In this winter workshop, we discuss the cultural traditions of 腊月 (làyùe), the month leading up to 春节/Spring Festival and a time where communities gathered to preserve and prepare food for the new year celebration. We will discuss diverse culinary practices from around China and invite participants to share their stories. We come together to recreate the traditional economies of scale and communal labor that made these practices not only possible but joyous!

Participants will learn to wind-cure meat, lactoferment mustard greens, and take home 2 prepped duck legs and 1 酸菜 (suāncài) jar. We end with a cooking demo of suancaiyu (hot and sour pickled mustard green fish stew, aka “sauerkraut fish”), with tasting/snacking for all.

Local well salt and huajiao supplied in collaboration with Syracuse Salt Co and 50Hertz Tingly Foods.

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Wèi 味 Collective (味·集社) (https://www.instagram.com/wei.collective/) is on a mission to amplify Sichuan’s ancestral and contemporary foodways.

We are the first cross-cultural, Sichuan-run central platform bridging the province’s mainland and diasporic producers, businesses, writers, restaurateurs, and especially farmers, growers, and foragers—the heart of Sichuan’s agricultural heritage.

Launched in August 2025 by Kathy Yuan, Wèi Collective’s community building initiatives will include online resource mapping & knowledge shares; bilingual career development opportunities & internships for Sichuan students; in-person programming & small biz partnerships in collaboration with @thinkchinatown (NYC); land-to-table/mountain-to-basin tours (Sichuan); and more to come.

味 (wèi) is a Chinese character for taste, aroma, flavor. Wèi 味 Collective was founded to create a community centering Sichuan voices: our tastemakers, especially from the mainland. In the West, Sichuan food has never been more popular or reductive. We want the world to know there’s more.

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Zoe Yang (https://www.instagram.com/jingtastic/): Nanjing-bred culinary brazenness. Radical forager. Transforming consciousness & ancestral/local ecologies in the home kitchen, often via the pickle jar.