-understanding China through its food

-Sharks fin and Sichuan pepper a memoir travel book by Fuchsia Dunlop gives subtle and deep insights into Chinese thinking through food

-oppression of Uyghurs through food

-understanding the rare and exotic and why increase meat consumption is a trend is likely to continue

-understanding the sheer range and complexity of Chinese food

-How Buddhist  thinking is expressed through food

-why understanding a little about the culture or cuisine of a food  is necessary to appreciate whether it is “good” or not

Fuchsia Dunlop's travel and food memoir of China, Shark’s fin and Sichuan pepper, is one of the two best books I’ve read in recent years in helping me think about China today and its history.

(The other book is by Julie Lovell: Maoism a global history. Lovell has also recently translated an abridged version of the monkey King which is also really worth reading. The Monkey King is one of the four great classic novels of China the others being the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber. A great number I would go so far to say that the majority of educated Chinese people would have read or at least know the stories in all four books this observation indicates a quality infused in Chinese culture)

Dunlop immerses herself in Chinese food culture and commits to eating everything. While grappling with the tapestry of Chinese food and culture on its own terms she does not lose sight of her own British upbringing and lens insights to those of us who have never visited China to understand why some practices might be.  Through the stories and experiences one can see how food and cuisine are culture and how  they travel through the country and through the world

This is meaningful to me as the British born son of a Chinese Malaysian father and a Chinese Singaporean mother and I see this in the story I’ve related of how the dish of chicken rice came from roots in China via immigrants to Singapore, Malaysia and SE Asia and where it is now handed down to me in London.

Take the topic of eating everything and the potentially  unsustainable food trajectory that the world is on

“...The Chinese do you seem to eat everything one must admit.  But in a sense they are just a distorting mirror magnifying the voracity of the entire human race the Chinese word for population is people mouths and in China there are now over 1,300,000,000 mouths all munching away… it’s the same with timber, minerals and oil which feed Chinese economic development. China has become the worlds largest consumer of grain meet coal and steel. It may look rapacious but the Chinese are really just catching up with the greed of the rest of the world on a dizzying scale.

There is an equally rich and ancient strain of Chinese thought more than 2000 years ago the sage Mozi wrote of ancient laws regarding food and drink.

Stop when hunger satiated, breathing becomes strong limbs are strengthened and ears and eyes become sharp. There is no need of combining the five taste extremely well or harmonising the difference with orders. And if it should not be made to put your delicacies from four countries.

Confucius living at around the same time did not eat much and took care that amount of meat he ate did not exceed the amount of rice. His example has been used as a model for generations of Chinese children urged by the parents to eat up their rice or noodles and not be distracted by meat or fish…. And while businessmen and officials in early 21st century China stuff their faces with meat, fish and exotic delicacies, many people live at home on a simple diet of mainly grains and vegetables.

For the irony is that despite the conspicuous consumption of Banquet culture...the traditional diet of the Chinese masses could be a model for the entire human race.

...the way the older generation and the poor still eat... steamed rice or boiled noodles served with plenty of seasonal vegetables cooked simply, beancurd in many forms, very few sweet meats and small amounts of meat and fish that bring flavour to the table.

The traditional Chinese diet is nutritionally balanced and marvellously satisfying to the senses. After all my gastronomic adventures I don’t know if I can think of a better way to live...”

(Dunlops cookbook Every Grain of Rice is a tribute to this frugal healthy and delicious home cooking idea).  She addresses the culture which values the “banquet culture”, and how rarity or the exotic is valued. And in parallel what has happened to the environment, and to some traditional “old” things - like architecture and building and “wet markets” - disappearing under “progress”.  I can see from this that these trends seem very likely to continue. 

In other parts of the book, Dunlop evokes in vignette the clash of cultures and riches within China that she sees.

This observation stuck with me.

“...As I waited in the courtyard for my lift to the bus stop the local butcher was doing his rounds. A slight scruffy man bearing two bamboo trays on a bamboo shoulder pole he shouted out “meat for sale, meat for sale''. He paused in the gateway and I caught a glimpse of his wares.

He didn’t have much to sell just a few rather mean looking hunks of pork and some bones. At the entrance to the roundhouse next door he discussed prices with two elderly men one of them frail and dignified in his threadbare Mao suit , ended up coming to a deal and then walked home clutching his purchase, wrapped in his hand. It was a single pork bone, a small one, with a knuckle at one end to which clung a few ragged threads of meat. 

