ChineseCookingDemystified
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Plans for 2021 & Moving Forward
🕑 Added 2021-01-06 02:41:22 +0000 UTCHappy end of 2020! We wanted to give you guys a quick update on what’s going on with us, the channel, and our plans for the future.
Before we get into what we’ve got on the plate, I did want to answer two questions that I’ve heard pop up now and then:
Question #1: Are there going to be those Reddit posts anymore?
The short answer is… maybe, but probably not. I know in our ‘about the project’ description up in this Patreon we talk about accompanying the videos with in-depth Reddit posts. As the project started getting a bit more intense on the video side, it began getting increasingly challenging to squeeze in that extra bit of writing.
See, back when we were started this project, the videos took a grand total of one day to produce. We’d film one day, then the next day I’d look at the footage, write the narration, record it, and stich everything together in Windows Movie Maker. We’d post the following morning, and I’d pound out the Reddit post by evening.
And as the channel grew, I started putting a lot more time into the videos themselves. And I think it shows. Just compare our old video on Chow Mein to our more recent video on Swiss Chicken wings. I think you can see a pretty markedly obvious quality difference.
But that quality difference also comes at a time cost. If you’re curious at all, that one day process from before now takes the better part of a week:
· Sunday: Filming
· Monday: Color Grading and Thumbnail
· Tuesday: Writing the narration (this takes a while because we like each video to have a unique cultural/historical angle)
· Wednesday: Narration and audio editing
· Thursday-Friday: Cutting (the cultural/historical intros are often very challenging to cut, taking a full day in and of themselves)
· Saturday: Writing the description box recipe, the notes, and release.
If I opt to just do the description box recipes, then that means I can take the rest of the day off Saturday after we release. It’s proven kind of an important bit of time for me so that I can re-charge my batteries.
While there’s more I can say about the Reddit posts (and I’d be happy to expand if you’ve got any questions), in the end it just ended up being a work-life balance sort of thing.
Question #2: What’s the word on the book project?
So yeah. There’s an important bit of context to our announcement of that book project earlier in the year. See, we’d been approached by a publisher – one under MacMillan at that! – which felt very… flattering. I’m not going to go into the whole experience, but there’s a good NYT article on the topic of publishers approaching food bloggers entitled “Would you write a cookbook for next to nothing?”
And for us, at the end of the day the answer to that question was ‘no’, at least not in the timeframe they were expecting (they wanted it deliverable in ~6 months). But we’d invested so much time into crafting the idea and the content of the book that we wanted to continue on with the project.
We got a bit busy (see: the above schedule that I outlined), but in this new year Steph’s going to take lead on the book project. She’s planning on writing a bit every day, and at least putting out one chapter monthly here on Patreon. The chapters themselves will likely be a bit out of order. You guys can help be our recipe testers, then once the project’s near completion it’ll come to me to smooth out the English/expand on the background.
Goal for 2021: More Steph
Over the past four years of doing this project, we ended up getting in a bit a workflow groove: Steph would take lead on the research and testing of the recipes (it’s much easier for her to do research stuff in Chinese than me) and I would do the writing and video editing. It’s a pretty efficient division of labor – we always viewed ourselves as a ‘translation team’ of sorts, where she’s researching and obtaining this whole sort of body of culinary knowledge, and my goal is to take that knowledge and put it in an understandable and engaging way for a western audience.
And while that dynamic definitely does work, there’s two problems with it: (1) it can stretch me (Chris) a bit thin at times, and more importantly (2) Steph ends up having much less of a pronounced voice on the channel.
See, when the BA thing went down, I did a bit of self-reflection. While I don’t think anyone that knows us or our project would ever label us ‘problematic’, the question I asked myself was “is there any way we can be better?” After all, 'good' isn't just the absence of bad. And to me the answer was obvious – the world needs to see more Steph. Steph being the voice of the outro and me hiding behind my hands just... isn’t enough.
So what we’re aiming for is this: out of our three monthly videos, two will be narrated by me, and one will be narrated by Steph. Whenever we get any outside media, Steph’s going to be the face there (unless they explicitly need the two of us). Steph’ll continue to be the camera-facing one, and she’ll be the lead on that book.
Medium Term Goal (2-3 years in the future): Moving more around China
Cantonese food has always been right in our wheelhouse. After all, Steph is Cantonese. And between the two of us, we’ve lived in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shunde our entire adult lives. We’ve traveled extensively around the Pearl River Delta, from Toishan to Hong Kong. Steph’s Dad is a living encyclopedia of the food of the region. Of all the Chinese cuisines, cooking Cantonese food is, by far, the one that we’re most confident in.
Steph’s an excellent researcher – it’s why we’ve been able to do stuff like Sichuan dishes, Guizhou dishes, Jiangsu/Zhejiang dishes, and so forth. Traveling extensively – and purposefully – also helps. But there’s nothing quite like actually being in a place and living there.
