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"Cooking, Chinese History."
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China in seven banquets : a flavourful history
\"A captivating journey spanning five thousand years of Chinese culinary heritage, exploring the essence of each era through seven extraordinary meals. China in Seven Banquets takes readers on a gastronomic adventure into the history of China's constantly evolving and astonishingly diverse cuisine. From the opulent Eight Treasures feast of ancient times to the Tang dynasty's legendary 'Tail-Burning' banquet, and the extravagant 'complete Manchu-Han feast' of the Qing court, these iconic repasts offer glimpses into China's rich food history. Delving further, the book invites us to partake of lavish banquets immortalized in literature and film, a New Year's buffet from 1920s Shanghai, a modern delivery menu reflecting the hyperglobal present, and it even offers a peek at the tables of the not-so-distant future. Drawing upon his extensive gastronomic adventures across China, acclaimed historian Thomas David DuBois unravels its ever-changing landscape of culinary trends, revealing why flavors and customs evolved over time. DuBois also recreates dozens of traditional recipes using modern kitchen techniques. Whether indulging in fermented elk or savoring absinthe cocktails, readers embark on an unparalleled odyssey that redefines their perception of Chinese cuisine\"-- Provided by publisher
BOOK
Chow chop suey
Chinese food first became popular in America under the shadow of violence against Chinese aliens, a despised racial minority ineligible for United States citizenship. The founding of late-nineteenth-century chop suey restaurants that pitched an altered version of Cantonese cuisine to white patrons despite a virulently anti-Chinese climate is one of several pivotal events in Anne Mendelsons thoughtful history of American Chinese food. Chow Chop Suey uses cooking to trace different stages of the Chinese communitys footing in the larger white society.Mendelson begins with the arrival of men from the poorest district of Canton Province during the Gold Rush. She describes the formation of American Chinatowns and examines the curious racial dynamic underlying the purposeful invention of hybridized Chinese American food, historically prepared by Cantonese-descended cooks for whites incapable of grasping Chinese culinary principles. Mendelson then follows the eventual abolition of anti-Chinese immigration laws and the many demographic changes that transformed the face of Chinese cooking in America during and after the Cold War. Mendelson concludes with the post-1965 arrival of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and many regions of mainland China. As she shows, they have immeasurably enriched Chinese cooking in America but tend to form comparatively self-sufficient enclaves in which they, unlike their predecessors, are not dependent on cooking for a white clientele.
eBook
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Expresstakes readers on a compelling journey from the California Gold Rush to the present, letting readers witness both the profusion of Chinese restaurants across the United States and the evolution of many distinct American-Chinese iconic dishes from chop suey to General Tso's chicken. Along the way, historian Haiming Liu explains how the immigrants adapted their traditional food to suit local palates, and gives readers a taste of Chinese cuisine embedded in the bittersweet story of Chinese Americans.Treating food as a social history, Liu explores why Chinese food changed and how it has influenced American culinary culture, and how Chinese restaurants have become places where shared ethnic identity is affirmed-not only for Chinese immigrants but also for American Jews. The book also includes a look at national chains like P. F. Chang's and a consideration of how Chinese food culture continues to spread around the globe.Drawing from hundreds of historical and contemporary newspaper reports, journal articles, and writings on food in both English and Chinese,From Canton Restaurant to Panda Expressrepresents a groundbreaking piece of scholarly research. It can be enjoyed equally as a fascinating set of stories about Chinese migration, cultural negotiation, race and ethnicity, diverse flavored Chinese cuisine and its share in American food market today.
eBook
Invitation to a banquet : the story of Chinese food
\"Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but today that is beginning to change. In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland. Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine\"--Dust jacket flap.
Book
The prehistoric roots of Chinese cuisines: Mapping staple food systems of China, 6000 BC–220 AD
We conducted a meta-analysis of published carbon and nitrogen isotope data from archaeological human skeletal remains (n = 2448) from 128 sites cross China in order to investigate broad spatial and temporal patterns in the formation of staple cuisines. Between 6000-5000 cal BC we found evidence for an already distinct north versus south divide in the use of main crop staples (namely millet vs. a broad spectrum of C3 plant based diet including rice) that became more pronounced between 5000-2000 cal BC. We infer that this pattern can be understood as a difference in the spectrum of subsistence activities employed in the Loess Plateau and the Yangtze-Huai regions, which can be partly explained by differences in environmental conditions. We argue that regional differentiation in dietary tradition are not driven by differences in the conventional \"stages\" of shifting modes of subsistence (hunting-foraging-pastoralism-farming), but rather by myriad subsistence choices that combined and discarded modes in a number of innovative ways over thousands of years. The introduction of wheat and barley from southwestern Asia after 2000 cal BC resulted in the development of an additional east to west gradient in the degree of incorporation of the different staple products into human diets. Wheat and barley were rapidly adopted as staple foods in the Continental Interior contra the very gradual pace of adoption of these western crops in the Loess Plateau. While environmental and social factors likely contributed to their slow adoption, we explored local cooking practice as a third explanation; wheat and barley may have been more readily folded into grinding-and-baking cooking traditions than into steaming-and-boiling traditions. Changes in these culinary practices may have begun in the female sector of society.
Journal Article
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express : a history of Chinese food in the United States
\"The story of Chinese Americans through the lens of food. From Canton Restaurant in 1849 to Panda Express today, Chinese food history in America spans over 150 years. Chinese 'Forty-niners' were mostly merchants and restaurateurs who migrated here not to dig gold but to do trade. Racism against the Chinese slowed down the growth of the Chinese restaurant business in the late 19th century, but it made a rebound in the format of chop suey. From 1900 to the 1960s, chop suey as imagined authentic Chinese food attracted numerous American customers including Jewish Americans as its collective fan. Then the real Chinese food such as Hunan, Sichuan or Shanghai cuisine replaced chop suey houses in the 1970s following the arrival of new Chinese immigrants after immigration reform in 1965. Those regional-flavored Chinese restaurants were brought in and established by immigrants from Taiwan rather than mainland China. As Chinese restaurants in America turned Chinese in flavor, P.F. Chang's and Panda Express rose fast in the 1990s to meet the need of constantly changing and often multi-ethnically blended eating habits of American customers. Chinese food in America is a fascinating history about both Chinese and Americans. Embedded in this history is the story of human migration, culinary tradition, racial politics, ethnic identity, cultural negotiation, Chinese Diaspora and transnational life, and Chinese cuisine as a global food. Though a scholarly work, this book aims at all readers who are interested in food history and culture\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
China in Seven Banquets
A captivating journey spanning five thousand years of Chinese culinary heritage, exploring the essence of each era through seven extraordinary meals. China in Seven Banquets takes readers on a gastronomic adventure into the history of China s constantly evolving and astonishingly diverse cuisine. From the opulent Eight Treasures feast of ancient times to the Tang dynasty s legendary Tail-Burning banquet, and the extravagant complete Manchu-Han feast of the Qing court, these iconic repasts offer glimpses into China s rich food history. Delving further, the book invites us to partake of lavish banquets immortalized in literature and film, a New Year s buffet from 1920s Shanghai, a modern delivery menu reflecting the hyperglobal present, and it even offers a peek at the tables of the not-so-distant future. Drawing upon his extensive gastronomic adventures across China, acclaimed historian Thomas David DuBois unravels its ever-changing landscape of culinary trends, revealing why flavors and customs evolved over time. DuBois also recreates dozens of traditional recipes using modern kitchen techniques. Whether indulging in fermented elk or savoring absinthe cocktails, readers embark on an unparalleled odyssey that redefines their perception of Chinese cuisine.
eBook