When Design Meets Food: A Beijing Community Grocer’s Decade of Renewal｜Food Talk Vol. 20
Nestled among the trendy restaurants and cafés on the bustling Phoenix Hui retail street along Beijing’s Eastern Third Ring Road is a greengrocer named “Jishi”. If you’ve ever walked past it, you might have been drawn in by its unpretentious shop window and displays.
In this episode, we take you on a deep dive into this rather distinctive greengrocer.
Jishi is no ordinary neighbourhood supermarket. It serves as the physical community grocer for the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, sourcing fresh, organic ingredients from ecological smallholder farms around the capital. Here, you can discover exactly which farm a head of Chinese cabbage came from, or which fellow farmer grew the corn used to make that bowl of popcorn. From leaf to table, every ingredient is traced directly back to its source.
Last year, Jishi marked its tenth year in business. For a number of reasons, the shop relocated to a new spot on the same street, underwent its third renovation, and launched its 3.0 iteration. In this episode, we welcome Xia Yunsheng, director of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, and Kang Zhen, the designer behind the new Jishi space, to join Food Talk presenter Hao Xiaozhu. Together, they reflect on how this small, eco-conscious shop has spent a decade finding its place amidst the consumer-driven pulse of Beijing’s CBD.
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Xia Yunsheng
Former journalist and amateur farmer, he has been selling vegetables at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market for a decade.
Kang Zhen
Lead designer at Beijing Fencun Design Co., Ltd. He holds degrees from Tianjin University and the National School of Architecture and Landscape in Lille, France, where he obtained a Master’s in Architecture and qualified as a state-registered French architect. Serving as the designer for the 3.0 renovation of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Jishi during the pandemic marked a turning point in his architectural philosophy and career path. Since then, he has been actively exploring and practising how spatial design can rebuild the harmonious, healthy relationship between people, communities, cities, and nature. He currently leads the Wetland Guardians initiative at Friends of Nature and acts as deputy convenor for the preparation committee of Friends of Nature’s Gaia Family Group 4.
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Hao Xiaozhu
Non-resident presenter for Food Talk, and an occasional part-time worker at Jishi.
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04:51 The “marketplace”, often positioned as the antithesis of the “supermarket”, acts as a vital vessel for lifestyle in Europe. In China, the tradition of heading to local markets (“gǎnjí”) fell out of favour for a time. Do our lives still require it?
08:32 Is it truly necessary to renovate a community greengrocer that has already weathered so many twists and turns?
11:22 Is design merely about aesthetics? The designer argues that the best work must be guided by genuine needs and authentic relationships.
17:06 Stripping every brick and tile from the old shop for reuse: is this penny-pinching, or part of a deeper intention? Or perhaps both?
23:09 More than just selling vegetables, the aim is to provide a “smallholder farmers’ table” where visitors can sit down to freshly made Alsatian crêpes. While the “farm-to-table” movement has swept across the globe, and Jishi has made numerous attempts alongside its farming partners, why does it remain so difficult to realise in China today?
27:41 Lacking a heavily polished “designed” aesthetic, the unfinished quality of the space leaves room for greater possibilities.
34:52 The intention is not merely to operate as a “shop”. The relationship with the community is fundamentally one of equality and co-creation, rather than a simple “I serve you” dynamic.
39:05 A community vegetable shop doesn’t pull in much profit from daily sales. How much budget is realistically available for design and renovation, and how heavily do these financial constraints weigh on both Jishi and the designer? How do you strike a balance between the consumerist atmosphere of a city CBD and an ethos of ecological sustainability?
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Photography
Foodthink
Production Team for This Episode
Planning: Ze En
Production: Xiao Jing
Cover Art: Wan Lin
Music: Ba Nong
Editing: Ze En
Layout: Xiao Shu
Contact Email
xiaojing@foodthink.cn