Say Yes to Art, No to Life: What Kind of Food Market Do We Need?
In 2016, I had a few rather unsuccessful shopping trips to Sanyuanli Market. I only recently made my way back, drawn by the exhibition and the urge to check in, only to find it had long since settled on its new identity: an art scene.
Seven years on, Sanyuanli has been given a glossy makeover: to promote a new outlet, a coffee brand is currently hosting a special exhibition for its Yunnan coffee harvest season, titled *Yunnan Wonderland*. It was created in collaboration with Hu Rui, the director whose *Yao Chinese Folktales* animation series recently crossed over to mainstream audiences.
I must admit, when I saw the slogan ‘Yunnan is a wonderland, its vitality eternal’ on the heavy windbreak curtain, it gave me a slight jolt. It felt as if stepping through that curtain would instantly grant me a Yunnanese adventure. Yunnan is indeed a land of culinary wonders.
The market stalls are a feast for the eyes. Assorted herbs, edible flowers, fungi, fruits, and seafood are arranged into a vibrant spectrum of colours, making one wonder whether the stallholders have studied window display design.
Then again, the organisers likely couldn’t tell you which of the produce actually hails from Yunnan. That doesn’t prevent them, however, from dressing up the vegetable stalls with the ‘single-origin’ concept—a marketing term typically reserved for high-value speciality crops like artisanal coffee.
Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that most vegetables sold by small vendors have passed through multiple layers of the supply chain; they couldn’t possibly be single-origin. This is all the more true at Sanyuanli, which markets itself on the sheer diversity of its ingredients.
Sanyuanli – Beijing’s international culinary calling card, a flagship for old-street revitalisation, an artistic hotspot for viral photo ops – is precisely not the wet market where ordinary residents sort out their daily sustenance. It does little to spark a passion for life or cooking, and instead, an unpleasant shopping trip from seven years ago came flooding back.
I. In the cosmopolitan Sanyuanli, decent taro is nowhere to be found
Back then, it was likely the only wet market where you could so effortlessly source speciality ingredients from all corners of the globe.
When she decided to recreate her hometown’s taro dessert, however, the taro proved a complete let-down.
She tasted the boiled taro, dejected, and asked me: “Why is it so hard to find good taro in Beijing? The taro we grow at home in our courtyard turns soft, floury, and aromatic once cooked.” After tasting two batches of hard, crunchy taro, we resolved to head to Sanyuanli and pick out a decent one ourselves.
We found a stall with a comprehensive selection of vegetables and told the vendor we specifically wanted Lipu taro from Guangxi, and it had to be floury. The boss promised it would be, handed us a large, soil-caked root, and we carried its weight back home, only to find it rotten when cut open. A box of okra, wrapped in cling film and bought on a whim, had a mouldy bottom layer.
Clinging to the rotten taro and mouldy okra, we finally tracked down the initially enthusiastic vendor among a row of strikingly similar stalls. He informed us that the vegetables hadn’t come from his stall and he wasn’t responsible.
Resigned, we bought another taro, took it home, sliced and boiled it, but it was still hard. We gave up entirely.
II. From Southwestern Hunan to Beijing: The Indispensable Wet Market
Using bamboo winnowing baskets and nylon sacks as their display surfaces, these vegetable stalls sprawl loosely and freely from the bustling core—the city centre farmers’ market—outwards. Vendors who are friends set up close together for easy chat, and when someone walks past, they’ll casually hail them: “Miss, fancy buying some veg?”
Because most of the produce is locally grown, only a handful of seasonal varieties are available at any one time. Paradoxically, this simplicity lends a greater sense of variety.
Chillies alone come in red, yellow, green, and purple; long, short, round, pointed, curled, and straight. Throw in the gradations of heat—fiery, medium, mild—and there are simply too many to tell apart.
It isn’t that produce from elsewhere is completely absent, but the difference is plain to see. Moreover, local luffa is just sweeter than luffa from further afield, and local coriander has a fragrance that simply cannot be matched. My mother prefers buying from elderly vendors. If she sees them struggling to sell their stock, she’ll sometimes buy the whole lot, leaving our household eating the same vegetables for days on end. That’s simply her way of showing she cares.
For someone who can’t rely on eating out for every meal, the wet market remained an essential part of daily life during my first few years in Beijing. On weekdays, I mostly shopped at the neighbourhood convenience grocery stations. It was only on weekends, when time allowed, that I’d make the trip to the more distant Jinsong Dingsheng Market for bulk shopping.
The severe avian flu outbreak in early 2014 prompted Beijing to introduce the *Measures for the Administration of Designated Livestock and Poultry Slaughterhouses in Beijing Municipality*, banning the sale of live poultry and livestock in wet markets. Overnight, the market lost half its former bustle.
Following large-scale urban management campaigns and the demolition of unauthorised structures in 2017, the market’s footprint shrank further still. It may have emerged neat and brightly lit, but the familiar clamour of daily trade had vanished entirely.
