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Wenjun Fang (wf646)

Intangible cultural heritage tag on Food

Generally, when we talked about intangible cultural heritage, the most familiar ideas are different kinds of performance and traditional handicrafts. All those performing styles or handcraft techniques have a long history. They have been handed down from generation to generation and influenced history in a way. The idea of respecting the ancient wisdom and human history is the most critical reason we must protect those intangible cultural heritages. Ancient culinary techniques could be one of the most special ones during all kinds of intangible cultural heritage. It has a much more profound impact than any other type of heritage on modern human life.
Recently, intangible cultural heritage has become a popular title of dishes and attracts a lot of attention both online and offline. Dishes within such a label are usually the most famous regional specialties and very common in local restaurants. Such a recommendation term will easily attract tourists and foreigners who are not familiar with local food. However, for most restaurants, it is just a marketing method. The dish with the title of intangible cultural heritage is always selling at a higher price than the same dish without such identification. Of course, it has a more sophisticated table setting and a better dining environment. Such experience will make people feel like they are tasting something different. The restaurant is selling such expertise to the customers, trying to let them believe that the dish is different, and enjoying the traditional delicacy represents the higher social classes.

Other than restaurants, food bloggers are also willing to use intangible cultural heritage food as the topic of their videos. Attached was the video from my followed food blogger, who is doing funny cooking videos about surprise cuisines or food that are usually hard to cook at home. In this video, she is cooking a court dish that was reputedly one of the most favorite empress dowager Cixi dishes. To cook this dish, the chef has to fill every single bean sprout with chicken mesh. The bean sprout’s diameter is only 2 millimeters on average, which is a really hard process. There has no recipe in detail. In fact, what we learned about this course all came from the history research materials about the empress dowager Cixi. There are only descriptions about the dish’s visible part and how it tastes, but no details about the raw materials, the sauce that is used, or the way of cooking.

http://www.bilibili.com/video/BV147411H7VT

Swislocki Mark defined the term “culinary nostalgia” as the “recollection or purposive evocation of another time and place through food”, which’s a time-honored Chinese tradition. It’s intriguing to read his discussion about food as local knowledge. After quoting Duara’s idea about “the local”, Swislocki then analyzed the essay “Selling Candy” written by Zhou Zuoren, in which he illuminated how food operated as a subject of chronotopic discourse (pp. 18) First, Swislocki pointed out that the candy can help people conjure a sense of place and remind them of those days in the hometown. Secondly, Zhou made Shaoxing Food culture (represented by the candy) into a “chronotope that transcended the problems of the day” (pp. 19) as he lived in turbulent times of China.

As a loyal reader of Zhou Zuoren’s works, I would like to add some views on this issue. Zhou really likes to write short essays about food (at least dozens of his articles mentioned food), themes of which are closely related to the hometown, nostalgia, local characteristics, and changes in Chinese society under the influence of the West at that time. In my opinion, rather than saying that Zhou sought to carve out a cultural realm that transcended the secular world by writing on food, it is better to say that he was practicing a “culinary nostalgia” on the dual level of time and space in a more profound way. His writing about food culture can show the individuals’ memories of the past and the cuisine of their hometown, at the same time, also show a collective recollection of traditional Chinese culture and social conditions of that generation. For one thing, like the essay “Selling Candy”, Zhou described many of the delicacies he ate in his hometown – Shaoxing. In the essay “Fried Ghosts” (You Zha Gui, a snack similar to fried dough sticks), he recalled the process of making fried ghosts and compared the differences of such fired snacks in various places of China; In “Wild Vegetables in My Hometown”, he mentioned that Shaoxing people often pick wild vegetables in spring to stir-fry them with rice cakes or make pastries. As a native of Ningbo (Ningbo and Shaoxing are both in Zhejiang Province and very close), I can easily resonate when reading his essay, and miss the local dishes and my home. For another, in the era of social transformation, Zhou’s description of the old-style exquisite food shows a nostalgia that travels through time and space, also a recollection of the culinary traditions that have passed away. In the “Dim Sum of the North and South”, he discussed in detail the old-style dim sum in the north China and the south China, both of which have a wide range of varieties, are exquisitely made, and follow strict making standards. He even criticized the popular tea food at that time for being nondescript, not learning foreign snacks successfully, also losing the original exquisiteness. Such ideas reflect a reminiscence of old traditions and a certain kind of nostalgia for the stable life in the previous history.

