*** For the second in our DIY Diary series, SmartBeijing sits down with Erica Huang, founder of floating Gulou farmers market Farm to Neighbors. F2N is a classic Beijing DIY success story (in progress). It started after former VICE employee Erica Huang got sick of biking to Beijing's widely distributed organic farms / produce markets (I made a map of them as they stood in December 2010: pretty damn far apart), and decided to import that whole scene into the city center for a one-off pop up organic veggie stand at conceptual hutong brasserie Wu Jin. That attracted a small but passionate turnout, and Erica sensed a demand for quality ingredients, organic veg, free-range poultry, and responsibly-packaged foodstuffs in the Gulou neighborhood. Thus Farm to Neighbors expanded into Baochao hip spot Modernista, and has grown nearly every week since August of last year to become the 30-vendor-strong healthy living bazaar it is today. Erica quit her day job in February to focus on the market full time. She just collected the Beijinger's Food Entrepreneur of the Year award last week, and next month will expand her market to a second time-slot and neighborhood: Saturdays in Shunyi. Ahead of that, I sat down with her to talk about the challenges of eating local and organic, as well as the challenges of building something from a labor-of-love hobby into a sustainable, full-time small business... ***

: No, I just quit VICE in February. But yeah, I worked at VICE for two and a half years. And then I started Farm to Neighbors in August last year. At first it was just a vegetable stand at Wu Jin. After the first one, I thought, "Hey, the community responded really well. Maybe they need more than just vegetables." So then we started to do regular markets at Modernista.

: Well, it was actually fulfilling my own needs, because I got really sick after two years living here. Not physically sick, where I had to stay in the hospital. It was like the whole balance of my body was just off. It showed through having really, really bad breakouts in my skin. And, you know, because skin issues are related to psychological issues... a lot of people, when they have severe acne, will get depression. So I didn't want to go out, I just started to become more hermit-like, and got really sad. And also, in general, I felt really tired, and my joints started to hurt depending on the weather. So that was more severe than before. It didn't really happen when I was living in New York. So I started to study diets and how they affect you, and I started to go on different diets. First gluten-free, then paleo, and then moving toward this diet called GAPS diet: Gut and Psychology Syndrome. When your gut balance, flora balance, is off, then it affects your psychological state. Erica: All these diets require you to eat really healthy. Grass-fed meats, organic vegetables. So I needed to get these things, but I couldn't get them easily in Gulou, around my neighborhood. At first I was biking to all the organic farmers' markets, traveling around Beijing, but eventually that was too hard to do, biking so far. Then I found a vegetable lady in Sanyuanli that grows organically, and a friend introduced me to her friend who has a farm in Hebei that grows all of their own crops to feed their own animals, free-range animals. So I started to buy food from them regularly. The reason I actually started the first vegetable stand was because the vegetable seller was telling me that during summer vacation, she couldn't sell all her vegetables because the schools were all off on holiday. She supplies a lot of elementary schools. So I said, "I'll help you do a market in my community, and see how that goes." So that was the starting point. the Sanyuanli organic veg connection @ F2N

: It was totally just taking it a step at a time. It was never an entrepreneurial thing. Even now, I don't really know if it's entrepreneurial or not. It's just doing something that I really like. Actually, the first vegetable stand didn't really have a huge reception... it was just that you could kind of see the need, when people came. A lot of the people who came were my friends who live in the neighborhood. It was just really obvious that in the Gulou neighborhood, there's not something [like this] that's easily accessible. Finding Modernista was total coincidence. I was thinking, "Where can I have this market? I need to borrow somebody's space because I can't rent anywhere..." So I talked to Nuria from Modernista. She's from Spain, and she always loved farmers' markets back home, and she'd always dreamed of having a caishichang in her bar. Sunday afternoon at Modernista is kinda chill, so she said, "I can use the vegetables and the stuff in the market to make brunch for everyone." So that worked really well.

