From consumers to shop assistants, eight Foodthink members worked nonstop for 12 hours at Jishi, an ecological organic vegetable shop in Beijing. Identifying produce, packing, live streaming and washing lamb soup bowls, they saw how selling vegetables links in-store service, supply chains and domestic labour.
In Songyang, south-western Zhejiang, from the streamside to the ancestral hall offering table, locals sun-dry sweet potato starch, hang persimmons, steam tang gao, brew qu-based red yeast rice wine, and set out pig heads—mountain produce and New Year customs for a reunion dinner.
Food and farming media outlet Foodthink’s 2025 hot topics cover climate disasters, the food-delivery wars, imported meat, smallholders’ plight, returning home to farm, ecological agriculture and the pre-prepared food controversy.
Crop Migration, co-authored by four agricultural historians, including Francesca Bray, presents the migration of crops and the expansion of plantations, bringing into view the ecological costs of large-scale agriculture and the wisdom of care in China’s agricultural traditions.
Kouzi’s sixth winter in rural Fujian puts the rocket stove and the big kang, the polytunnel and the old granary, radish, ginger and jujube soup, and dried pumpkin to work, turning the damp cold into warm, easy days.
Huang Chen, a former Caixin assistant editor-in-chief, and Foodthink colleagues Yuyang and Li Ye visit a community ecological vegetable shop in Sanyuanqiao, Beijing, and, while stocking shelves, sorting produce and working the till, rediscover the tangible reality and concrete connection of labour away from screens.
Grassland contraction means Kazakh herders’ cattle and sheep can no longer rely on haymaking in hayfields alone to get through winter; watering, harvesting, planting and market purchases all push up winter costs.
On 7 February, Foodthink’s editorial team will take over Jishi, the Sanyuanqiao community store of Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, to sell vegetables for 12 hours. There will also be a year-end review, a sharing session, a New Year’s goods livestream and a documentary screening. Readers can attend in person, and some events can be watched online.
From American cockroach coffee to the bankruptcy of the European insect protein unicorn Ÿnsect, insect protein has been packaged by capital as low-carbon feed and the answer to the food crisis; the energy costs, research disputes, and regulatory easing in industrial farming are moving “eating insects” from science fiction toward the dining table.
Farmer Kou Yanding has sued for defamation after Baidu AI generated a fake “judgment” saying he had been sentenced for extortion. The Beijing Internet Court has heard the case, making it the first AI defamation case in China with documented records.