                                                                                                          Stir-fried Rice Cake with Wild Vegetables

Read more about “Fried Ghosts”

Read more about “Wild Vegetables in My Hometown”

Read more about “Dim Sum of the North and South”

Swislocki’s point on the duality of modern and nostalgic Shanghai reminds me of my favorite director— Wong Kar-wai, who connects the old Shanghai and the modern Hong Kong through his works. Wong is a Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-based filmmaker, noted for his sensuous art films and recognized as a pivotal figure in the cinema of Hong Kong. His works are typical of unique narratives and aesthetic orientation, with a creative way of expressing feeling. Till present, Wong has made 10 features in total, many of which have appeared on best-of lists both domestically and internationally. His next highly-anticipated work in production is Fan Hua (Blooming Flowers), adapted from Jin Yucheng’s famous debut novel, which is set in Shanghai and telling stories of the 1960s and the ’90s.

Looking into the texts of Wong’s movies, we can find that he has been paradoxically writing a migration history with his imagination of the “nostalgic Shanghai” and a modern fable of “nothingness”. It is the combination of traditional Oriental aesthetics with unconventional expressionism narratives that makes the cultural symbol system of Wong’s films easy to receive and consume for the audiences from Hong Kong, from Greater China, from East Asia, and from the West.

For the Hong Kong local audience in 1990s, nostalgia for the past and uncertainty for the future are the most resonating ethos. As one of the “Southern” people in Hong Kong who migrated from mainland China and a cultural hybrid, Wong sensed a cramped living space and an alienated interpersonal space in the enclave of a cosmopolis and artfully casted the “Déjà disparu” state of Hong Kong into the cinematic space. Metaphors of time are also everywhere in Wong’s films: “Somewhere, somehow, things come with an expiration date. Is there anything on earth that will not expire?” The classic lines of Chungking Express reflect a postmodern feeling of nothingness in contemporary minds, as well as a common anxiety of Hong Kong residents faced before the 1997 handover, when the United Kingdom ended administration for the colony of Hong Kong and returned control of the territory to China. Along with other coeval nostalgic films, Wong’s films made an effort in seeking the common cultural memory of Hong Kong migrants and other Chinese diaspora. Therefore, Wong set the majority of his films in specific, suppositive space and time. He made the Shanghai trilogy- Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046 all set to happen in the 1960s Hong Kong. For Wong, Shanghai is his birthplace; it is also the root and past of Hong Kong.

For the Pan-East Asian audience, postmodernity embodied in Wong’s films is a most consumable and intriguing cultural element. Similar to Koichi Iwabuchi’s illustration of Japan’s regional dominance in his work Culture of Empire (2008): Transnational media flows and cultural (dis)connections in East Asia, “the emerging sense of cultural similarity between Japan and other Asian nations these viewers experience seems to be based upon a consciousness that they all live in the same modern temporality and spatiality,” (p.155) Hong Kong also led in modernity among East Asian countries in the 1990s as a glocalized regional hub. Some of Wong’s films are set in the South America, or in South Asia, providing a foreign experience that matches a global image of the East Asian audience. The flooding of capitalistic urban landscape, the theme of missing and refusal in romantic relationships, the issue of “forget or remember”, the mentality of solitude and fetishism, these postmodern elements collaged in Wong’s films to construct a great visual and emotion tension. In addition, with a stylized postmodern narrative in which form outweighs content, Wong’s writing is highly fragmented. The lines, the film music, or the cartoonic character images can all be singled out from the whole text and travel as cultural symbols.

For the Western audience, the masterpieces In the Mood for Love and The Grandmaster are their favorites. Both of the two movies visualize an “Oriental imagination” through the Othering, differentiated film text. The 23 different cheongsams Maggie Cheung wore in the former film veiled an implicit filter of the “Latin 60s mood”; the legendary life of grandmaster Ip Man in the latter film presented the traditional chivalric spirit in “river and lake”. In the process of defamiliarization narration, Wong created a spectacular East. A note-worthy fact is that most scenes of In the Mood for Love were actually shot in Bangkok, Thailand, instead of Hong Kong or Shanghai. That means the images of the location Wong depicts in the film are in distortion. As the auteur himself said, he had no intention in representing faithfully of the 1960s China, but only hoped to depict the images of the foreground of his subjective memory. But it doesn’t matter for the Western audience who want to enjoy a delicate, differentiated “East” in the cinema. Another reason for picking these two films rather than the urban series is that composed by first developed countries, the Western market didn’t buy into the modern experience narrative as much as East Asia. What resonate better with them are the humanistic sentiments and the classic sense of fatalism, which appeared in both movies. 

