“Complaints and mistakes flood in every morning before dawn. But I choose to switch off my phone and bury myself in sleep: they aren’t severe enough to make clients stop working with us or to drive the slaughterhouse into bankruptcy. They simply appear like clockwork every day, keeping the wheels…
Eating to Extinction Original Title: Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need To Save Them Author: Dan Saladino Curated by: Beiye Books Publisher: Wenhui Publishing House Translator: Gao Yubing Published: November 2023 Foodthink’s Take Eating to Extinction is a work that explores the global crisis of…
That bread has sold out again. As usual, I popped into the supermarket over the weekend to pick up my “weekly shop”. I headed to the bakery aisle in search of Jason’s Sourdough, only to find the shelf completely bare, save for a white “restocking” label. In just a few…
I.Branches Laden with Lychees Before my dad sent me photos of lychees weighing down the branches via mobile, I had never thought about going home to help sell them. My family home is in Lufeng, Guangdong Province, where we have a lychee grove of nearly one *mu*. They’ve been grown…
Farmer Sun Wenxiang stood in his concrete courtyard to welcome us, his large, calloused feet bare. In early July, Hongya County in Meishan City, Sichuan Province, had just experienced several torrential rainstorms. It was a rare few days of downtime between farm tasks. In another fortnight, the maize in Sun…
The gardenias have begun to bloom in the valley. My flowers are finally here. June 16th, a month ago, was the anniversary of Villain’s Valley. 2025 marks the fourth year. My own little plot in front of the house provides more than enough to be self-sufficient, and in the valley…
Since early June, a video titled “From Waste Siege to Not Enough Waste to Burn: China’s Speed Leaves the West Baffled” has been spreading rapidly across the internet. The idea of simply tossing unsightly rubbish into a furnace to be burned away, while using the resulting energy for electricity, has…
Preface As part of the generation born after 1990, we rode the wave of marketisation and commodification, experiencing the dazzling, kaleidoscope world they created. Unlike our parents’ generation, who were born into farming and did almost everything by hand, we have handed over most of our lives—from the clothes we…
Foodthink Says The saga of “shortages” and skyrocketing prices in Japanese supermarkets has dragged on from last summer through to this one. Despite continuous government intervention, rice prices have refused to drop; instead, the situation has intensified, leading the media to dub it the “Reiwa Rice Riot”. Not only have…
A while ago, some people joked that McDonald’s had become like an emotionless ‘middle-aged man’—no longer brimming with childhood innocence or youthful vitality, but transformed into a lifeless canteen for corporate drudges. Yet, in truth, McDonald’s has never lacked for ‘beasts of burden’. I was surprised to find that, including…
