has an enormous queue—you buy a couple of sticks, then settle down under a canopy with a bowl of soya milk… It’s still like that today; it’s just that I can’t drag myself out of bed that early any more.
◉ Golden corn cakes. Photo: Ye Jiang@阿努比斯 (female, Hangzhou, born in the 1990s)
At Huanghu Farmers’ Market, there’s a stall run by an auntie who sells all sorts of homemade semi-prepared foods. Besides her regular mantou and rice cakes, the rest of her selection changes constantly—fish balls, stuffed pancakes, steamed pork in rice flour, and more. Every time I go to the market, I check to see what the auntie has made today.
@Tianle Beijing
The market in Songyuli has some excellent sewing shops, and Nongguangli Market has delicious baked flatbreads. When I go to see a film at the Baiziwan Film Archive, I pop into the big market next door for baked stuffed buns, braised goose, and sausages—all made by the small-scale vendors themselves. There’s a professional pride and an easy-going confidence about them that you never see in chain-store staff, and the food is wonderful. The new Chaoshan cuisine stall at Wudaokou Farmers’ Market is delicious!
◉ Welcome to Wudaokou Farmers’ Market in Beijing—this place is packed with great food. Photo: Yuyang@笋加鲜 (male, born in the 1990s, Shenzhen)
In Guangdong, the market must-eat is siu mei, of course. I can get it at the market near my home—freshly roasted chicken, a whole bird for just 60 yuan, better than the roast chicken at any restaurant nearby.
◉ Siu mei—the one pleasure Cantonese people can never give up! Image source: Foodthink@梅子青 (female, born in the 1990s, Anshun)
The braised meat at the market near 303 Hospital in Pingba District, Anshun, and the roast duck at the old Pingba Farmers’ Market.
@南乡子 (female, born in the 1970s, Beijing)
The braised pig’s head and plain tofu at Yongtai Comprehensive Market. The young man at the braised pig’s head stall always wraps the sliced meat neatly in oil paper after cutting it—I love that kind of old-school, eco-friendly packaging.
@桔子 (female, Wuzhou, born in the 1990s)
At Yijing Market in Wuzhou: hand-shredded chicken, poached chicken, roast duck, char siu, roasted pork belly, and more—all Cantonese-style flavours (I’m salivating as I type this…).
◉ The big slab in the middle is roasted pork belly—or, in influencer-food language, “crispy-skin pork belly”, haha. Photo: Juzi’s mum
What Do Wet Markets Look Like Abroad?
Since the last century, markets spontaneously set up by farmers and town-dwellers across many countries have been swept aside by the march of modernisation and replaced by standardised chain supermarkets. The process began in Britain, then spread across the world. So are there still wet markets abroad today? And what do they look like?@Ling
It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Singapore. Just across the footbridge from our estate are two chain supermarkets, FairPrice Finest and CS Fresh, but my mother tried one and flatly refused to go back. She’d much rather brave the blazing equatorial sun and trek twenty minutes on foot to visit the pasar. On our first visit, I carried my daughter—still under two—through the wet, slippery aisles between the vegetable stalls, and the vendor aunties pounced on us like starving tigers, showering the little girl with every sweet compliment they could muster. Some of the aunties even got into a row about whether or not to feed my daughter chocolate, and I nearly had a social anxiety attack on the spot.◉ A fruit stall in the pasar. Photo: Ling
For an elderly woman like her, hailing from a small fifth-tier city in China, the pasar offers three things that put her at ease: the wet market itself, the language, and a sense of human warmth. To drive home the pasar’s virtues, my mother had me compare supermarket prices for every carton of eggs and every sponge gourd. After a round of unit conversions, I concluded that the prices were six of one, half a dozen of the other. My mother wasn’t having it. “Look how fresh the eggs are at the pasar! I’ve kept chickens before—I know that only really fresh eggs are tricky to peel after boiling. Who knows how long the ones at the supermarket have been sitting in cold storage!”
◉ Pumpkins imported into Singapore from Australia. Photo: Ling@晶晶
In Granada, Spain, besides the city-centre wet markets that double as tourist attractions and restaurant destinations, several neighbourhoods have their own markets too. They open daily at set hours, and while prices are relatively higher than those at budget supermarkets, the produce is fresh and plentiful.
