yq2080

Pilcher discussed the culinary knowledge infrastructure and examined its constant change over the long history. According to Pilcher, cookbooks, the wider publishing industry and restaurants have encouraged innovation and complexity in the kitchen. I quite agree with Pilcher’s argument that “the modern infrastructure of culinary knowledge has arguably been concerned less with the transmission of existing practices than with the pursuit of novelty and innovation.” (pp. 118) Importantly, media plays a vital role in widely disseminating culinary knowledge and building famous food brands. As the article said, “both old and new media clamor for attention by constantly repackaging culinary instruction, criticism, and entertainment.” (pp. 118) In an era with advanced social media, in an international city like Shanghai, we can witness the boom of culinary innovation, but such competition of innovation may be driven by capital markets and profits essentially.

To gain the attention of customers in the fierce competition, many restaurants are doing their best to create unique innovation. As we all know, China has “Eight Major Cuisines”, and nowadays many restaurants have tried to reform these traditional cuisines in combination with rare ingredients and Western cooking methods, advertising themselves as new factions. For example, Yu Zhi Lan is a typical representative of new-style Sichuan cuisine, and it’s also a one-diamond restaurant on the Black Pearl list, with an average of one thousand and seven hundred RMB per person. It incorporates rare ingredients like the high-end Japanese beef, black truffles, lobster into Sichuan cuisine, and presents cuisines in a concise and elegant style, boasting its brand image with such innovations. However, it has received criticism from some gourmets before, because its so-called innovation doesn’t improve the taste of the dishes or form a new style, but is more like a strange modification of the dishes in order to show the high-level image of the brand. Take the dish Private cuisine: 15-year-old wine preserved crab for instance. Generally speaking, chefs use yellow wine to marinate the crab, but Yu Zhi Lan uses 15-year-old Mao Tai, the extremely expensive wine to marinate it. To be honest, such innovation could bring subtle differences in taste, which is undoubtedly a perfunctory change with the only purpose of maximizing profits.

The homepage of Yu Zhi Lan on Da Zhong Dian Ping app

The cuisine called Private cuisine: 15-year-old wine preserved crab and a comment that highly praises it by a KOL

Even so, some people are still willing to pay high prices to eat, and post many pictures on social platforms to brag about the special features of this dish. There is a hidden logic behind this: the restaurant uses repackaging to make traditional dishes present a completely different appearance and high-end grade, and those customers hope to reflect their social status and great taste by consuming these symbolic dishes. Innovation has enriched the symbolic meaning of cuisines, but the useful knowledge in the culinary knowledge infrastructure hasn’t increased. Additionally, some KOLs who have been paid by the restaurant help conduct promotion on various social platforms to reach a wide range of the audience. For consumers in a big city like Shanghai, they seem to have many choices when picking up a restaurant to eat, but every time they want to chase the most popular cuisine, they are actually the object of hunting in the web woven by the food system.

It is interesting to read the authors’ discussion about “globalized habitus” and “ethnic clusters” in Global Cities, Local Streets. According to them, demographic changes in the neighborhood can create new business opportunity for immigrant merchants, and “with transnational migration and local settlement, clusters of ethnic businesses form Little Italys, Little Havanas and Little Senegals.” (pp. 8) They also pointed out that “ethnic clusters do not last forever” (pp. 8), and the new pattern in modern society is “super-diversity” of local shopping streets.

Personally speaking, I agree with the developing process and social role of ethnic clusters mentioned in the book, also the emerging trend of “super-diversity”. However, I think ethnic clusters can actually last for a long time rather than inevitably transferring to the new pattern, because some of them can also develop a new social role in public space and provide diverse functions for the modern society. Here I’d like to take the “Korea street” in the Minhang district of Shanghai for example. Hongquan Street is located in the Minhang District of Shanghai, with many Korea communities in the surrounding area. The entire street is full of various shops and operated by Koreans, so the street was nicknamed as the “Korea Street”. Every day, many people come here not only to experience the Korean culture, but for the various entertainment and business purposes. Surprisingly, this well-known area has just been formed in recent years, and is constantly expanding its business scale and influence. It’s true that the small stores here provide products to the Korean people and serve local Chinese people as middleman minorities. However, the ethnic clusters here have much more power and influence beyond these primitive ones. The authors said that ethnic cluster will gradually disappear when a group moves away or “the initial cohort of store owners ages, retires” (pp. 10). Nonetheless, with the increasingly close economic and cultural exchanges in modern society, the immigrant community can grow stronger and stronger. In a Minhang news report, we can see the future development plan of Korea Street and Korea community based on the ethnic cluster: Korean specialty restaurants, Korean supermarkets, Korean performing arts schools and various Korean enterprises will be introduced here to create a Korean town with unique characteristics. Additionally, an increasing number of Korean venture capital funds have been received, leading to great development prospects in the fields of business, technology and culture. (Read more here) In a Vlog recording the condition of Korea Community during the epidemic in March, we can see that this place is still a vital and organized ecosystem.(Watch the video) To sum up, affected by the economic and cultural factors, ethnic clusters today can develop into a mature and integrated community. This example shows the new form of ethnic cluster in modern society, which definitely contributes to the diversity of Shanghai streets and local culture.

Roy discussed the interlocked practices of worlding, and used three Asian cities as examples for further explanation. It’s very appropriate for Roy to summarize that Shenzhen is shaped by a key trope: speed. As China’s first special economic zone, Shenzhen has ushered in rapid development in recent decades, and is famous for its fortified factories which can manufacture products at unmatched speed. When Roy described the scene in conference that “Shenzhen reporters quite boldly imagined Shenzhen as the global city of the future” (pp. 315), I was not surprised at all. Typically, many people are proud of the rapid development of Shenzhen, but they need a set of authoritative evaluation systems to prove the status of Shenzhen and to serve as a source of their pride. Therefore, they eagerly hope Shenzhen to become a world-class city comparable to New York in the future. Such awareness prompts them to recognize Shenzhen’s position as “world’s workshop”, which helps accelerate the self-worlding practice of Shenzhen at the same time.

When those Shenzhen reporters told the scholars that they regarded the migrant workers as the symbol of Shenzhen, they felt surprised because the migrant workers are “disavowed subaltern subject of Shenzhen’s prehistory” (pp. 318). Although Roy discussed the underlying reasons behind the reporters’ answer (influenced by the Time magazine of that year) and sensibly viewed this designation also as part of the worlding practice, I think his point of view is not completely right. In fact, migrant workers have never received enough attention from the society. They are always unrecognized, disavowed groups under the shadows, which only receive temporary attention when they are reported by well-known media. Every year, there are workers’ strikes and collective protests in Shenzhen because of unreasonable work intensity and wages. In 2018, a sensational and heated event of workers’ rights defense (Read more here) was ultimately reported as an illegal activity funded by foreign forces by the authorities, and all social discussions ended at that time. The cases that occurred in the Foxconn factory are just the epitome of the fate of “Chinese workers”.

Deep related with the Shenzhen’s prehistory, counterfeiting industry, can also be seen as a homegrown and subaltern subject just as the migrant workers. No one can deny the harm and negative influence of the counterfeiting industry, but it’s indeed an integral part of the development of Shenzhen. Viewed by the outside world, “Shenzhen speed” always bears the imprint of intellectual property theft. There’s a CNN news report about Shenzhen in November 2018, which was titled “Inside China’s Silicon Valley: from copycats to innovation”. (Read more here) This news pointed out that while genuine innovation is happening in Shenzhen, the counterfeiting industry is still massive. Actually, to achieve the mass dream of world-class Asian city, Shenzhen inevitably takes advantage of this force.