No weather allowance, and fines for not clocking in – the platform’s “tiered reward” scheme pushes risk onto riders. On downpour days there is no circuit breaker; the city’s convenience never pauses, only a person’s safety does.
After Xibei’s chain-restaurant incident, takeaway, supermarket and freezer ready meals have put the breath of the wok, prices and the feeling of being deceived back on the table. Small eateries’ fresh stir-frying, international students’ dinners and homemade meals offer another path between convenience and freshness.
The “not enough waste to burn” video sparked debate, but China’s incinerators face overcapacity, not a waste shortage. Statutory dioxin monitoring occurs only annually, and food-contact plastic additive risks have long been underestimated. Zero-waste and waste-reduction practitioners urge cutting at source, not simply burning the problem away.
Zhang Kai, brewer at Fenye Brewing, and Xu Xin (Elephant), co-founder of Mars Elephant Lab, bridge brewing and baking with the same grain—from inoculating corn with sake koji to brewing an Earth Day beer from surplus bread at ten Beijing bakeries—and China’s import-reliant grain supply chain.
Mao Da and Sun Jinghua argue that incineration is the end of the processing chain, not a way out; overcapacity undermines the incentive for reduction and recycling, and the furnace has neither eliminated dioxins nor replaced sorting.
Yi woman Kangli and Greater Khingan Range forager Jin Peng discuss pricing mountain produce, the drain of people from mountain villages, and the challenges and hopes amid climate change.
In 2008, Cao Xiaohong built a grocery-buying group in a small Hunan town with email and cash. Xiaoyunsheng has sold at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market for over a decade. Both have gone from “die-hard organic” to “laid-back shopping”, keeping the seasoned feel for market picking and sustaining trust.
Social enterprise “Muyunpo”, rooted in Xiaojin County, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan, organises Jiarong Tibetan region villagers to independently forage matsutake, free-graze yaks and grow apples, returning sales surplus to villagers’ groups at year-end. Yunhui and Xixi share how they found a different path.
Meituan-funded environmental organisations once named and shamed food delivery plastic pollution, but their voices have grown quieter over the past two years. From the 2004 APP deforestation boycott by grassroots organisations to today’s waning civil-society oversight, the balance of power between public-interest organisations and polluting companies has shifted dramatically.
Cat Alliance is turning a cornfield in Heshun, Shanxi, into a bond between North China leopards, villagers, and urban audiences through ecological agriculture without chemical fertilisers or pesticides – exploring a new path for conservation and community coexistence.