Modern Chinese Foodways

Pushing back against feel-good media which emphasizes happy laborers “in matching colorful ethnic costumes and iconic bamboo hats,” employing “traditional manual techniques passed down for generations,” this collection of papers by more than a dozen scholars examines the way Chinese food production has changed dramatically since the mid-ninteenth century.

Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other academics examine a range of topics, including

• The change in millet’s social status, from food of the destitute to a sought-after, culturally important grain

• Similarly, the evolution of soy sauce from elite food to ubiquity

• The emergence of domestic cookbooks and female culinary authorities in the twentieth century, subverting traditions of male gourmands

• The spread of Japanese foodways in China, and of Chinese foodways in Peru

Chapters include endnotes. There is also a list of recommended works for further reading, which runs to several hundred titles.

Paperback. Black-and-white photographs.