I thought back to the vulgar extravagance of [a meal]] in northern Fujian and the easy abundance of a rustic dinner the night before - the plentiful dishes of duck and chicken the steam pork that we had barely touched and my heart stuck in my throat…”

The challenges of China echo in the west and UK. Inequality, the meanness of western abbatoris and our own food supply. Dunlop also touches on how you need to engage with a culture, with a food or cuisine to be able to tell or appreciate it.

One aspect for me, is how Chinese value texture in a way that the west does not and a wastern palate does not appreciate bones, cartilage, cold, gloopy jelly fish textures (although the west has them eg oysters). And it goes both ways, this from a later time when took super accomplished Chinese chefs to one of the best western restaurants in the world (French Laundry)

“...it was a most difficult, a most alien, a most challenging experience.

We begin to talk about it in Chinese. They explain that they find the creaminess of the “sabayon” in the first course off-putting. And surprisingly, given the Chinese penchant for strong and salty pickles, none of them can stand the taste of the sharp Niçoise olives that accompany the lobster. “They taste like Chinese medicine,” they all agree.

They are shocked by the rare flesh of the lamb, although it’s the most perfect I’ve ever tasted. (“Dangerous,” says Xiao Jianming, who refuses to touch it. “Terribly unhealthy.”) The sequence of delicious desserts is an irrelevance for these visitors from a food culture without much of a sweet tooth. (The only dish they relish, curiously, is a coconut sorbet.) They are also mystified by the custom of serving tiny,personal portions of food on enormous white plates, and find the length of this meal served à la russe interminable.

I am struck by how much, at some abstract level, Thomas Keller’s food has in common with the finest of Chinese cuisine, in its magnificent ingredients, intellectual wit, and delicate sensitivity to the resonances among tastes, textures, and colors. But the physical facts of its expression, the sequence of dishes before us, might as well have come from another world.

“How am I supposed to eat this?” asks Yu Bo, puzzling over the red snapper that has sent me off into flights of ecstasy. He is as confused as a Westerner faced with her first bowl of shark’s-fin soup, plateful of sea cucumber, or serving of stir-fried ducks’ tongues. I’ve often seen this scenario in China, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed it from the other side.

The chefs are not as arrogant about their own prejudices as many Westerners are in China. Lan Guijun admits, “It’s just that we don’t understand, it’s like not knowing a language.” Yu Bo is even more humble: “It’s all very interesting,” he says, “but I simply can’t say whether it’s good or bad: I’m not qualified to judge.”

That last line sticks with me “It’s all very interesting,” he says, “but I simply can’t say whether it’s good or bad: I’m not qualified to judge.”

Not only does this apply to food but a range of cultural arts like parts of theatre and art, this can be applied to. But, interestingly when applied to food - you might think that food - high end food can be universally appreciated. I don’t think that is the case. Perhaps more particular high end food can be harder to understand without knowing the traditions it is working in.

Dunlop also examines the prejudice and tensions in China through food. Take a topic that has become increasingly controversial which is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 

“....I began to notice how often the Uyghur’s loathing week of the Han Chinese coalesced around the matter of pork for the Chinese of course porkis the staple meat to eat it on its own or stirfry with vegetables - they wrap it in dumplings, they use its bones for stock and its fat to flavour almost everything they eat. When the Chinese say meat. they usually mean pork unless otherwise specified.  To the Uyghur, as Muslimsthe idea of eating pork is abhorrent. One taxi driver cocooned with me in the privacy of his cab assured me that if a true Muslim eats pork his his skin will erupt into blood-spouting boils that can be fatal.

...And Chinese have occasionally use the pork taboo to inflame Muslim sensibilities.  During the cultural Revolution Chinese Muslims were reportedlyforced to eat pork and  to drink water from wells contaminated by pigs. Although the Chinese authorities in no way condone such crass behaviour, many Uyghurs  feel the government does not try hard enough to protect their feelings. 

The Muslim taboo on pork reinforces strong social divisions between Uyghur and Han. Most Uyghur won’t patronise Chinese restaurants even those that claim to serve food in accordance with Muslim dietary laws.

You can’t trust the Chinese not to use any pork products whatever they say, a shopkeeper told me. And as for the Han Chinese they tend to see Uyghur restaurants as dirty. And so the two ethnic groups dine separately and don’t talk to each other.

Revulsion at the pork-eating of the Han Chinese is the focus for general anxieties about cultural assimilation and contamination….”

There is so much thoughtful observation in the book and of course fascinating detail about food.

Here’s a YT of Tyler Cowen and Dunlop plus guests, dining out and talking about her book and Chinese food in the US. Of note is Ezra Klein who is a notable vegan as well as media commentator and NYT op-ed writer.

Amazon Link to book.