The fourth season of food documentary Once Upon a Bite, co-directed by Chen Xiaoqing and Chen Lei, explores food cultures pertinent to grains around the globe.
Revolving on grains, the most common ingredient in the kitchen, the documentary seeks to display a wide variety of grain foods and cultural diversity on this planet. Meanwhile, it also probes into stories that embody the relations between people, the land on which they live as well as the values upheld by certain ethnic groups.
Grain foods, the staples for Chinese people, can give the Chinese audience a sense of security and satisfaction, said director Chen Xiaoqing, one of the best minds behind food documentaries in China including the mega hit A Bite of China.
Grains serve as the foundation for the evolvement of food cultures. Mastering the know-how of cultivating grains marked the start for humans to have stable habitat, a point that inspired the documentary's production unit to cast light on grains for the newest season.
Its first two episodes, respectively themed on wheat and rice, showed the variations of the two sorts of grains and dug out relevant stories in China, Japan, Italy and other countries.
Chen Lei said the idea of filming a season focusing on grains can be traced back to four years ago. The unit rent a plot of farmland on Shanghai's Chongming Island where they grew grains to record the process.
The documentary is now available on Tencent's video-sharing platform.
