This is the essay I applied with to get this fellowship in the first place - It may feel stuffy compared to many of the other things on here, and I know, no pictures = tragically uninteresting. But If you want to know more, give it a read. (I'm going to add a photo as bait :P)
Street Food, Covid, and Climate Change: A Multimedia Project
To me, food is love. Growing up, cooking for someone was how to show you cared about them. Food brings people together. It’s a nourishing hug. I grew up cooking and eating foods from all around the world due to my multi ethnic and rather exploratory family. Taiwanese, Eastern European, German, Italian, French, Japanese, Thai, American Southern, my family bonded through culinary adventures. Food was central to the way my family experienced travel as well. We would go out of our way to find the most authentic restaurants and food stalls; experiencing the local culture through their foods and often making friends with the street vendors and restaurateurs. Traveling became one of my passions, as did recreating dishes I experienced abroad. This culminated in my working under a James Beard nominated chef at a Japanese restaurant as a sous chef during high school. This opportunity afforded me the opportunity to connect with local and international Japanese vendors, and the more I talked with these vendors, the more I realized how drastically small changes in weather and environment could be for their trade and livelihood. An extra hot summer, or an unseasonably cold winter could destroy entire harvests. As this dawned on me, I couldn’t help but think of the people who had continually impressed me, and inspired me to work in the culinary industry in the first place, the street vendors I’d met while traveling. I wondered how climate change has affected access to foods they have to buy, their margins so tight. When Covid seized the globe, I transitioned from being curious, to being worried. One third of small businesses in the US closed during Covid, and it could be worse abroad (statista.com). With travel screeching to a halt, vendors have to rely on only their local market, and with the shifting access to ingredients and potentially rising prices due to climate change, their customers may not be able to afford the street food they previously relied on. My hope is to find out what is happening to these street food vendors, engage with them in their local environments and research and document their current conditions to validate my suspicions, and amplify their voices.
For my Appel Fellowship project, I will travel to Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to interview market purveyors and street food vendors, in areas that rely heavily on highly local supply chains for daily sustenance, to find out how climate change has affected them. Effects to these markets are also likely heightened by Covid-19, and I intend to investigate what symptoms have manifested in these communities. Are these purveyors and street food vendors able to adapt? Are they more at risk of sliding into poverty than ever before? I’ve identified a few specific areas to visit, Ratchawat & Sriyan Market in Bangkok, Ningxia Night Market in Taiwan, and Shau Kei Wan Main Street East in Hong Kong.
I believe multimedia is the best way to convey the emotion and intimacy of this project. To begin, I will interview local street vendors from Inland Coalition For Immigrant Justice (ICIJ) to ground the project, and have a base to compare my findings abroad with. Once abroad, I will interview food purveyors, street vendors, and customers in Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. The reason I have chosen these locations is because the locals rely heavily on street food. Whether because they don’t have a kitchen at home, or that street food is simply cheaper, many people in these communities eat street food multiple times per day. I will consult with my advisor, Professor Terril Jones, a journalist with over 20 years of experience in Asian Journalism, to construct a well rounded interview that protects the rights of those I am interviewing. I have friends in each country I intend to visit committed to help me with translation and interviews. I will maintain a daily blog with supporting docu-series style videos, photos and audio clips from each location, showcasing the trends I discover and the stories I am told. Along with the larger essays and video pieces I will produce, I will add short stories and essays focusing on the major trends experienced during my research. I believe the photos, videos, and audio clips will deepen the emotional connection to the people and places visited. I estimate spending two weeks in each location to ensure I'm able to have enough contact to gather enough stories and information. Upon my return home, I will take another few weeks to edit and polish each part of the blog and the longer videos to post on both youtube and the blog.
Now is the most poignant time to document these effects, as Covid has heightened them. Not only is this deeply important for the people I am interviewing, it would also be life changing for me. It is a window into my ideal career based on three of my passions: journalism, food, and travel photography. This project would give me valuable experience using writing and a multimedia medium to tell important stories currently overlooked. Heightening people’s voices is what I want to do, and this is the perfect time and opportunity to do it.
These street food reliant communities are at risk, with 60% of eateries closing during Covid internationally (CNBC.com). I want to help preserve these diverse culinary ecosystems by shining a light on their beauty. By creating a means for others to immerse in their story, we can amplify their value, their voices, and their stories, so they can continue to support their local communities, and enrich people’s lives, just like they did mine. I believe their stories will have the power to move people to get more involved personally. To reach the largest possible audience, I plan to publish the videos on youtube, and condense my writings and weekly essays into a script and slideshow for a TED Talk that will summarize my experience and findings. My ultimate hope is to connect my audience, using my passion for food culture as a relatable conduit, with the real life experiences of those on the front lines of climate change and the impacts of COVID 19. Once engaged and emotionally connected we will all be even a bit more invested in participating in reversing the behaviors that contribute to climate change.
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