The original documentary "The First Meal" will be shown every Sunday at 12:00 noon from September 19. With the core concept of "Eating the warmth of the morning light into the stomach", "First Meal" shows the potential humanistic attributes behind breakfast as a form of food by organically combining storytelling and culinary elements, guiding viewers to regain their longing and concern for breakfast. The film, together with the previously broadcasted "Let's Have a Snack" and "I Fan You", are also part of the "B Station Food Chronicles" documentary series.
I don't know where it all started, but busy work and life has gradually turned the original "sophisticated" breakfast into a "just-so" one. According to a survey on breakfast behaviour conducted by the Chinese Nutrition Society in recent years, 35% of Chinese office workers go into the office hungry every day, and many people's general impression of breakfast has become "just fill up your stomach" and "just buy something on the way to work". Some people would rather give up breakfast for an extra 10 minutes of lazy sleep.
In order to awaken people's memory of breakfast and guide them to revive their longing and concern for it, First Meal specially invited actors Gao Lu, Liu Lin, Mei Ting and Yong Mei to do the voiceover. In addition, the entire documentary selects a rich variety of breakfast items from all over the country, eschewing elaborate plating and ornate decorations for everyday food that is close to life, full of a strong local flavour, intimate and hazy. There are no superfluous descriptions or expositions in the documentary, the focus is directly on the food itself. In the programme, the shopkeepers and diners speak in an unintelligible vernacular without subtitles, making the audience immerse themselves in the experience, as if they were passing by their own stalls downstairs, intimate and real.
The climate and folklore of different regions have led to different breakfast cultures. In China, breakfast has strong local characteristics, varying from east to west and from north to south. The war of sweet and savoury tastes in the north and south has expanded from tofu brains to soy milk, and the steaming and boiling of corn and the size of buns also defy each other. In addition, although rice noodles, a well-known delicacy, are long and smooth in places like Hunan and Hubei, in Guangdong they become intestinal noodles wrapped in everything, and in Yunnan they turn into snow-white, round bait. First Meal" draws out the different food cultures of different parts of the country through their very different breakfasts, and also highlights the relationship between places and people through the cultural vehicle of breakfast.
It is reported that the already broadcasted "Let's have a snack", "I'll Fan You" and the upcoming "The First Meal", as well as the future heavyweight IP works of food documentaries "Life in a String 3" and "Small Town Night Food 2", etc. together constitute a new aggregated IP of food documentaries launched by B Station, "The B Station Food Chronicle". These documentaries connect rich food with delicate emotions and convey taste memories through visual images, achieving a new type of companionship for viewers in the field of documentaries. In today's fast and stressful city life, B Station provides a respite with food documentaries, from which viewers can see the diverse presentation of food culture and draw spiritual strength to face the busy social life.
XJ editor Melissa Xu
Proofread by Wu Xingfa
