Jiang Ke joined McDonald’s with a passion for studying restaurant operations and served as a shift manager for seven months. From the 90-second service target in the back kitchen to the Smart Production System and shared store manager, she explains how McDonald’s operates like a factory and the pressure employees face.
In the small courtyard of the studio in Hangzhou, Jiang Ziqi turns kitchen waste, coffee grounds, tissues and other organic residues into compost, then mixes it into the poor red-brown clay and plants sponge gourds, chillies and peas.
In the Jiangnan village of Zhenghebang, the Yu Jiangang family, who had made silk quilts for many years, had once wanted to leave. In 2024, after their Guihua silkworms were poisoned, they converted 14 mu of paddy fields beside the mulberry trees to ecological farming; along with their own 1 mu, they created a 15-mu ecological paddy field.
The Ujimqin sheep from Dulan’s herder family in Harigaobi, East Ujimqin Banner, graze nomadically through all four seasons. Boiled with only water and salt until soft and yielding, they are lightly gamy, fresh and tender — the true flavour of the grassland.
Yiyi Farm stir-fries ginger and garlic in lard until fragrant, then adds tomato, celery and other ingredients to simmer a versatile red sour soup. It can be used to cook fish, blanch beef, make noodles, stir-fry vegetables, or make a sour soup hotpot, refreshing the palate after Spring Festival’s hearty fish and meat.
Farmers at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market serve home-grown white radish or green radish, washed and left unpeeled, cut into finger-thick strips, and dipped in a little soy sauce—refreshing, crisp and sweet.
This dish from Xiucai Doufang braises a piece of tofu with a name in yellow soybean paste, light soy sauce and half a bowl of water for three minutes, reducing the sauce. It is one of the farm friends’ New Year dishes launched by Foodthink together with Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.
Beijing Huairou Snail Farm shares a New Year dish recipe: slow-cooked free-range rooster with beer and spices, easy to make at home in about two hours.
Wu Longlong shares a steamed pork belly recipe using Mutongxin Farm’s free-range pork: marinate the pork belly with Sichuan pepper and five-spice powder, stir-fry until slightly curled, dredge it, then steam for 40 minutes.
From the second to the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, Foodthink is teaming up with farmers from Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market to share six New Year recipes made with their own ingredients, helping use up leftovers while adding a new dish to the table each day.
