Living|Open up to the Alternative: Living the Vegan Life in Beijing( 二 ) of|Life|meat|also|Vegan|as|and|meat|

Photo of Max Song (Photo provided to gmw.cn)
To vegans like Max and Jennifer, the question they get asked the most is if they have enough protein intake. To Max, this is not a big issue in China. With the available food resources, he finds the vegan lifestyle both accessible and affordable: “For Chinese people, veganism can be very cheap, you just cook tofu and that’s it.” Jennifer adds that though people are concerned about different protein intakes, there are lots of foods that substitute other proteins, but you do need to supplement vitamin B12 as it is a micro bacteria that we get from animals.
For Jennifer and Max, besides practicing veganism in their daily lives, they share a similar vision: to promote the vegan lifestyle and make it more accessible in Beijing. Through joining the volunteer organization Vegans of Beijing, they were able to actualize their ideal.
Max and Jennifer both got involved with Vegans of Beijing in 2018, starting off as volunteers and eventually becoming admins. As a non-registered volunteer organization, Vegans of Beijing is currently run by five admins who are responsible for hosting events and managing budgets and logistics. The five admins all work full-time, mostly as English teachers, and dedicate a large part of their spare time to running Vegans of Beijing. The team is mostly foreigners, with Max as the only Chinese admin.
With the goal of making veganism more accessible, Vegans of Beijing collaborates with different restaurants in the city, mostly Western ones, to see if a vegan menu can be built on top of the current menu. Once the vegan menu is developed, it is expected to be integrated into the restaurant’s permanent menu, to offer vegans more eat-out options in Beijing. So far, the group has formed partnerships with close to 20 restaurants, including Western restaurants like Q-Mex and Avocado Tree, and Chinese restaurant Jindingxuan (金鼎轩).

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Vegan menu at a restaurant in Beijing (Photo provided to gmw.cn)
In addition, Vegans of Beijing also seeks to educate people on the philosophy behind veganism. The group hosts regular movie nights to screen documentaries on environmentalism and global warming, to raise people’s awareness of the negative impacts the meat and dairy industries have on the planet, and to inform people on how veganism can become a solution to these problems.
Every month, Vegans of Beijing hosts at least two events. Aside from movie nights, dinner nights are also regular, where members and friends are invited to eat at restaurants with vegan options. Dinner nights go together with restaurant collaborations, where it would be organized whenever a restaurant is ready to introduce its vegan menu. Hence, the group dinner both celebrates the creation of the vegan menu, and reminds the restaurant of the existing vegan demand. On top of regular events, the group also hosts online and offline vegan markets to promote available vegan options in the city. Additionally, a trip was organized recently for members to visit an organic farm and receive a lecture on ecology.

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Jennifer (first row fourth from the right) and Max (first row first from the right) with other members of Vegans of Beijing (Photo provided to gmw.cn)
Since each of the admins is responsible for at least five events per year, they seek to come up with more creative ideas. This year, to imitate Veganuary in England, where people are encouraged to go vegan for the entire month of January, Jennifer organized a month-long campaign of “Meatless March” to motivate people to go vegan for the month of March. She invited all participants into a WeChat group, created 31 days of posters and recipes, and sent encouraging messages to support the participants along the way. At the end of the month, a dinner and documentary-screening session was hosted for everyone to share their experiences. “I received a lot of positive feedback. Some people even wished it was available in other cities, not just in Beijing,” said Jennifer as she reflected back on the event. “Quite a few people said they would try it again, some said that they had been on the fence, but now they are leaning more towards the vegan lifestyle.”

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