@mundum
This year I went to Thailand on a work trip, and the markets there are an absolute paradise for introverts. Big and small, each has its own positioning and price point. Or Tor Kor is probably the most “upscale” wet market I’ve visited in Thailand. Before I went, I read a few reviews calling it Bangkok’s cleanest and priciest market. They weren’t wrong—it really is spotless, and the fruit really is expensive. Perhaps what you’re paying for is the experience. There were so many local specialities—wax apples, sugar apples, mangoes, papayas, guavas, sea coconuts, young green coconuts, pomelos, baby pineapples—but the stallholders were determined to recommend imported cherries to me…
◉ An ordinary Thursday, with echoes of the shooting from a few months earlier still lingering. Half past eight and barely a customer in sight. Trolleys laden with seafood weave between chatting vendors, and the durians haven’t been cracked open and laid out yet. Photo: mundum@面团
I’m currently living in Europe. In the small Spanish town where I live, there’s a street market on both Saturday and Sunday. It runs until around 2 p.m., when the stallholders pack up and a municipal street-sweeping vehicle comes through to wash the ground. You need to register to set up a stall here—I’ve seen officials checking each seller’s permits. At the market you can find fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables, all kinds of pickles, and even bed sheets, blankets, clothes, shoes and jewellery—proper street-stall bargains, in other words. The fruit and veg here isn’t just fresher and tastier than what you’d find in supermarkets or greengrocers; it’s cheaper, too.
@Ye
Around Christmas last year we went on a trip to Florida and stumbled upon a wet market south of Tampa. It was the peak of the state’s citrus season—oranges, mandarins and grapefruits piled in dazzling heaps at the stalls by the entrance. Even from a distance you could feel a wave of hyper-saturated orange heat washing over you, from the tip of your nose all the way up to your brain. The moment you step inside, it’s like the Monkey King falling into the celestial Peach Garden: cacao pods, guavas, passion fruit, star apples, sapodillas, star fruit, sugar apples, plantains… the full family tree of tropical fruit laid out before your eyes. Florida is an ardent, flamboyant place, and you can see it in nothing more than a trip to the market.
◉ Stop to really smell and taste, and you’ll discover a strange kinship between tropical fruits. Even when the flavours are worlds apart, there’s always one aromatic thread that shoots straight up to your sinuses. Photo: Ye
Come Along to a “Farmers’ Market”
The “Farmers’ Market” is a place where producers bring their home-grown, locally produced food into the city and set up stalls together; city-dwellers, hearing the word, come along and buy produce straight from the farmers’ hands. Unlike an ordinary wet market, then, a farmers’ market places greater emphasis on the direct link between the farming households who grow the food and the consumers who buy it.@阿努比斯 (female, Hangzhou, born in the 1990s)
My hometown, Rizhao in Shandong, has plenty of wet markets, but what I’d really recommend is going to the periodic village fairs – the markets in the bigger villages are wonderfully lively. In my village, there are four market days every ten-day cycle on the lunar calendar. On top of that, a morning market springs up each day along the pavement of one street. Everything at the market is a local variety: little cherries and grapes, sweet with a tang of tartness; tomatoes that actually taste of tomato, and cucumbers that actually taste of cucumber… The farmers introduce their produce with real pride.@冰缦
The wet market near my home since the pandemic has seen a sharp drop in footfall. One day, Xiaohongshu recommended the “Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market” page to me, and it lit a spark! For someone like me, who only counts a vegetable as truly “bought” once it’s been through their own hands, markets are pure salvation. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, one should eat seasonal, locally grown fruit and vegetables. Those vegetables, bursting with life and still streaked with mud, have never been abused by chemicals. They have embraced the sunshine, frolicked in wind and rain, and been kissed by the hands of every farmer-friend I know.
◉ At the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, small-scale local farmers practising ecological agriculture and artisan workshops producing additive-free ingredients sell their own products directly to consumers. Photo: Yan Qiange@菲 (female, born in the 1980s, Guangzhou)
I rarely visit farmers’ markets, but recently a stallholder who drives all the way from Nansha to set up in Liwan let me get my hands on some incredibly fresh Machong bananas and lemons!
@Adelaide
Since I started working in Jinan, I’ve noticed that some of the organic or even “green”-labelled produce in the big supermarkets isn’t any cheaper than what’s on offer at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market – and I have no way of verifying the growing conditions behind the labels. Perhaps it’s fair to say that, in the eyes of our ecological farmer-friends, a steady connection with consumers is more precious than a quick profit here and there. They don’t deliberately “package” their produce the way the conventional food system does. Instead, they tell you honestly about the growth and management of every crop cycle, including those growing experiments that didn’t quite go to plan.
