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Every time I talk about the people who are deeply influenced by their hometown flavor, or mention regional characteristics of food, I would come up with the following example that happened around me:

When I was an undergraduate, I had a classmate from Hunan province where the diet is always spicy. She just came to Shanghai and felt very uncomfortable about the food offered in the canteen. As a result, she lost 3 kilos a month. She complained that the food in Shanghai is too sweet for her to swallow. Even the food in the canteen, where, to the greatest extent, the tastes of students from various regions are taken into account, is still preserves a strong Shanghai style. Therefore, she asked her mother to send two jars of chopped pepper from her hometown, and mixed it with rice, soup, even “sweet and sour pork ribs”, almost anything she ate. The chopped pepper worked up her appetite, and she said “ That is what real food should be!”

It seems that for most Chinese, the taste of hometown carries much more meaning than the food itself, which is called culinary nostalgia in Mark’s text. He points out that “regional food culture was intrinsic to how Chinese connected to the past, lived in the present, and imagined a future.” We can explore this phenomenon by tracing the evolution of the word “weidao (taste)” meaning in Chinese.

 

It is not until 1916 that Taiyan Zhang use this word “weidao” to describe the taste and flavor of food. Before that, this word, in fact, had extensive meanings, including the ways people processed food and cooked, the people’s attitude towards food, etc. Simply put, it refers to the relationship between people and food, and the story of people and food, where the meaning of culinary nostalgia was implicitly embed. It stressed the relationship between people and the nature of food. Regarding this point, there’s a new documentary called Taste Of China released recently. I think it should be more accurately called “the source-tracking journey about Chinese food”, since “food source” is the core of this documentary.

That is, traditional Chinese emphasize a lot on the raw materials of food. Take me as an example. I was born in a coastal city in Jiangsu Province, and the gourmets there, like my father, have very strict requirements for ingredients, especially seafood. They can know whether the fish is wild or reared with one bite, and even where the fish was caught in the Yangtze River since the water quality in different regions is diverse, which contributes to the difference in the texture of fresh fish.

 

However, our generation, who grown up in industrial age, is surrounded by air pollution, soil pollution, off-season fruits and vegetables, genetically modified food, etc., which makes us lose the sense for “food source”.

 

We can see this trend also in the cities’ restaurants. Strictly distinguished“eight major Chinese cuisines” in the traditional sense no longer exists. You can easily find fish-flavored pork shreds at a Shandong restaurant, and you can eat roast duck at a Huaiyang restaurant. These restaurants, in fact, are moving towards a trend of integration.

 

 

From the perspective of customers, we can observe that young people increasingly favor fusion restaurants because they can eat different flavors of food from all over the world, even the combination of Chinese and Western recipes. Except for those famous dishes, it seems difficult for contemporary young people to exemplify their hometown flavors. The boundaries are getting blurred. Therefore, I’m not so sure that what effects this trend will have on future regional identity.

Fusion Restaurants are high-graded.

Will it be the only way to recall the taste of your hometown in small stalls along the street exclusively ? More important, will the young in cities be able to recognize their hometown flavor?

For consumers, the transportation process of food has never been an issue they need to care about. In the market, The sales of the food is directly linked to food packaging. The “packaging” here includes factors such as appearance, place of production, freshness, taste, media promotion, etc. Food transportation has always been a professional field of knowledge and was ignored by the public. People generally assume that food transportation is something that large supermarkets and trading companies need to think about. It has nothing to do with the food they consume, let alone with politics.

 

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, cold chain transportation did not enter the public’s vision and was not fiercely discussed. As Jeffrey mentioned in the article, cold chain system was theoretically designed to provide an animal protein-based diet to global populations at first. And after 1880s, by when the cold storage network had expanded, the cargoes transported by cold chain turn various. Food like dairy, seafood, beers and other sturdy produce was transported all over the nation, even across the ocean to another continent.

 

Long-distance cold chain transportation gives food higher value and certain socio-economic meaning. “As with other infrastructure, refrigerated transportation system affected the economic values, social meanings, and sensory experience of foods that traveled through them”, Jeffrey writes. In fact, the logistics cost of the cold chain is internalized in the value of food. For example, beef from Japan (wagyu) , shrimp from South Africa (Kuruma shrimp/tiger prawn) or salmon from northern Europe remains fresh when shipped to China. They are labeled with “ import freshness” in the market or restaurant and sold at a pretty high price. People who are able to afford this kind of food are believed to have a higher social status. Therefore, people are not only paying for the food itself, but also the transportation system behind it.

Cold chain transportation has even affected the world pattern. The cold chain creates conditions for long-distance food transportation, which also increases cross-border food trade, making transnational cooperation and competition grow. Because of economic participation, cold chain transportation has also been given more political significance, and has even been regarded as a tool of political adjustment.

 

In the era of COVID-19, the international focus is on tracing the source of COVID-19. Found in the seafood market, the new corona virus is highly suspected to be carried by seafood. In particular, in recent times, seafood markets in Liaoning province, Qingdao and other places have detected imported seafood carrying corona virus, and as a result, people’s fear of bats has turned into the fear of seafood. Several months ago, a large number of Norwegian salmon were detected to be corona virus infected, and China implemented an import ban on Norwegian seafood. This is considered a microcosm of the political conflict between China and Norway. Because of the low temperature of cold chain, the corona virus can easily remain active in that environment, waiting to reach the other side of the ocean. Therefore, cold chain of seafood is under fierce discussion by the public that whether it should be continued with the risk of virus spread.

What is culture? Wherever there are people, there are settlements and communities, which collide and blend with the elements around them, thereby immersing themselves in a certain conventional atmosphere and forming a relatively unique “culture”.

 

When I wander the “sidewalks” and “neighborhoods,” I am always looking for street culture. The street food stores, the delivery men shuttling through the streets, these are all urban scenes that move me so much.

 

The concept of “street culture” is an imported term that originated from the lower class black community in the United States, and has been gradually fused by Japan and Korea into the four main categories of DJ-ing, rapping, break dancing and graffiti or aerosol art. With skating, skateboarding, stunt cycling, street basketball, street soccer and other competitive and extreme sports, the collection of music, art, sports, fashion trends, once as a “Western subculture” of hip-hop has now become a popular attitude of young people, even a subtle cultural atmosphere. You may not dance, nor sing rap, but you always know a few trendy brands, unconsciously wear oversize clothes, and listen to a few R&B style songs. It can be said that the elements of street culture are no longer “underground” and have been integrated into people’s daily lives.

 

When we listen to hip-hop, even though this art form has gone from underground to mainstream, and has even become a cultural consumer product in global circulation, it has always been inseparable from the streets of the Bronx, from the realities of life for the underprivileged and marginalized, and from the soul of freedom and struggle. This culture is nurtured in such a diverse and vibrant public space.

 

But is there a real street culture in China? The soil of street culture is the street. It is its spontaneity, freedom, enthusiasm and relaxation that breed this culture. If this public space is lost, the discussion of street culture will be nonsense.

 

The current state of urban planning in China has squeezed the “street” space. For the sake of economic development, we have long been accustomed to wide, straight roads. The wider, the better. Building wider roads to speed up the flow of traffic as much as possible. But this comes at the expense of the public’s walking space and experience. For example, the bus stop, which used to be just across the street, now has to be two stops longer because the entire road has become a one-way street; there is never enough parking, and even the sidewalks are full of cars, and the blind corridors are also encroached upon…. …all as Jane Jacobs says in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” about the “encroachment of the automobile on the city”.

 

We are losing public space, with street culture slipping away.