Nostalgia fuels demand for honest food in China (2)

Each week, the market gathers around 20 small- and medium-sized local family farms that sell homegrown produce ranging from rice, vegetables, chicken, eggs and meat. There are also a couple of families who make traditional, old-time snacks such as vegetarian buns and candied hawthorn strips.

First mooted by two foreign artists in 2010 as an art project observing the relationship between food and society, the market attracted mainly foreign expatriates in the beginning. Things started changing after the organizers opened an account on Sina Weibo, China's biggest micro-blogging site.

This became an information platform through which the organizers broadcast both the market venues and the produce available that particular week, but it also started to build an active online community that eagerly shares news and knowledge. At the moment, it has about 63,000 who are linked to its blog daily.

Its popularity is also directly related to the series of food safety scandals that have surfaced in the last few years, a concern that was also raised at the current parliamentary meetings in Beijing.

Amid the ugly images conjured by food safety scandals, the pictures of clean, fresh and uncontaminated vegetables and meat sources posted on the weibo gave promise that a healthy lifestyle was still within reach.

The Beijing Country Fair now helps its farmer-producers gross a total of about 10,000 yuan ($1,609) each time it meets. It is a modest figure, but for them, it is at least a positive move up a steep learning curve.

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