A turbulent year of lockdowns, extreme heat, and disrupted food systems in China, seen through Foodthink’s nearly 100 articles, 40 events, and 13 podcast episodes — from Shanghai’s vegetable scrambles to a climate survey of ecological smallholders.
Foodthink’s Beijing team, sealed in their office for seven days during 2022’s lockdown, looks back on the year and shares what each colleague hopes 2023 will bring.
Yu Jiangang left advertising in Beijing to rear silkworms and make silk quilts in his Jiangnan village. Twelve years on, commercial agriculture and capital have pressed closer, and the question of whether a rural identity can survive outside the marketplace remains open.
Through a winter of pandemic lockdown, sudden policy reversal, and a death in the family, a mother in a small town north of the Yangtze steadies her household with the old calendar of curing pork, frying meatballs, and airing quilts in the sun.
Ma Lan, who has developed forest kindergarten programmes since 2014, discusses what Chinese children gain from spending a full year sowing, tending, harvesting, and cooking their own food through farm-based nature education.
Grain that once shipped from Odesa to Africa and Asia is now funnelled into EU markets, prompting farmer protests in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, while the developing nations that depended on Ukrainian wheat have received a smaller share.
Chen Chong spent a month at the Tang family’s eleven-person farm in Jintang County near Chengdu, where a scattered household has spent a decade finding its way back together on the land.
Foodthink recaps five years of food and agriculture writing and community events, asks past attendees to complete a survey with a set of Douban Nature tableware as the prize, and previews the Beijing Fengnianqing online series from 22 December to 15 January.
Five Foodthink colleagues and an office flatmate, sealed in a Chaoyang, Beijing office, spent seven days with clear-broth lamb, pumpkin buns, an online choir rehearsal and a midnight reading group — eating well, working as usual.
Foodthink colleagues will ‘take over’ Community Market, Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market’s physical vegetable shop, on 23 October, running the store for a day and hosting four events, including a loose goods area tour, a Bule Cheese tasting, and a decade-in-business roundtable. Join in person or online.