Small food producers, restaurant owners, chefs, and professors from China are joining the Slow Food movement worldwide in order to create a greener and more sustainable lifestyle in the future, according to the head of the Slow Food organization for China.
"For the first time in its history, Slow Food China took part in the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto gathering in Italy," president of Slow Food China Qiao Ling told Xinhua in a recent interview in Turin, referring to the annual exhibition of food, agricultural products in Italy.
"The association aims to preserve the tradition of food processes and to preserve the variety of food,"she said.
Slow Food China was inaugurated in January 2015 at the Italian Embassy in Beijing. Slow Food China has set up an alliance with the China Association for the Promotion of International Agricultural Cooperation, and is currently registered as a non-profit organization.
Terra Madre Salone del Gusto is an international event dedicated to food and gastronomy that takes place every year in Turin. The 2016 gathering wound down last week.
The meeting is organized by Slow Food, an association founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini in 1986 to defend regional traditions, good food, gastronomic pleasure, and a slow pace of life.
The Slow Food movement "aims to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people's dwindling interest in the food they eat," according to Qiao. It now promotes a comprehensive approach to food and involves people in over 160 countries "working to ensure everyone has access to good, clean and fair food," she said.
Slow Food China, as a Chinese association linked to the Slow Food International network, always follows international values, criterion, process and structure, Qiao added.
This time,"our delegation brought to Turin around 70 products that belong to the project Ark of Taste," Qiao recalled. It is a catalogue of endangered Chinese traditional food, the goal being to protect culinary heritage, she stressed.
Products exhibited in Turin included Hanyuan Pepper, a perennial and spiny plant.
"Its berries are collected and harvested just like common pepper,"Qiao explained. It has been collected for more than 1,000 years in the Sichuan province in southwest China.
Other products brought by the Chinese delegation to the international show were the Leishan Red Bean, Ordos Yellow Millet Wine, wheat sauce, hand made oat bread, and Qingyi River Yayufish.
They also displayed the fancy buns of Huanghua, a type of sweet and soft buns native to the town of Yang Erzhuang in the northern part of the county of Huanghua. Since they require a lot of manual work, they are an artisan production, said Piero Ling, co-founder of Slow Food China.
"Our aim is to promote the message of Slow Food in China and what they are doing,"said Vittorio Sun, the other co-founder of Slow Food China. "Last year we organized an event in Beijing, the so-called Slow Food Beijing Festival."
The Chinese association wants to promote the development of the Slow Food movement, and share its vision, objectives and basic ideas, Sun said.
Among their goals is "to set up a communication platform in order to exchange different cultural experiences and information relating to the extraordinary Chinese food heritage," he added.
