Family food culture, local food memories, workers’ table stories, and personal relationships with food.
Perhaps you have already heard of homemade pickles, kimchi, or kombucha; they seem to have become the latest craze among young people. In reality, you may never have considered that fermented foods are actually staples in our kitchens—be it soy sauce, vinegar, wine, cheese, miso, or fermented bean curd, they…
I. The word ‘fermentation’ always evokes a sensory longing for foods with rich, mellow textures. Yet, rather than being a culinary art, fermentation is more akin to a gift from nature. As experience and knowledge accumulated, humanity learned to make slight adjustments to external factors, such as ambient temperature, working…
In Evil Valley, farmer Kouzi uses no pesticides and, though apples cannot be home-grown and pumpkins are beset by fruit flies, still learns to cherish those limited harvests.
Early autumn finally brought the first self-reliant harvest since the inception of Evil Valley. I particularly want to stress the “self-reliant” part: from transplanting the seedlings to the final harvest, I handled every step myself, taking complete charge of the whole operation single-handedly. Having moved into Evil Valley in…
Online sales have carried Yunnan’s toxic Jianshouqing wild mushroom beyond Yunnan, where unfamiliar diners face rising poisoning cases, while local eating depends on careful cooking, family caution and a light-hearted attitude to ‘little people’.
In Russian, summer is also known as the ‘dacha season’. Maxim Gorky wrote a short play, translated into Chinese as *The Summer Guest*, but originally titled *Dachniki* in Russian—which more literally translates to ‘the dacha people’. In 1995, the same story was adapted into a film titled *Summer People*. The…
I. Growing Up with the Flavours of the Loess Plateau I was born in the 1980s and grew up in the mountains of the Loess Plateau. I loved the mountains, the plateau, and the freedom of roaming through hills blanketed in wildflowers. My hometown lies where Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Inner…
A note from Foodthink Our memories of our mothers always seem intertwined with food and care. Some may have been exceptional cooks, knowing every family member’s preferences and bringing comfort through delicious meals. Others may not have been skilled in the kitchen, yet they were often consumed by the endless…
In recent years, more and more people have started drinking specialty coffee. Specialty coffee is truly fascinating, isn’t it? Some brews taste of chocolate, some bring to mind the fizz of popping candy, and others exude the aroma of black tea. However, there are times when coffee makes you question…
Shuyu, who keeps microbial cultures in a courtyard house in Gulou, Beijing, and Korean-American astrophysicist Kiwon re-ferment only premium Chinese tea into a sweet and sour drink; friends portion, blind-taste and post it, carrying its flavour to small towns and cities during the pandemic.