: We did it from August through November of last year. It was such a makeshift thing. It started out with just four vendors, and slowly it became eight vendors, and by Thanksgiving we had ten vendors, and that was the max. Nuria was really excited, she told me that they're gonna expand. They have the space next door rented. I think they're going to re-open this month. [Ed.'s note: This Saturday!] But since they went into construction, we've been at Culture Yard, and we tried one at Nice Rice (白米粒), and now we're at 4 Corners. even 4co's bouncer rocks an organic diet

: The first vendors were the [Sanyuanli] vegetable lady, and the farm that has pasture-raised pork, chicken, and eggs. They also do grains, xiaomi, millet, and make their own noodles. And then I met Zimin, who’s the Tibetan yogurt guy. He’s also an entrepreneur, he started making Tibetan yogurt because of this soul-searching journey. He saw that the way people lived in Tibet is divine, but they cannot keep their culture of raising yaks that roam on the mountains, because there is no market for it. And since there’s no good, local, high-quality yogurt in the city, he decided that he’d buy the yak milk from the local Tibetans, then ship it to Beijing and make it into traditional Tibetan yogurt. So he joined [the market]. And then another guy who makes traditional rice wine also joined. the yogurt guy wasn't there when we went, but Miss Muesli was holding it down and this Tibetan honey stand 米酒 Erica: And then we also had Jessica Rapp, who was getting clothing donations, and selling these recycled — but still very fashionable — clothes for really cheap. And then... Liu Yang, Le Fromager de Pekin, also joined. And more and more people heard about the farmers' market, and approached me. I would assess their products, and get to know them, visit their workshop, and, if it was good enough, I'd ask them to join.

: At 4 Corners we can only fit, at max, fifteen vendors, but on the list we have 25-30. We do rotations. Of these 30 vendors, a portion of them can't come regularly. We try to have the staple ones, like vegetables, meats, eggs, bread, have them not change every week. And then we rotate the others every other week.

: Yeah, that's Mr. Bear. He was brought by Liu Yang, from Fromager de Pekin. Liu Yang makes French cheese, and he was close friends with Mr. Bear. They'd collaborated before. Liu Yang lived in France for six years, and he said that Mr. Bear's French baguettes remind him of living there. Erica: The reason I was really excited to include Mr. Bear is that I'd been trying to look for sourdough bread, pure sourdough bread without any dry yeast or commercial yeast added. I approached many bakers in Beijing, and they were saying that it's impossible. You can do long fermentation, but at the end everybody still adds a little bit of yeast to keep it controllable, because natural yeast is just so dependent on the weather, humidity and temperature. But Mr. Bear is so enthusiastic, and he took up the challenge. His French baguettes still follow the long fermentation process, and he uses a little bit of dry yeast, but his sourdough rye breads don't have any dry or commercial yeast at all. And that's not a big deal for most people, but because I have an allergic reaction to dry yeast, it was really great to find him. Mr. Bear

: The more I work on the market, the more I understand this is very important, to have a rule. So I've been trying to figure it out. In China, the idea of organic is so tainted. There are people who are very educated about what is organic, and there are people who just don't really care. And then there are people who are skeptical about organic food. Because it's such a small, growing market, we first try to select things that customers need. We already have vegetables, we have bread, jam, cheese, so if another person comes with the same product, then I say maybe wait a little bit, for the market to grow bigger. Erica: But, for instance, right now we are missing tofu products, and also vegan products. A guy I just met, he has really good, traditionally-made tofu. When I find a product that I want, I start looking at their production method or growing method. If it's a farm crop, it has to follow organic principles. No pesticides, no chemical fertilizer, no chemical herbicides, and no hormones or vegetable steroids. Those are the guidelines, the principles that I look at first. But if a farm comes, and they have a great product that we need, but they're in a transition period… for example, the apples that we sell, they're from an apple farm that was started by a couple. They went back to their hometown in Xixia to work with local orchards and help them transition from conventional to organic. Over three years, they've helped farmers to relinquish the use of pesticides and all that stuff. But right now they still have to use a little bit of anti-bacterials, when the flowers bloom. In this case, I ask them to be transparent about what they're doing. So I think one of the guidelines for the market is that you're honest at conveying what your product is to the customer, so that the customer can have the right to choose whether or not they want to buy it. I don't think anybody living in this world expects to get everything 100% organic. But I think what people really want is to know what's in the product. 苹果干

