Our Last Letter of 2025: Foodthink’s Fengnian Qing “Cook-Up” Grand Showcase

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This is Foodthink’s last post of 2025. Surprise—it’s not a year-end wrap-up! (The truth is, the annual summary still hasn’t been wrung out, so please try calling back later…)

In the meantime, why not take a look at all the things we cooked up at the Guangdong Fengnian Qing we just came back from!

◉ Foodthink editor Yuyang caught mid-spell. Photography | Yan Qiange

Co-Creating Climate Sci-Fi Novellas

Thanks to the annual Fengnian Qing, we spent a winter solstice in Guangzhou that was as hot as the summer solstice—Santa Claus would have had to ride in on a camel. Who knows whether this unseasonably hot winter solstice can be blamed on climate change.

Over three days, we took the titles of the more than a hundred articles Foodthink published this year on land, farmers, food and climate, and mixed them with a huge spread of Cantonese cuisine, turning them all into story fragments. Nearly a hundred adults and children on site drew word cards at random and played a relay chain to “piece together good prose,” collaboratively writing eight climate science fiction novellas in real time that would put AI to shame.

In these stories, you’ll see the culinary imagination of the people of Guangdong—

  • The ultimate solution to saving humanity turns out to be—potatoes, corn, beef offal, ginger milk curd, rice noodle rolls?
  • Ice… the ice age descends, and the whole world becomes one giant table of Cantonese morning tea!
  • The ginger milk curd’s CV had quite a few entries: to grab our respective posts, people even started hurling char siu bao at each other… The char siu bao hadn’t done a single thing wrong…
  • Rice noodle rolls seized the airspace, and the people of Guangdong transformed into cosmic free-range chickens…
These eight science fiction novellas all adhere to one creative principle: even in the apocalypse, it has to taste good. A perfect echo of this year’s Fengnian Qing theme: A thousand crafts, one meal.

◉ For more information about Fengnian Qing, please click the link on the poster.

Through everyone’s literary creation, we’ve been given the chance to step from “words” back into “reality” and reimagine the relationship between humanity and land, climate, and food 🍚

Of course, creations this brilliant can’t just stay at Fengnian Qing. We’ve put all eight novellas online, freed from pen and paper, achieving “cyber immortality.” In addition, to more vividly capture the mental state of the old Guangzhou folk, we’ve also prepared a AIGC version—where ChatGPT visualises these abstractions.

👇Swipe to explore AI’s imagination

*Friendly reminder: Please make sure you’ve had something to eat today before viewing.

Poetry Between Bites: Cantonese Edition

Besides joining the climate science fiction relay, introverts could also sit down and mash Foodthink’s article titles together with Guangdong specialties to craft “Poetry Between Bites.” Truly worthy of Guangzhou… I have never seen collage poetry this delicious! In the spaces between words, we caught the scent of the land, tasted street food, and shared our thoughts.

◉ Take a look: savouring Guangzhou’s whimsical imagination and poetic abundance~

Not Available Today

◉ Everyone shared foods that have grown hard to find, along with the stories behind them.

When familiar foods and flavours fade away, so too does the way we relate to land, climate, and memory—shifting quietly, almost imperceptibly. What are some things you used to eat but can hardly find now?

Green mandarin, White Rabbit candy; Grandma’s pie, the rice vermicelli shop downstairs; Qimo roasted persimmon… What did they taste like? And why did they disappear?

We would love to work with you all to document these vanishing foods, preserving their flavour stories and sweet memories. Feel free to leave a comment and share your own “sold out today”~

◉ Guess what “food” this is?

We were so happy to run into so many Foodthink readers from across the Greater Bay Area at Fengnian Qing—

Some came from Huizhou, some from Foshan, some from Shunde, some from Hong Kong,

and there were even veteran readers who have been following Foodthink since 2017.

Thank you all for showing up in person to hang out with us—we have finally stepped from the online world into real life! We are so grateful to everyone who has been with us on the other side of the screen, year after year~ And we met a whole host of new friends too. Here is to the days ahead, where Foodthink can walk alongside you as you eat well and live well.

Forum Recap

For the first time, Foodthink brings the documentary 2024 Lianhe Creative Programme–supported, Whose Table, Whose Pasture, to Guangzhou to meet its readers. The film’s director ventured deep into the pastoral regions around Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact of large volumes of imported frozen beef and mutton entering local markets. The film reveals how imported meat, with its low-price advantage, has disrupted local beef and mutton production, posing a brutal question: In the globalised meat supply chain, who enjoys the low prices, and who bears the cost?

◉ Poster for Whose Table, Whose Pasture

On the afternoon of the last day, we invited Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen—documentary filmmakers focused on issues facing agriculture, rural areas, and farmers—to share what they observed during this year’s visits to rural communities in Guangdong and Guangxi, including the impact of natural disasters. Liao Fenglian, who has long been deeply rooted in Guangzhou’s agricultural scene, shared the challenges that the city’s “super-long summers” have posed to crop cultivation over the past two years. When agriculture and rural communities are hit by extreme weather, what changes are unfolding in our cities and on our dining tables? Readers and consumers on site also joined this discussion about extreme weather—facing the reality and searching for solutions.

◉ Watch: Zhao Yushun’s talk; Liao Fenglian’s talk; audience Q&A. Photography | Ming Chun

On site, our assigned photographer also captured many warm and joyful moments.

◉ Hope you, reading this, can also smile knowingly. Photography | Yan Qiange
If you still don’t know what Fengnian Qing is, in the simplest terms: it is China’s largest offline gathering dedicated to sustainable food and agriculture, born in Guangzhou but with an influence that now far exceeds Guangdong and Guangxi. Now in its ninth year, from its origins as a farm produce market to today’s cross-disciplinary event blending ecological agriculture, art and literature, and social issues, Fengnian Qing has always been the thread connecting the countryside with the city, producers with consumers.

As Fengnian Qing’s only host organisation from outside the region, Foodthink seizes the chance every year to come to Guangzhou and meet our farming friends and readers in the south. We have grown here, and here we have witnessed: when producers and consumers lift each other up, the act of eating gains dignity and meaning beyond just making a living.

Side Story

In the images below, can you recognise any of the ecological smallholder farmers that Foodthink has reported on or partnered with?

◉ For some, the answer is written right on the riddle 😂. Photography | Yan Qiange
2025, happy wrap day! May everyone, after all the wild brainstorming, still have the energy to roll up their sleeves and get things done.

2026, see you again in Guangzhou, to celebrate a bountiful year once more.

“Eat well, drink well, and may everything turn out even better than you hoped”

Planner: Li Ye

Editors: Kerry Tianle

Novella illustrations: ZX, Li Ye

Published by Foodthink