As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is pretty late to the vegan trend. While our government has been busy buying more farms in the United States and Australia to meet our skyrocketing meat consumption, our fellow Asian friends in Japan and Thailand have been doing vegan festivals for years. But it's never too late to start caring about Mother Nature and take action! (Well... maybe it is too late. All the same...) Enter Shanghai Vegan Fiesta, the first vegan festival in modu and possibly in China.

Before the event kicks off in Jing'an this Saturday, we threw a few questions to one of the organizers Lin about what to expect at the festival. Take three minutes to read this and maybe forward it to a friend. Spread the word.

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SmSh: First, can you tell us a little bit of your organization and what Shanghai Vegan Fiesta is about?

Lin: Shanghai Veggie Lovers is a community that hosts events such as game nights, potlucks, movie nights, and more, to gather like-minded individuals. VeggieDorm is an organization that advocates and promotes a healthy, environmentally friendly, positive, and socially responsible lifestyle by sharing these ideologies through their platform. Together, we have worked together to make the Shanghai Vegan Fiesta a reality. Veganism is a lifestyle that tries to minimize the amount of harm one may impose on the animals, the environment, and more. The day will feature yoga classes; cooking demos; speeches on animal rights, health, and helping the environment; food tastings; product samplings; raffles; live music; and lots more. The Shanghai Vegan Fiesta is a day to spread and celebrate compassion. The festival is a charity event and we are going to be donating the money raised from the event to our NGO supporters: Mercy for Animals, PETA, Animals Asia, and SOS Animal Protection.

SmSh: How was the idea of Shanghai Vegan Fiesta born?

Lin: The idea of a vegan festival has been in the talks for a long time. There are vegan festivals held around the world and many passionate members of the community wanted to bring the same spirit from the festivals to Shanghai. We decided to finalize the date and make this event happen in November because it is World Vegan Month.

SmSh: Does Shanghai have a big enough vegan population for a vegan festival?

Lin: When planning the festival, we decided on two main goals. The first is to have a fun day where we can bring together the large vegan/vegetarian community. In Shanghai, there is a large vegetarian community because many individuals who are Buddhists follow a vegetarian diet or a vegan diet. On top of that, there are many, both expats and locals, who choose to live without animal products because of reasons including animal rights, environment protection, personal health, and more. Just one day after one of our organizers published an article on his official WeChat account, VeggieDorm, over 10,000 users had already read the article and now a week later, the count is over 30,000. While we expect that most of the visitors to the festival will be from the already existing vegan/vegetarian population, the second goal of the festival is to draw in as many non-vegans/vegetarians as possible. We hope that through this festival, we can spread awareness of veganism by organizing speeches on various aspects of the lifestyle, allow others to taste some delicious vegan food already available in Shanghai, and sample some cruelty-free products. Veganism is a lifestyle trend that has been on a consistent rise all over the world and many people are interested in learning more about it.

SmSh: Organizing a festival like this requires a lot of work, what are the main difficulties in your opinion to set up a vegan event in Shanghai?

Lin: One of the biggest difficulties we had when setting up this vegan event was honestly a lack of experience. We, the five organizers of the event, all hold full-time jobs and none of us have ever organized an event of this scale before. When going into this festival, we were prepared to be doing a lot of work but there have been quite a few unexpected obstacles that we’ve had to work through such as a lack of funds, and timing issues. Furthermore, another difficulty that we have had is trying to limit the amount of things we want to include in the festival. There are many great vendors, vegan lecturers, entertainment, etc… in Shanghai but we are limited in both space and time.

SmSh: Do you think Shanghai is becoming more vegan-friendly in the last few years?

Lin: Just in the past year and a half that I have been living in Shanghai, I have seen a huge increase in the vegan/vegetarian population. This increase seems to directly result in more options available in stores, restaurants, and with private vendors. I feel that every few days, there is either a new vegan-friendly restaurant popping up in the city, a new private vendor selling home-made vegan yogurt, a store carrying new line of non-animal tested products, and more. *** Shanghai Vegan Fiesta will take place on November 5 at Bubbly Nation, 537 Haifang Road near Xikang Road. The event is free, runs from 10am to 5pm, and features talks in both English and Chinese. You can RSVP on their Meetup page.