We all know about the famous story about Yang Yuhuan and her love for lychee. As the most beloved consort of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, she got whatever she wanted, including her favorite fruit, lychee.
Since lychee can only be grown in the southern part of the country and the Tang Dynasty centered in Northern China, it was extremely difficult for people in the north to even get a taste of this tropical fruit. The Emperor had to utilize military force to transport the lychee picked from the south so Yang Yuhuan could have the freshest fruit possible, after all lychee could go bad quite quickly.
Never could Yang Yuhuan imagine people nowadays can get lychee whenever and wherever they want with one simple click on the blocks in their hands-smart phones. Not only lychee but essentially any food you want you can buy them on Taobao or other shopping sites. The development of online shopping and logistic network promotes food travel and emergence of culinary tourism in online spaces. Indeed people now can get the food from everywhere without physically travel to the place. For millennials, eating foods from all over the world is commonplace and for people whose main goal of traveling is to taste the local food, culinary experience in online spaces is a viable and affordable choice. Such phenomena coincide with the theme of the course that mobile delivery as a social infrastructure, while these deliveries take longer to fulfilled, it is definitely worthwhile to account. Over the years, we observe the transfer of food supply chain from physical location to online platforms. By all means, locations are important in the process of selling foods however their functions becomes places for production and storage rather than a physical shop that attract customers. Some might argue that such system deprive the authentic tastes from local foods that were supposedly to be eaten at their origins. But there are multiple examples that showcase the online spaces are revitalizing local foods and generate more cultural and economical value the origins. One of the most obvious example is perhaps “Luosi Fen” (or its official translation Liuzhou River Snail Rice Noodle).
This is a special food originated in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province. The ingredients include fungus, peanut, river snail sauce, dry tofu, and so-called the soul of Luosi Fen, pickled bamboo shoot which gives the food an unforgettable stench. People who have tasted the rice noodle describe the stink, though smells bad, offer more umami while eating. This rice noodle was only available in Guangxi area because the difficulties imposed upon its expansion. On one hand, the production of the noodle requires fresh ingredients including fresh river snail which are only available in the southern part of the country. On the other hand, the environment of the closed-up food stands or indoor restaurants makes the smell of rice noodle hard to escape, therefore people seldom walks into these rice noodles places, thus bad for business. However, a few years ago, rice noodle factories in Liuzhou started to produce the instant version of the food and attempted to sell it to different places other than its origin. Boom of online shopping makes the product extremely successful. With people’s curiosity regarding the alleged “magical stench” and positive reviews from influencer on Chinese internet, the food becomes the most searched and sold instant products on Taobao in the past two years. During the pandemic lockdown, the rice noodle of almost any brand were sold out, the factories had to operate 24/7 to fulfill the order and yet people had to wait as long as 40 days to get the product. The online spaces make such food travel possible.
More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG0WuslbWgM
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