Food's disappearing community

"As online food delivery platforms developed, if people want to eat something, they just order. In other words, people don't need recipes much anymore," she says.

Another issue she has observed is that people have gradually lost their ability to choose the right food.

Young people, especially those living in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, often rely on online delivery platforms to buy ingredients when they want to cook, rather than going to a market.

"When you want to cook fried cabbage, you find an online shopping platform offering three types of cabbage. One is organic, and another is for baby food, both of which are more expensive than the common cabbage," she says.

Chen says that she usually buys the cheapest one, which she finds bitter compared to those in Hunan. It was not until she attempted to write a recipe for cabbage salad and needed to find the sweet variety that she bought all the cabbage varieties available from an online platform.