Podcast episodes, transcripts, interviews, and related content.
This episode of Food Talk focuses on the recent and widely discussed oil tanker incident, exploring the impact of food safety issues on our daily lives. Despite weathering numerous food safety scandals, consumers still seem powerless to change the environment they live in. This is even more apparent from the…
Our guest for this episode of Food Talk, Huang Guoliang, is a veteran rural development worker. Like many of our friends in the field, we are more accustomed to calling him “Lao Liu”. Since dedicating himself to rural reconstruction in 2005, Lao Liu has worked in the countryside for nearly…
While attending a conference in Nanning, we caught up with our old friend, Huang Yajun. A seasoned rural worker born in the 1980s, Yajun has experienced several stages of rural development over the last decade or so—from spontaneous community-led exploration to government-driven poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation. Across various villages,…
Which documentary influenced the career choices of our colleagues at Foodthink, prompting us to dedicate ourselves to the food and agriculture sector? Perhaps it was *Food, Inc.* Released in 2009, the film exposes the inner workings of the US food industry, with a particular focus on the health and environmental…
On a windy March day in Beijing, we sat down at the Foodthink office with Tang Liang, who had travelled from his farm in Sichuan, to look back on his twelve-year journey of returning to his roots. Tang Liang was the first in his family to attend university. After graduating…
The Spring Festival holiday has come to an end. What tastes of home did you rediscover this year? In this episode of Food Talk, the team at Foodthink gather to share their culinary memories of the New Year. From Shaanxi to Hainan, and Harbin to Beijing, each region brings its…
How can we tell whether fruit and vegetables are truly good? Should we rely solely on how symmetrical and attractive they look? If so, why is it that the ‘ugly’ produce—the misshapen fruits and veg found on the farm—disappears the moment it hits the shelves? The genes haven’t mutated; the…
In Sanyuanqiao, Beijing, there is an unusual community vegetable shop where all produce is delivered directly by local agroecological smallholders. Each piece of produce is tied to a specific grower’s name, and nothing is grown using pesticides or chemical fertilisers, adhering to strict production standards. This shop, called Ji Shi,…
Long-time readers of Foodthink will certainly be familiar with the name “Grandma Kouzi”. Since 2021, this woman in her sixties has chosen to move to “Villain’s Valley” in Fujian. There, she built her own home and worked the land herself, carving a sanctuary out of the wilderness to explore a…
In this episode, we explore the wonderful world of cheese—the ultimate fermented food—and share the story of Liu Yang, the founder of Bule Cheese and a true Chinese cheese artisan. A Beijinger with a background in IT, Liu Yang stumbled upon the art of stirring milk and making cheese while…
