a brooklyn bagel in beijing

There is a spot on the outskirts of Beijing that expats flock to with their families for brunch, artisan pizzas, and bagels that remind them of the corner store in Brooklyn. That place is Mrs. Shanen's, and the owner Lejen, a Chinese-born American, has become a fixture in the city's food scene. She recently started a small organic farm in rural Beijing near the restaurant and now sources most food from her own farm, using only organic processes.

I was curious to see what an organic farm in China is like, so I set up a time on the weekend to meet her and view Green Cow Farm. The farm is a collaboration between her and Model Farm, an independent organization working with the governments in China and Brazil to promote organic farming through setting up functioal model farms. Government dignitaries and environmental decision-makers often tour them and gradually adopt larger-scale versions that are commercially viable. Coincidentally enough, the director of the project in China, who I met that day, is a fellow Canuck, and one of the farms being set up right now is in the small town of Guanghan, where I was born!

Other than producing organic eggs, milk, and vegetables, the farm has many guest rooms that feature solar heating, and no-flush toilets that save the world one sewer at a time. They are just normal toilets that unload into a big pit underground where the waste is mixed together with other compost, and eventually used back on the soil, full circle. Amazingly enough, the toilets did not smell at all and don't pollute our most valuable resource, water.

I also attended a brunch held by the Yale Club in Beijing, don't ask how I weasled my way onto that mailing list, featuring Evan Osnos as the speaker. I have an intellectual crush on Evan Osnos. He took over Peter Hessler (more on him later) as the Chinese correspondant for the New Yorker magazine a year ago, leaving his former post as foreign correspondant to the Washington Post. He understands and explains the societal onion that is China with such thorough, unbiased clarity that he's won over many Chinese readers, which is saying a lot for a country that has always had a shaky relationship with foreign media. He spoke well about China, the "angry" youth who defend it, the African vendors who come to make it big, and the avant-garde film directors who are presenting the country in its truest form. He dissapointingly didn't dwell on US-China relations even though the talk was titled "China in the age of Obama", but living in China for a while will teach you to keep your political opinions mum.

Read his work here, here, and his blog here.