1 Women’s Lives At sixty, looking back on her thirties, a woman finds it so remote, as though another lifetime has passed. In the 1990s, in my thirties, the air was filled with all manner of apocalyptic fables. Whether in novels or films, the…
◉ There are plenty of group photos featuring Guan Qi, yet very few portraits of him alone. In those group shots, he always lingered at the back or to the side, quiet and wearing a gentle smile. This picture was taken in December 2024 at Qiandao Lake in Hangzhou,…
Foodthink says In January this year, a Beijing resident ordered fresh lily bulbs from Hema but received toxic daffodil bulbs instead, leading to their 71-year-old mother and 12-year-old son being hospitalised after eating them. Hema attributed the error to a sorter who, during the picking process, accidentally placed daffodil…
With the arrival of Grain Rain, the showers nourish the myriad crops, and the fields enter their most busy and vibrant season of the year. Following two weeks of quiet, Foodthink embarks on a fresh journey at this solar term. Borrowing the blessing of a good rain, we sow…
I. A Gen Z’s Memories of Agricultural Machinery As far back as I can remember, my family has farmed, mainly growing wheat and rice. During holidays, I would follow the rear of a harvester with my friends, picking up stray rice ears. Harvesters were rare back then; a village might…
I am a girl who grew up wandering around the wet markets. In my day-to-day life, I am just an office worker in a cubicle, but come Chinese New Year, I transform into the “deputy” of a wet market grocery shop. What exactly is a wet market? For ordinary people…
Friends are divided on whether Guan Qi was more of an introvert or an extrovert. Several of us asked him directly and received different answers each time. After he passed away, we gathered and realised it was a mystery that could never be definitively resolved. Whenever we think back to…
On 4 April last year, Foodthink published a “compilation of deleted articles”. Since then, whenever an article is removed, colleagues have relied on a wry internal joke for solace: “We already have another entry for next year’s 404 compilation.” But the articles 404’d over these two years are not entirely…
A Note from Foodthink As Qingming Festival approaches, whether for a trip or to sweep tombs, many will head out to the countryside for a few “farmhouse meals”. The author of this piece did just this year during the Spring Festival. These reflections on eating during a rural New Year…
How did an organisation focused on insect ecology come to care about farmers’ livelihoods? And how did an organisation focused on farmers’ livelihoods end up composing ‘The Fly Song‘ for flies? How did a man from Shanxi become a village ‘male women’s director’ (a humorous term for a man holding…