◉ Regulars at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market choosing vegetables grown by Sister Chen Yanhong, a farmer in Shunyi, Beijing. Photo: Adelaide@张小猫 (founder of the Chengdu Lifestyle Market)
On one day each month, small and medium-scale farm owners from different parts of Sichuan load up with freshly harvested grain, fruit and vegetables and, come rain or shine, head to a corner of the city for the Chengdu Lifestyle Market to sell the fruits of their seasonal labour. The experience is worlds apart from ordering online and having things delivered to your door. What a market offers is a chance for people to meet face to face. It’s not just consumers coming to see the stallholders – the stallholders themselves need that monthly gathering too. Going it alone is a lonely affair; people need a network of mutual support. (Quoted from “YOU Chengdu”‘s “Sling a Bamboo Basket, Grab a Plate – Off to the Market”))
◉ Sun Wenxiang, one of the stallholders at the Chengdu Lifestyle Market. The local heritage variety of sticky rice he and his family have been preserving, “Red-Tip Sticky Rice”, has been recorded on the Ark of Taste by the international Slow Food movement. Sun Wenxiang is also featured in the book Disappearing Foods as a guardian of rice varieties. Photo: Zhang Xiaomao
The Future of Wet Markets
What changes has today’s wet market undergone compared to the past, and what impact have those changes had? Squeezed by supermarkets and e-commerce, how should the wet market evolve to protect its own space in the future?@章鱼 (female, born in the 1980s, Osaka)
Let me talk about the changes at the wet market in my small hometown. First, market management has become far more standardised. Second, the vegetables on sale have changed too: in the old days, villagers from the outskirts would bring their own home-grown produce to sell; now, most of it is grown at scale and brought in by wholesale produce dealers. With better transport links, the range of vegetables is far wider, but the taste of vegetables has grown ever weaker.@梅子青 (female, born in the 1990s, Anshun)
It’s not the same any more. The old markets were dirty, disorderly and poorly managed – as far back as I can remember, the floor always had a thin film of slushy mud and was never truly clean – but they had such warmth and a human touch. There were always a handful of stalls where the vegetables were cheap, delicious, clean and safe, and the moment a family member mentioned a particular stall, everyone knew exactly where to go. The renovated market now has uniform stall positions and identical white-tiled surfaces. It looks spotless, but footfall has plummeted – nobody wants to browse the wet market any more.@阿猹 (female, born in the 1990s, Beijing)
It’s cleaner than when I was a child, but most sellers are just middlemen now, not the people who actually grow the vegetables. When I was little, you’d always find a cluster of quiet old folks in the corners of the market – not great at hawking their wares, but their Chinese chives had the tell-tale red roots, and even though their aubergines and cucumbers were a bit lopsided, they were seasonal, straight from the ground. These days, if I ask a stallholder how to cook a vegetable, he often knows less than I do.@Vivek (female, born in the 1970s, Dali)
There’s far more regulation on stallholders now – what were once large open-air periodic fairs have become indoor stalls, and the commercial feel gets stronger by the year. Produce dealers keep multiplying, actual growers keep shrinking, and more and more farmers are selling up their land or renting it out!@钟淑如
In my view, simply championing the humanistic value of wet markets isn’t enough. At the end of the day, a wet market is a place to buy and sell vegetables. The real key to sustainability is attracting younger shoppers and helping the market keep pace with the rhythm of urban renewal.
During my research, I found that many wet markets are already innovating in their core business. To keep up with young people’s pace of life, for example, Guangzhou’s Lingnan Group plans to sell pre-prepped, ready-to-cook vegetable packs at its markets, so that young people who fancy cooking but lack the time can quickly stir-fry their way to a satisfying meal at home. A technological upgrade is another trend. Hangzhou is building all manner of “smart wet markets”: in these clean, bright, spacious new environments, you can scan a QR code to trace a vegetable’s origin, pay by facial recognition, order online and have your produce delivered to your door in thirty minutes – even live-streamed shopping has made its way in.
As long as there are people who still love buying fresh food and cooking at home, and as long as city managers take an inclusive approach to governing wet markets, we have every reason to believe that the wet market will continue to exist – and will be more diverse, and more vibrant, than ever.
◉ The wet floors before renovation. Photo: Zhong Shuru◉ After renovation, the floors are clean and dry – a far better shopping experience. Photo: Zhong Shuru