: Yeah, I quit VICE to do this full time because it started to demand more and more work. Because I do farm visits, and a lot of the time I have to do it from Monday to Friday. So I'd have to ask for a day off just to do my farm visits. It started to get to the point where I needed to put more time on this project. Setting a standard and ensuring the quality of the products for the market is really important, and it needs a lot of time. I've never gotten any training for entrepreneurship, so I never considered this entrepreneurial. It's not a charity thing, because I don't have any money. I don't have a trust fund. So I am doing this so that I can make money to support myself. And hopefully, as the market grows, I'll have a team, and I can support the team so that the market can always become better and better.

: [sighs] I wish I had a team… I don't really have a team now, I do everything from sourcing the vendors, making sure the products are up to quality, doing all the promotion, and also communicating with the vendors, listening to what their needs are, and also talking to the customers and seeing what their needs are… But I've been really lucky to have a friend, Andres, who helps me every Sunday to sell the apples from Shandong, which frees me up to talk to people during the market. I hope he can help me to manage the market itself on Sundays, so that I can do more outreach and talk to more people.

: I realized my market is different because it attracts both foreigners and local Chinese customers. Maybe because I'm also bilingual and I write all of my marketing materials in both Chinese and English. I think since I'm doing this full time, I should do it more than just Sunday. So I was looking at pockets of communities that don't have this available to them already. I saw that a community that has both a lot of foreigners and Chinese people that would want this is probably Chaoyang, but that neighborhood has been well served by the Beijing Organic Farmers' Market. I think there are a lot of different small markets going on there. But Shunyi is such a big community, with so many families and so many international schools, lots of foreigners, lots of Chinese people, and there's no regular farmers' market there. So I approached a few restaurants, and also Pinnacle Plaza, Euro Plaza, and we ended up being really lucky that Pinnacle Plaza was totally thrilled. So we're going to do it there in May, outdoors. In April, it's still a bit chilly, so we talked to Pinotage. They have a big banquet hall that's really nice, and they're willing to have us there as well. So that's how it came about.

: I know many friends who own restaurants or are starting their own food businesses, more and more care about the quality of ingredients they use. They want more seasonal, local, or as sustainable as possible. So I would really like to be able to help them find better options, as opposed to conventional stuff from the wholesale market. Rager Pie, a regular F2N vendor Erica: We would really like Farm to Neighbors to help people enjoy food in a healthy way, and also just to remind people of how good it is to have traditionally-prepared food, handmade food. And also [to serve] as a platform of education. A lot of people who live in China aren't really in touch with the rural areas, or the agricultural movement that's going on here. There's a big, big demand for organic food production. So we want to give people more knowledge about that, and maybe they can start visiting farms themselves, getting involved. So all of that is in the planning, just to get the community involved.

: We will try to keep any events at the same time as the Saturday and Sunday markets, but we might do small ones that are invitation-based. Since we've been doing this regularly, a lot of companies and restaurants want us to do private events at their space. So we might start considering that as well.

: I think what I've learned the most over this past year is that there are a lot of people who want to do good things, but it's still a very complicated world, working with people. You have to be very, very firm on your standards. Even though doing something that's high-quality and good may take a lot of time, it will still be better than doing something that's pleasing everyone and really popular, but only lasts for a short amount of time. Farm to Neighbors has been growing really slowly. It's not every Sunday that we have a lot of customers. I think being patient is really important. Anybody that's starting their own thing: be patient, and don't be afraid if it doesn't seem like it's working for a long time. *** The Gulou F2N resumes this Sunday, March 22 at 4 Corners, and this time also includes some "unusual artworks" and WeChat deals. Check the listing for full info. The Saturday Shunyi market kicks off on Saturday, April 4 at Pinotage Plaza, where it will remain for the rest of the month. Stay tuned to SmBJ for future moves from Ms. Huang & co.