Labor in food and farming systems, migrant workers, labor rights, and changes in production-side work.
In a dialogue at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, Kang Li, an Yi woman from Chuxiong, Yunnan, and Jin Peng, a Greater Khingan Mountains forager, describe returning to the mountains to pick mushrooms and selling wild mountain produce, discussing mountain village labour, climate change and pricing logic.
A Working Holiday Visa holder delivers food on foot for Uber Eats in Melbourne’s city centre. In their first month, over 80 orders earned them more than 1,200 Australian dollars; a cafe job covers rent, yet hourly pay falls below Australia’s legal minimum hourly wage.
Summer arrives, and with it, another season for watermelon. Watermelons are inseparable from summer, just as the farmers behind the fruit evolve alongside their crop. Wherever there is land, you will find the watermelon farmers of Taizhou. Their history of enterprise dates back to the 1980s, forming another chapter in…
I. Flowers in Early Bloom On 3 May, in Jinqu Town, Mei County, Shaanxi, Xu Yuanlin spotted the messenger flower in his vineyard first thing in the morning. He was stunned. The so-called messenger flower is the first blossom of the season; like a herald, it warns farmers to begin…
JD and Meituan are locked in a fierce battle for the food delivery market, with the most striking point of contention being the dispute over riders’ social security. On 19 February 2025, JD took the lead by announcing it would pay the “Five Insurances and one Housing Fund” for full-time…
The film *Nei Sha* opens with an immediate explanation of its title. On the banks of a reed bed in winter, Teacher Tang, an organic farmer, explains to a visiting professor: this is the mouth of the Yangtze River, where shifting sands have deposited over time to gradually form islands.…
From late last year until April, the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai—a popular tourist destination—was frequently shrouded in a thick haze. On 29 March, Chiang Mai was ranked by IQAir as the most polluted city in the world, with an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 188, which is 17.4…
Qingming is a festival for ancestral worship and tomb-sweeping. This year, Qingming falls on 4 April, which happens to be 404. This brings to mind those articles that have been 404 not found. Last year, several Foodthink articles “disappeared” from our WeChat official account—the highest number in our history. Yet,…
Foodthink Says Was there ever a moment when you suddenly just didn’t want to order takeaway anymore? On 1st March, Foodthink’s new column, “Eat Something Good”, launched a call for submissions: 「100 Moments I Didn’t Want Takeaway」, and we received many letters from our readers. As an editorial team that…
Meituan’s “Pin Hao Fan” service, launched under the banner of “zero delivery fees and 10-yuan meals”, has seen a surge of workers flocking to it thanks to its low-price strategy. While the adage “you get what you pay for” inevitably raises concerns about food safety—and I myself suffered two days…