So that’s why we really want to take this show on the road. Our tentative plan is to use Shunde as a base for half the year, then rent a place out in a smaller Chinese city for the other half. Many smaller Chinese cities can get quite cheap, so it looks to be perfectly doable (e.g. between Shunde and Leshan, a smaller city in Sichuan, rent would still be half of what we’d have been paying in Shenzhen).
We need to get a bit more financial stability before doing this, but optimistically we’d be looking at starting to move around this time next year.
Long Term Goal (8-10 years in the future): Deep Dive into the Minority Cuisines in the Chinese Southwest & the South East Asian Massif
I’ve been super fortunate – I’ve lived my entire adult life abroad. Wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.
Steph hasn’t. With the (notable) exception of her long term travels throughout southeast Asia, she’s lived her whole adult life in the Pearl River Delta… and one day we’d like to change that.
In our opinion, some of the most interesting cuisines in the world aren’t just in China, but rather, all across an area known as the South East Asian Massif. This is an area that stretches all the from Sichuan to the southern Vietnamese highlands. Map of what I'm talking about here:
Steph’s the language expert among the two of us – her ability to pick up languages on the fly is top-notch. Long term, she’d like to study in Kunming at the Yunnan Minorities University and pick up Dai (a.k.a. Tai in Thailand, Shan in Myanmar) and Miao (a.k.a. Hmong in Laos). We’d love to be able to move around both China and Southeast Asia, document some of these minority cuisines, and teach you how to make them.
Comments
Peter Kardel
Nice work, it really does show! Why not get a Patreon to develop a simple (elegant, easy to follow in the kitchen) recipe stylesheet, then transcribe the video into a recipe? You're going to need this content for the book anyway. I've done this on a few favorites, making then look more like Serious Eats East :-O Best regards, Pk
Tom Kirkham
Thanks so much for this update, it is so exciting to hear what your ambitions are! Your drive to reflect on and improve your video content is really impressive, an inspiration. You guys have got me completely hooked on Chinese cooking and makes me regret that when I was in China pre-CCD my travels were dictated by the most popular tourist sites and not the best places for food. E.g. I passed over Guiyang only to change from the Guilin train to the mainline, and your insta feed right now is making that hurt. As I have learnt more about the basics of Chinese cooking I have found a printed copy of the written reddit recipe invaluable when you are trying to keep track of 20 second technique, e.g. in the veg stir fry, beef passing oil recipes. But it's important that you guys take a break and the most important technique can definitely fit in the description box. Also so excited to hear about your travel plans - there is such huge potential here. Dunlop is a trailblazer and even she doesn't get close to comprehensive beyond Sichuan. I have a copy of David Thompson Thai food, something of a masterpiece, and even there there is so much more to be explained for someone who hasn't been there or doesn't know the language. If you could do that from an outsider's perspective and give a holistic view across the region it would be quite something. Haha
JF M
Sounds like a great plan. Please don't sell yourself short with a publisher. Take the time you need and know that we all will be here to support your content and work. Thanks for all the hard work and I look forward to the wider look at China and other SEA cuisines in the coming years.
Mr. Martini
I'm super excited for what you two will do in the future. thank you!
Your plans look great, and I hope you reach your goals. Looking forward to the future.
Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas
So yeah! A couple people were asking on the Discord, I hope you don’t mind a quick copy/paste of the answer :) “the other bit of context with the Reddit posts is that it's a lot harder to post to a community of 2.5 million than 500k (what /r/cooking was when we first started). before, I could just toss the post up and could be relatively sure that it'd end up being one of the top 1-3 posts in the sub & a good chunk of people would see it. within the past year or so I've had to do that whole song and dance where if the post got an early downvote or two from the Knights of New, I'd need to pull the post and try again in another ten minutes or so. It felt a bit scummy/gamey, but the other option is to just leave a post that I worked a half a day on (and basically gave up my day off for) to just languish there. It just got taxing”
Christian Tucker
Would be interested in hearing more about your thoughts on Reddit. Weird feedback? I always looked forward to the the posts but I get they can be a hassle and respect the prioritization of work/life balance.
Sounds great, looking forward to it!
Olivier
Looking forward to all of it!
Love what you guys are doing
Adrian Preece
Awesome plans! Can’t wait to watch them unfold!!!
Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas
Our plan is to do something sort of unheard of in the cookbook space - we'll just finish the manuscript & shop that around, ala what writers do for a fiction book. If we can get that published, awesome (and I'm probably overly optimsitic on that front); but if not, we'll pay a designer, try the self-publishing route, and if it proves too expensive at least get a nice pretty PDF for y'all so that you can easily print & bind yourselves :)
Matt Wang
Happy New Year Steph and Chris thank you for being so thoughtful!
So excited to watch all your great plans unfold!!
patrick thoendel
I wish I could travel into the future just so I could see what your deep dive into the cooking of southwest china and ethnic minorities project looks like!
Todd Simkins
What are your thoughts on going the self published route for the cookbook? I love the videos and posts, but there's just something about dead trees.
Thank you for everything and congratulations on all your success and growth!