I also briefly witnessed the final heyday of the Longfusi morning market. It was the first time I’d realised there could be such a bustling early market inside the Second Ring Road. On winter mornings at six or seven, before dawn broke, lorries would roll in to unload yams, Chinese cabbage, sweet potatoes and leeks. The produce was laid out straight on the ground and sold for just a few cents a jin. Steam billowed from stack after stack of huge mantou, alongside stalls offering seedlings and herbs… Buoyant elderly shoppers would pull their little trolleys straight through the stalls, soon heading home with their carts brimming over.
In June 2016, after more than two decades of trading, the Longfusi morning market finally made way for a new commercial quarter. It was said that the tenants would all be international luxury brands—yet another footnote to the changing times.
In a Beijing where traditional markets are steadily fading, the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market stands as the last beacon of wet market culture in my eyes.
III. A Final Solace for Lovers of the Wet Market
A farmers’ market is certainly no ordinary local market; all the fresh produce on sale comes from ecological smallholders in the Beijing hinterland.
The ecologically grown fruit and vegetables may not be photogenic. They vary in size and shape, often bearing the marks of sun and insect, yet it is precisely this lack of conformity that preserves their authentic, vibrant taste. With a bit of luck, a visit to the market might yield fruit picked straight from the tree, bursting with sweetness and fragrance.
You won’t find every vegetable under the sun available year-round, as you might in a conventional market. Yet this very constraint teaches the true value of seasonal eating: the slender but fiercely aromatic garlic chives of early spring, cherries that grace the stalls for a mere fortnight, and the way Chinese cabbage only reveals its sweetness after a touch of frost.
That vibrant sense of vitality permeating the market also stems from the farmers themselves. Each one is as lively and full of character as the produce laid out before them.
For example, Wang Xin, the strawberry grower. The reason I must respectfully address him as ‘Teacher’ is that his strawberries are simply unparalleled. The aroma alone is intoxicating, and a single bite makes your very soul tremble.
Strawberries are highly demanding. From sprouting and flowering to fruiting, they require a steady and consistent supply of soil nutrients. Drawing on his formal landscaping training at Beijing University of Agriculture—specifically his expertise in mixing substrate for orchids—Mr Wang removed the original topsoil and replaced it entirely with a custom-blended nutrient mix. It is a process undertaken without regard for cost, one that only a technically obsessive perfectionist could manage, which explains why his strawberries command a premium price.
I remember a market day when he had brought only a modest haul of rather small strawberries. As it turned out, some had been pinched. The neighbouring growers of conventional strawberries knew full well that his crop is grown without pesticides, so they would slip into the greenhouse whenever the covers were lifted to help themselves. I told him he ought to be pleased; that is the highest form of praise one can receive from peers.
In my view, the cultivated mushrooms grown by Qin Re, known as the ‘Mushroom Gentleman’, can rival the exquisite freshness of wild mushrooms from Yunnan.
His grey oyster mushrooms need only a brief sauté in olive oil with a pinch of sea salt to reveal an unmatched depth of savoury richness. The oyster mushrooms you find at the wet market may look similar to Qin Re’s, but they are fundamentally different things.
He’s also completely overturned my preconceptions about many common cultivated mushrooms. His enoki mushrooms aren’t the pale, stunted-looking variety with almost invisible caps. Instead, they boast crisp golden stems crowned with broad brown caps, wonderfully sweet, smooth, and tender. And his king oyster mushrooms aren’t just thick, blunt stalks; they bloom into proper caps, release a lovely almond fragrance, and retain a firm, tender bite even after prolonged cooking.
Being from Hunan myself, I’m also fond of his pickled green beans. They are, unfortunately, quite pricey. After buying a batch once, I decided to try making them myself. After a month of fermenting and eating my way through the jar, I realised: if I were to sell them, I’d have to charge even more than he does.
There are so many wonderful people here. Brother Liu, who always manages to pull out vegetables you’ve never heard of. Yingying, whose smile reveals two perfect dimples. Jin Peng, a forager and poet who roams the tundra and woodlands. Qingshao Shanren, a perfectionist who refuses to cut corners, crafting his malt syrup only with the finest, genuine ingredients…
Bei Youji is a place with real warmth. When I shop here, I’m not just buying produce; I’m purchasing a holistic experience that delights both body and mind, a constant source of inspiration that flows from the kitchen to the dining table. I’ve learned culinary techniques from the growers, and picked up skills like fermenting kimchi and brewing kombucha to deepen the flavours of my everyday meals. This is a dimension that the rapidly expanding world of food e-commerce could never hope to replicate.
Seven years on, Bei Youji has become a steady anchor in my life in Beijing. It grounds me, reminding me where I stand in the rush of modern life, and how closely I remain connected to the earth.
Going to the market is, at its core, a simple yet profound bond of trust between people. When we take charge of what we eat, we also secure the most grounding element of our lives. A table that turns with the seasons, woven through deep ties to the soil and those who tend it—these honest, steady meals across the turning years. Isn’t that, in itself, more profound than any high art?
Editor: Ze’en