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Modern Chinese Foodways

Part of Food, Health, and the Environment

Edited by Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle T. King, Jakob A. Klein
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Paperback
$60.00 US
| $79.00 CAN
The MIT Press
On sale Mar 04, 2025 | 360 Pages | 9780262551311
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An edited collection that explores the multifaceted experiences of Chinese culinary modernity both within and outside of mainland China from the mid-19th century to present.

Modern Chinese Foodways defines some of the major processes by which Chinese food and foodways have become modern, with a focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The editors, Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle T. King, and Jakob A. Klein, highlight four prominent areas of change: commodification of food production; the scientization of expertise and the development of new food technologies; the creation of new culinary identities based on gender, ethnicity, and nation; and the circuits of migration taking place since the nineteenth century.

This collection argues that Chinese food and foodways are very much modern—not a given in the face of the chorus of voices that insists on emphasizing its ancient roots—in ways that both recall the experiences of other cultures, as well as in ways unique to China’s own historical trajectory. 

The book combines incisive, original scholarship by thirteen leading voices in the field with editorial essays on the past and future of Chinese food studies to frame the field of inquiry for the next generation of Chinese food studies scholars. Demonstrating the significance of modern Chinese foodways to the phenomenon of culinary modernity writ large, which is still largely shaped by Euro-American perspectives and priorities, Modern Chinese Foodways is the first book of its kind.
Series Foreword
Foreword
E. N. Anderson
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle King, and Jakob Klein
Part I: Creating Value: Market Structures and Commodities
1 Lord Millet in Alibaba’s Cave: The Resurrection of an Iconic Food
Francesca Bray
2 Becoming an Everyday Food: Soy Sauce in Modern China (ca. 1800–1930)
Angela Ki Che Leung
3 Beef in China: A History in Eight Dishes
Thomas Dubois
Part II: Systematizing Expertise: Food, Science, and Technology
4 Absorbing Vitamins: How a Nutritional Paradigm Was Reinvented in Republican China
Hilary Smith
5 Taste 100 Herbs: Material Scarcity and Local Plant Knowledge in the Mao-Era Campaign for Native Pesticides
Sigrid Schmalzer
6 Food Delivery, the Platform Economy, and Digital Culture in China: The Human-Nonhuman Entanglement of Urban Chinese Foodways
Fan Yang
Part III: Constructing Culinary Identities: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity
7 Domestic Cookbooks and Female Culinary Authority in 20th Century China
Michelle King
8 Taiwanese Cuisine and Nationhood in the Twentieth Century
Yujen Chen
9 Getting Smashed: Drinking and Ethnic-Space Construction in a Hubei Tourist Spot
Xu Wu
10 Gastrographism in Contemporary China: From a Literary Past Time to a Professional Activity
Françoise Sabban
Part IV: “Chineseness” in Motion: Migration and Mobilities
11 Japanese Cuisine in Chinese Foodways
James Farrer and Chuanfei Wang
12 Chifas: How Chinese Food Became a Peruvian National Treasure
Lok Siu
13 Pigs from the Ancestors: Cantonese Ancestral Rites, Long-Term Change, and the Family Revolution
James Watson
Afterword: Chinese Food Futures
Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle King, and Jakob Klein
Recommended Works
Contributors
Index
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About

An edited collection that explores the multifaceted experiences of Chinese culinary modernity both within and outside of mainland China from the mid-19th century to present.

Modern Chinese Foodways defines some of the major processes by which Chinese food and foodways have become modern, with a focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The editors, Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle T. King, and Jakob A. Klein, highlight four prominent areas of change: commodification of food production; the scientization of expertise and the development of new food technologies; the creation of new culinary identities based on gender, ethnicity, and nation; and the circuits of migration taking place since the nineteenth century.

This collection argues that Chinese food and foodways are very much modern—not a given in the face of the chorus of voices that insists on emphasizing its ancient roots—in ways that both recall the experiences of other cultures, as well as in ways unique to China’s own historical trajectory. 

The book combines incisive, original scholarship by thirteen leading voices in the field with editorial essays on the past and future of Chinese food studies to frame the field of inquiry for the next generation of Chinese food studies scholars. Demonstrating the significance of modern Chinese foodways to the phenomenon of culinary modernity writ large, which is still largely shaped by Euro-American perspectives and priorities, Modern Chinese Foodways is the first book of its kind.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword
Foreword
E. N. Anderson
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle King, and Jakob Klein
Part I: Creating Value: Market Structures and Commodities
1 Lord Millet in Alibaba’s Cave: The Resurrection of an Iconic Food
Francesca Bray
2 Becoming an Everyday Food: Soy Sauce in Modern China (ca. 1800–1930)
Angela Ki Che Leung
3 Beef in China: A History in Eight Dishes
Thomas Dubois
Part II: Systematizing Expertise: Food, Science, and Technology
4 Absorbing Vitamins: How a Nutritional Paradigm Was Reinvented in Republican China
Hilary Smith
5 Taste 100 Herbs: Material Scarcity and Local Plant Knowledge in the Mao-Era Campaign for Native Pesticides
Sigrid Schmalzer
6 Food Delivery, the Platform Economy, and Digital Culture in China: The Human-Nonhuman Entanglement of Urban Chinese Foodways
Fan Yang
Part III: Constructing Culinary Identities: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity
7 Domestic Cookbooks and Female Culinary Authority in 20th Century China
Michelle King
8 Taiwanese Cuisine and Nationhood in the Twentieth Century
Yujen Chen
9 Getting Smashed: Drinking and Ethnic-Space Construction in a Hubei Tourist Spot
Xu Wu
10 Gastrographism in Contemporary China: From a Literary Past Time to a Professional Activity
Françoise Sabban
Part IV: “Chineseness” in Motion: Migration and Mobilities
11 Japanese Cuisine in Chinese Foodways
James Farrer and Chuanfei Wang
12 Chifas: How Chinese Food Became a Peruvian National Treasure
Lok Siu
13 Pigs from the Ancestors: Cantonese Ancestral Rites, Long-Term Change, and the Family Revolution
James Watson
Afterword: Chinese Food Futures
Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle King, and Jakob Klein
Recommended Works
Contributors
Index

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