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Qian Guo, Food Cultures of China: Recipes, Cultures and Issues, Bloomsbury, 2023. 272 pgs.
The first thing that struck me about Qian Guo's encyclopaedic undertaking in this book, was the picture of Chinese food before rice became the centre of the cuisine. It was only around 2000 BCE that rice overtook hemp and secured its place in the top five of the region's main grain crops.[1] I grew up eating South-East Asian Chinese food, with "rice and dishes" being the staple food format in my home, so I assumed I had a good understanding of the essential Chinese food repertoire. Qian Guo's Food Cultures of China has proven me wrong, opening a door to a culinary region that—though confined by modern geopolitical borders—is almost infinite in its history, symbolism, and complexity.
In the introduction, the book does well delving into the deep chronology of Chinese cuisine, stretching as far back as 7000-10,000 BCE to note the domestication of staple carbohydrates like millet, wheat, and rice. While the cultivation of a crop does not itself constitute a culinary landscape, the timeline preceding the first chapter illustrates the continuity of food culture in China. The overall text is not structured temporally, instead focusing on ingredients, components of a meal, and dining contexts. However, by establishing a sequence of food-related historical events, ranging from the first known instances of certain foods to the advent of prominent techniques, Qian Guo scaffolds the work he does throughout, returning to mini-histories within each of his chapters. Piece by piece, from agricultural practices to livestock rearing to fermentation and preservation, readers witness China's complex foodscape chronologically come into bloom. It is worth briefly considering that the word "culture" itself has roots in the Latin colere, meaning to cultivate and nurture.[2] A food culture, like its most basic component parts, is a product of tending to the earth, and the text shines a light on the many hands that have contributed to this process across the epochs and versions of China as we know it.
Discussing the relationship between Chinese people and the food they eat, Qian Guo homes in on two factors: first, a long history of food insecurity and scarce resources that has affected China, and second, the link between food, and health and wellbeing. To uphold these two pillars in the act of every meal is no small feat, and it necessitates a deep consideration of food as bodily fuel for both labour and health—which are sometimes at odds with each other. Take for instance the practical need to maximise energy for arduous manual work and the Confucian belief in moderation. The latter cautions against overconsumption and seeks a balanced meal (the right proportions of zhu shi and fu shi, calibrated to have the right "heating/cooling" effects on the body's internal temperature) with a mind to maintaining a sense of harmony within the self.[3] This temperance, while centring an idealistic wellness of the body, would not always be the most productive for someone out working in the fields for long hours without the opportunity to have another meal.
It could be argued that the text perhaps overattributes many factors of Chinese eating habits to historical food insecurity. This slightly narrow view of hunger and necessity risks overshadowing a major aspect of Chinese food culture: a profound understanding of taste and pleasure in the act of eating. In times of scarcity, it is assumed that enjoyment of food is low on the list of priorities, but the zhu shi/fu shi structure foundational to Chinese meals suggests otherwise. The starch components of meals, being more readily available and costing less, constitute zhu shi (the "main"), while meat, vegetable, and other dishes are fu shi ("sides"). Yes, material and practical reasons dictate that having a large portion of carbohydrates makes sense for a population undertaking hard manual labour. Yet, the knowledge that these starchy mains are often plain and difficult to ingest on their own is grounded in a desire for a pleasurable eating experience, thus the pairings with flavourful side dishes. Unlike in most Western food cultures where side dishes merely supplement the main, the main/side categorisation is less applicable to Chinese meals. Fu shi are essential rather than additional. A bowl of plain rice on its own would not be considered a meal but accompanied by a dish of steamed egg and pickled vegetables, it becomes complete. The curated varieties of fu shi found on the dining table, often "tiny in portion but potent in flavour", are testament to the culinary mastery that arises from the interaction between scarcity, wellness, and pleasure.
