In cooperation with different cultural groups and organizations, we have carried out writing projects such as Making Citrus, Planting a Town-city, The Past of Prunes in Xinjiang, Gardens of Plant Inhabitants, and Tofu in China: A Pre-Study for the Development of a Sino-German Tofu Network.
Starting in 2026, we will introduce three new media columns: Pan de Viaje, a collection of travel notes; Working Hours, a portrait series centered on artists and art critics; and Seasonal Notes, an archival library dedicated to plants.
Working Hours
Seasonal Notes
New articles coming soon.
Yao Song, Hangping Yang
Editor: Yao Jiang, Mingyu Zhuang
2026.3.2
At the closing phase of Out of Season (the 15th Shanghai Biennale), pineapples in Xuwen County are also entering their harvest season. This small county, located at the southernmost tip of mainland China on the Leizhou Peninsula, is one of the country’s most important pineapple-producing regions. In March and April, if you walk into almost any self-built house in a village, piles of pineapples will be stacked at the entrance. If you miss the season, finding pineapples becomes a matter of luck; you can only find them in the fields or at roadside stalls, often under violent thunderstorms and sudden torrential winds. For those anticipating the harvest, this is clearly already “out of season.”
The "Tableau physique des Andes et Pays voisins" (Physical Profile of the Andes and Neighboring Countries), which was included by Humboldt in his Essay on the Geography of Plants published in 1807.
Yao Jiang, Hangping Yang, Mingyu Zhuang
2025.5
While organizing archival materials from the Republic of China era, we came across a name: Taras Petrovich Gordeev. He was a Russian émigré scholar whose research focused primarily on the geo-botany (now more commonly referred to as phytogeography) of soils and plant communities in Northeast China.
A significant part of this scientist’s work lay in describing, documenting, and analyzing the patterns of plant distribution across the Earth’s surface and the causes behind them. For example, in the article “A Natural Overview of the Wudalianchi Volcanic Region in Heilongjiang Province,” co-authored with Vladimir Nikolaevich Zhernakov, he noted that “the vegetation of this region consists of approximately 500 plant species, which may be classified into the following basic plant formations: (1) vegetation on recent lava flows; (2) vegetation on recent volcanoes … (8) floodplain meadow vegetation; (9) aquatic vegetation.”
From the “topography, geology, and hydrology” of Wudalianchi to its “plant formations,” and further to the “catalog of collected plant species,” Gordeev gathered botanical data through observation, classification, description, analysis, and identification. He then extrapolated from these findings to delineate the boundaries of plant life. These botanical boundaries were embedded within the broader concept of territory, concealing lush vitality beneath numbers and charts.
At the end of the article, Gordeev wrote: “The scenery of Wudalianchi is truly picturesque; in the northeastern region of China, one can scarcely find a second place like it. Undoubtedly, owing to its fertility and scenic beauty, this region will, in the near future, be opened up by immigrant cultivation.”
Yao Jiang, Hangping Yang, Mingyu Zhuang
2025.1
The concept of the “Tofu Network” originated from the collaborative achievements of the Sino-German Agricultural Biodiversity Network. Experts from China and Germany jointly proposed the establishment of the “Tofu Network” as an initiative to promote deeper exchange and cooperation in the field of agricultural biodiversity, with a particular focus on soybeans and tofu-related food cultures. The Tofu Network is dedicated to raising public awareness of the rich heritage of traditional soybean and tofu food cultures, while advancing the conservation, utilization, and transmission of soybean landrace diversity in China and worldwide. It also seeks to explore innovative pathways for integrating traditional food cultures with the green transformation of agriculture.
With the support of the Sino-German Agricultural Center, the Farmers’ Seed Network commissioned Zhinanmen Market Department to conduct research on tofu in China and to compile the report Tofu in China: A Preliminary Study on the Sino-German Tofu Network. The report traces the historical evolution of tofu within Chinese cultural contexts and provides a focused analysis of its diverse characteristics across different agro-ecological regions. It highlights tofu’s multiple contributions to local food cultures, regional economic development, and biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, the study examines tofu’s potential as a bridge for international cooperation, emphasizing its important role in promoting sustainable agri-food systems.
Yao Jiang, Hangping Yang, Mingyu Zhuang
2024.9
Seeking a “flattened” mode of environmental reflection, one that takes plants as subjects or as central problems, emerged later than the “animal turn” that became visible in the 1980s. Discussions surrounding the significance of plants to human society and culture have largely developed since the turn of the millennium. Drawing on methods and perspectives from the humanities, these inquiries aim to deepen our understanding of plant–human relations and to help humanity confront the urgent human–environmental challenges of the Anthropocene.
Within environmental discourse, the humanistic focus on plant subjectivity can be traced back to a 1999 article by American botanists J. H. Wandersee and Elisabeth E. Schussler. At the outset of their paper, they cited several studies from the 1980s showing that American students were more inclined to learn about animals than plants; introductory biology courses at the time likewise tended to marginalize or even neglect plant-related instruction. Yet this stands in stark contrast to the fact that plants constitute the habitat for most animals and form the very foundation of all life on Earth.
From this contradiction, the two scholars proposed the concept of “Plant Blindness,” highlighting humanity’s sensory and cognitive neglect of plants. Their aim was to draw attention to the plants that surround us, to encourage appreciation of their biological characteristics and aesthetic forms, and to foster greater awareness of their vital importance to the biosphere and to human society.
Duhamel du Monceau, H.L., Traité des arbres et arbustes, Nouvelle édition [Nouveau Duhamel]
(1800-1819) Traité Arbr. Arbust., ed. 2
Illustration contributed by: Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Spain
Yao Jiang, Hangping Yang, Mingyu Zhuang
2024.8
The specific epithet of the European plum, domestica, reflects the understanding at the time that no wild varieties of the species had yet been identified in Europe and that only cultivated forms were known. Yet cultivated plants cannot emerge from nothing. Even though more than two thousand years of cultivation have largely erased the traces of their wild progenitors, botanists have never ceased investigating the origins of the European plum.
Around the 1980s, researchers employed cytological methods and tentatively concluded that the European plum (Prunus domestica) is a polyploid that arose through natural hybridization between wild cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera var. divaricata) and blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). This hypothesis remains the most widely accepted explanation today, though alternative views persist within the field—for example, the argument that the European plum was directly domesticated from cherry plum without hybrid origin.
Before its introduction into Xinjiang, China, the European plum can be traced along a historical route from West Asia into Central and Western Europe and the Balkan Peninsula, and later onward to the Americas. The plant species database Plants of the World Online identifies its native range more specifically as Iran and the Transcaucasus region. As for occasional claims that the European plum originated in China, these remain to be substantiated by further research.
By contrast, its congeneric relative, the Chinese plum (Prunus salicina), has been cultivated in China for at least three thousand years, dating back to antiquity.