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The third food regime, “based on free global trade, easy movement of financial capitals, and the growing centrality of intellectual property—from trademarks to scientific innovations” is the modern food system (Parasecoli, 2019, p. 42). Within this complicated system, the one I will particularly focus on is intellectual property (IP).

“…the development of Geographical indications, a category of intellectual property—regulated by a World Trade Organization (WTO) treaty—that provides visibility and protection to specialties such as champagne from France, Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy…” will be discussed (Parasecoli, 2019, p. 35). The emphasis on food origin should be the promise of good quality considering the non-human factors such as climate, soil and water, as well as human actors including experience, technology, etc. However, the preference on origin is far more than quality, it could be the fame consumption. Opening a menu in a ‘good-taste’ restaurant, you will find so many cuisines named by origins of ingredients such as Kobe beef, French black truffle, Boston lobsters, etc. All of them will be more expensive than ordinary ingredients. Though the added values are from true quality, taxes, international transportation, the result is they are the representations of good-state, abundant food knowledge, fashion and wealth. The added values beyond the quality became the more important thing.

Except for geographical indications, restaurants as the part of food system is also included in IP category. Michelin, Black pearl… there are so many evaluation systems to assess restaurants. Restaurants on the lists are always much more expensive, better environments and pretty hard to order. Searching the seeking Michelin videos, you will find lots of titles are focused on the prices. “Visiting the only Michelin three star in Shanghai, 17000rmb for two people” (link is here) is a typical example. In the video, the host said he spent three months to order it, which showed the extreme popularity of that restaurant. They went to a building on Waitan and waited on the sixth floor, which was not where they eat. “A car will pick us to a warehouse, it is mysterious” the host said. All these steps increase a feeling of fortune and having a social status, which is beyond food itself. It is the idea that if we can eat in a Michelin restaurant, we are the ones in higher class. Arrived at the restaurant, it was a dark house. “I just thought it is a haunted house.” the host made a joke. The environment also served to the creation of mystery. Cuisines were small-size, placed in delicate plates. Again, these settings are not related to the food quality, but a strategy to lift the level of the restaurant, making the IP more “upper class like”. And geographical indications are emphasized, which is not surprising. All in all, food is not food, it has been coded into a symbolic system operated by both producers and consumers to create a social ID.

For Jacobs, to guarantee streets in cities safe is the surveillance not from police but the residents along it so that “these public street spaces have eyes on them as continuously as possible” (p. 36). This requires “a substantial quantity of stores and other public spaces along the sidewalks in a district…enterprises and public spaces that are used by evening and night” (p. 36). While bars, night clubs and cinemas play the role of guard in many cities in other countries, in China, restaurants, street stalls and 24-hour convenience stores shoulder this kind of responsibility unconsciously.

This relates to one part of Chinese food culture: the culture of midnight snack. Whether “Daipaidang” (a kind of sidewalk food booth often holding a larger area than usual food stalls) or Chinese BBQ, whether night markets (often set just on the street) or food street, from the evening until early morning, searching a midnight snack is a social and cultural lifestyle. People sitting on the “cheap” plastic chairs along or on the streets, eating, drinking, talking and laughing, that is so-called Chinese character. The noise and the smoke are the best protectors of the streets lasting nearly all over the night. There is a series of documentaries called “The Story Of Chuaner” (人生一串 in Chinese, link is here), which records Chinese BBQ stalls all over China and the stories between owners and customers, revealing such life attitude. In addition, Japanese-style 24h convenience stores such as 7-11 and Lawson set all over the big cities like Shanghai or Hangzhou also increase the safety of streets.

Besides, many small restaurants or other types of food stores in China are located along the neighborhoods. Though there is a trend that many trendy and “high-status” restaurants — many of them are chain stores — are located in plaza or shopping malls, often the lowest and highest floors for them, those individual or family-owned restaurants or street malls are still vital in Chinese cities. Zukin, Kasinitz and Chen wrote in their book that “shopping streets in low-income and working-class neighborhoods rarely appear in online blogs and travel guides, and are certainly not depicted as hip, cool, or trendy” (p. 20), yet it is not the case in terms of food part of Chinese streets. These old, small and “untidy” eateries are still very attractive for Chinese, because they are seen as the representation of “true Chinese food”. In fact, searching old eateries is becoming the trend in China, “The Story Of Chuaner” which gained a huge public attention as an example. This prevents the disappearance of these “eyes” all over the streets, which leads to a certain level of safety in streets.

The food delivery apps can also be functional at some level, even though it pushes people from streets back to home. Because of the midnight snack culture, Chinese like ordering food on Apps in the midnight. In this way, thousands of delivery boys go across big or small streets at night, in other words, they become “the mobile eyes”. In order to be faster, delivery boys will choose those shorter pathways that sometimes cover those tiny streets, which is better for protection.  

Glaeser introduced the influential factors of the development and decline of urban cities, human capital and transportation is what he really concerned about. Just as he said, “cities aren’t structures, cities are people”, human-driven should be the key of current city plannings. For Glaeser, cities have higher productivity; cities make people happier; cities are lifestyle rather than the concrete. He warned us by the hallmark of certain declined cities such as Detroit that “they have too much housing and infrastructure relative to the strength of their economies”. Of course, that does not mean a halt of supply construction, but making the supply in demand, in other words, keeping pace with people’s needs. And it was also the new urban planning of China. Gone through so-called “modernization”, China tends to move from physical dimension to human dimension (link is here). Rather than building skyscrapers or other city icons, efforts should be made on the improvement of livelihood. One expert in the video, then pointing out two methods: the construction of underground, in other words, improving the public transportation to decrease the congestion, one of main big city diseases, and the care about education that profit-driven universities are not beneficial to higher education popularization. Glaeser also valued the transportation in his analysis of urbanization. With the claim “transportation always determined the urban form”, he listed the advantages of car cities: speed and space. Public transportation takes more time than private car on commutes, it only happened in small or middle-size cities in China, since extremely large population results in the extremely dense urban area, congestion could be the biggest problem. This is why underground is in urgent need in terms of improving living environment.

Roy discussed the urbanism from a different view. For her, the urban theory centered in the west mode should be modified to a provincial view since it demonstrates “how neoliberal urbanism is as much ‘Asian’ as it is ‘Western’, as much ‘homegrown’ as it is borrowed” (pp. 310-311). She particularly took an insight on the topics of worlding practices and subject-power in so-called “world-class cities” in Asia. Worlding being “a practice of centering, of generating and harnessing global regimes of value” (pp. 312), China is making very efforts on the worlding practices. Not only Shenzhen as the example she analyzed, Shanghai Pudong district (link is here), which is from a small so-called “fishing village” to the financial center (Lujiazui) gathering numerous talents and investments all over the world, and now Hangzhou where Alibaba settled down are contributed to the world-class construction. The e-commerce, Taobao, Jingdong or Meituan, based on the high efficiency of Chinese transportation system and supported by high speed delivery system, is definitely a worlding practice involving many subjects from e-shop owners, delivery men to the workers on the assembly lines since it not only includes overseas business, but also the window for the world to show the Chinese trade mode.