In the recipe boxes that are interspersed throughout, readers get a peek into this aforementioned culinary mastery, as Qian Guo creates a mosaic of China's innumerable regional cuisines. The recipes are loosely connected to the overarching chapter themes, though can seem out of place inserted amid the chunks of text which sometimes have little connection to the dishes themselves. They range from well-known centrepieces such as hong shao rou (braised pork) and jiao zi (dumplings), to more locally specific favourites like zheng mian tiao (Northern braised noodles) and shui zhu yu (Sichuan sliced fish in chilli oil).[4] No-nonsense and functionally instructive, the recipes call to be followed; yet the sheer number of them reflects the vast nature of the cuisine at hand. One cannot be sure if Qian Guo's intention in including them was to make China's food culture more accessible to his readers in encouraging them to recreate these dishes at home, or to mythologise this region's culinary corpus beyond reach.
It is worth noting that the recipe inserts do not just focus on restaurant and home-cooked dishes, but also include street food. This is slightly unusual as the essence of street food is largely based on the fact that it is not prepared in a traditional kitchen. It is meant to be cheap and convenient to buy, particularly in areas with a high concentration of workers who have limited time to cook their own meals. The magic of street food is its position outside conventional dining experiences. Its methods are not meant to be trapped by the confines of recipe, and therefore not meant to be replicated by the restaurant chef or home cook. Street food belongs to the hawkers and vendors, whose expertise are products of generational dedication to their particular repertoires. By including recipes for cult classics like you tiao (fried dough sticks) and cheong fan (steamed rice noodle rolls) alongside regional staples, Qian Guo's culinary picture becomes granular, filled in with the kind of food that fuels the country's ever-growing workforce.[5] Labourers and modern professionals alike, working long hours and late nights, find solace in the skewers, boxes, and bowls served in familiar markets and from roadside stalls.
On the complete opposite end of the consumption spectrum is the idea of "Western" food. Affluence and "modernisation" feature as the driving factors of increased interest in and desire for this kind of food in China, particularly among the young urban population. There are some broad-stroke statements about how Western food is a status marker and therefore preferred for special occasions, fuelling the myth of sophistication surrounding Western culinary practices. Naturally, as the global gastronomic standard is set by the mainly European culinary institutions, it is unsurprising that non-Western cuisines, many of which have existed in their own right for millennia, struggle to gain elevated status. This is not for want of complexity or history or innovation in China's food culture; it is the plain truth that the forces of neocolonialism and white supremacy continue to conspire in the world of food, drawing boundaries of merit based on conformity to biased norms. One would have liked to see more interrogation of this in the text, especially as the cultural capital of Western food meets its match with the immovable force of tradition in Chinese dining. This can be seen in formal banquet-style meals in China, often the setting of business, important family occasions, and lifetime events. While some may choose to impress their peers with a taste for the European, many are steadfast in the symbolism of formal Chinese dining. This dining etiquette encompasses seating positions, order in which food is accessed, and who pays, among many other aspects of restaurant meals.[6]
As an overview of China's food culture in all its variety and regional nuances, Qian Guo's book successfully functions as a gateway to approaching the region's foodscape. The focus on analysing consumption within the food culture paradigm inevitably highlights the less-explored aspect of food preparation and its development over time, but this is perhaps indicative of a wider truth about food cultures in an increasingly consumerist world, where product is divorced from its own production. Nevertheless, Food Cultures of China is an extensive addition to "The Global Kitchen" series, and Qian Guo manages to refract China's growth and expansion in modern culture through the lens of its food.
[1] See pg xxiii
[2] 'culture (n.)', Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/culture (accessed 7 July 2024).
[3] See pg 9, in which Qian Guo elaborates on Confucian quotes related to food, all with a mind to ensuring "stability and harmony".
[4] See pgs 14, 130, 72, and 77 respectively.
[5] See pgs 67 and 157 respectively.
[6] See pgs. 170-174.
How to cite: Holloway, Ceri Hwi-Li . "An Encyclopaedic Undertaking: Qian Guo's Food Cultures of China." Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 22 Jul. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/07/22/food-cultures.
Ceri Hwi-Li Holloway was born and grew up in Malaysia, in a mixed Chinese/Welsh family. She has lived in the UK since 2017, completing an undergraduate degree in English at Oxford and a master's degree in Postcolonial Literature at St Andrew's. Her previous work has looked at the linguistic development of multicultural 'urban' English, as well as culinary/food memoirs within the postoclonial sphere. She remains interested in both these areas, but particularly textual forms (recipe, review, narrative) within commercial and literary food writing.
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