Comfort Food, Safe Room

Our interest in food first emerged in late 2024–2025, when we explored different forms of women’s care labor within the framework of our first socially engaged theatre project, The Legend of Nüwa in the New Century. In close collaboration with rural-to-urban migrant mothers in Beijing, we were impressed by how their knowledge of food played a significant role in caring for their families and other women in the community.

Despite spending most of their time living and working in the city, these migrant women still return to their rural homes during busy farming seasons or traditional holidays. They bring back seasonal products from their hometowns, and share not only the food but also the knowledge of how to prepare it with the community. Fresh acacia flowers, green plum wine, juicy pears they grew themselves… We have participated in several shared meals in the community and experienced the warmth and connection of eating together.

Food is not merely essential for survival. In Chinese culture, eating is understood as living itself—not only on a physical level, but also emotionally and spiritually. We care about whom we eat with, what we eat, and who has devoted time and effort to prepare it. Inspired by these migrant women, with their abundant knowledge and wisdom of food, and informed by our own experiences of constantly moving between cities and countries, learning to care for ourselves through cooking and eating, we began to focus specifically on the relationship between food and care.

This is how the topic emerged: Comfort Food, Safe Room. We recognize that food has strong connections with a sense of safety, especially for those navigating mobile lives, moving from rural hometowns to large cities, from places where Sichuan dialect is spoken to those where English is spoken. We carry food as a shelter within our bodies, tasting home even when we are far away. In this project, we aim to explore how this sense of security, home, and sometimes sentimental longing is embodied through our interactions with food. How does food take care of us, and how do we take care of food in return?

This project is currently under development. We have conducted two public workshops, taking food and care as both method and theme. Building on these experiences, we are developing a performance under the same title, planned to premiere in 2026. In the performance, we hope to intertwine cooking, food, and the embodied feeling of a safe room, inviting audiences to experience how comfort and care can be conveyed through shared food practices and intimate theatrical expression.