  The first day when I arrived in Shanghai at where I live now, I was totally amazed by a long line in front of a Benbangcai restaurant named Guangmingcun. The line was so long that it extended even to the front door of another popular restaurant-the only Popeyes in China that opened not long before-which actually made me think the line was for Popeyes but not for Guangmingcun. The restaurant is on Middle Huaihai Road, where stores and restaurants with high popularity (or “Wanghongdian” in Chinese) gather, so it is not that normal that the longest line is for a Benbangcai restaurant that does not have very fancy look from the outside and even looks a little bit old. I remembered it was a weekday, but the line was still very long. There were many senior people in the line, but I could also see some young people in the line, busy with the stuffs on their phones to kill the long waiting time.

  Every day, the line is long. There are always people queueing up in front of the restaurant. But what made me become really curious about what on earth makes this restaurant so attractive was on another cold rainy day, I still saw the line. Those elder people wearing raincoats, and holding umbrellas on hands, were bearing with the bad and cold weather just for a meal when they could have stayed at home, which seems to be a better choice considering their ages. I have seen many popular restaurants that require a very long waiting time, but I have never seen one that has so many loyal customers who are determined to eat even when the weather condition is so bad. This is strange and makes me wonder how delicious could Benbangcai served in this restaurant be? (I have heard that people from outside Shanghai barely find Benbangcai delicious) 

  After searching on Internet, I learnt that Guangmingcun is a classic “Laozihao” restaurant specialized in Benbangcai, probably the favorite “Laozihao” restaurant to local Shanghai people. It has a history of over 80 years. For many Shanghai people, the taste of the food in this restaurant is the taste from their childhood and it stays the same over so many years. This restaurant has become the pride of Shanghai people, especially elder people.

  Actually, what is attractive about this restaurant is not anything magical. Instead, the unadorned but honest attitude, the consistent quality and taste of classic Benbangcai, and the affordable price that seems to be much lower than prices of those Wanghongdian, are what make it an evergreen must-go restaurant of the city. I couldn’t help but wonder: is it true that if a restaurant can always meet these requirements, then it is able to remain popular over a long time? (although it is also not easy to meet these requirements at least in terms of price) And for those “Laozihao” restaurants, when older generations become a past and when more and more young people do not consider these restaurants to be the memory of their childhood, will its glory still remain the same to those tourists who are merely curious about the taste of local food? To me, I may try it for once, but going there frequently may never become a thing to me since I have almost no interest in Benbangcai as a “Waidiren”.

read more about Guangmingcun here

Being one of the most influential genres of Cantonese culinary culture, Shunde Cuisine has long been recognized as the food capital in Guangdong. The saying “食在广州，厨出凤城”(The delicious foods come from Canton and the cooks come from Shunde) exemplifies the impacts of Shunde cooking style. Given the limitation of resources and the traditional forms of economy, Shunde Cuisine emphasizes on making the best foods out of local and ordinary produce. Since its establishment as a county under Ming Dynasty, Shunde’s economy relied heavily on fish farming and sericulture. The production cycle surrounding fish ponds and silkworm farms created a special agricultural phenomenon as well as a unique culinary scene. Shunde cuisine values freshness and umami tastes that comes from the produce itself. There is seldom heavy seasonings nor overcooking because these might cover the authentic taste of the foods. For example in Shunde, fish is often cooked through steaming and served only with soy sauce. Some might think steaming is not sufficient enough to get rid of the fishy smell or otherwise overcook the fish; however chefs in Shunde have a way of steaming the fish with precise duration of time and control of temperature that takes out the fishy smell and cook the fish to the right degree. The steam fish, naturally, tastes fresh and tender and can definitely represent Shunde cuisine. Even though it might seem easy to do, such technique requires years of experience and strict quality control of raw material. That being said, Shunde cuisine has never been given so much attention until the documentary “A Bite of Shunde”, a spin-off and sequel of “A Bite of China”, came out in 2016. The three-episode documentary introduces Shunde cuisine as one of the most prominent culinary scene in Southern China and showcases both traditional and innovative dishes made by cooks in Shunde. The program was aired on CCTV documentary channel and make Shunde famous overnight. People started to visit Shunde on weekends and holidays just for the sake of foods. In 2018, over 4.5 million tourists traveled to Shunde and created more than 17.1 billion in tourism revenue. With no doubt, the documentary has brought enormous economical benefits to the small town and create thousands of new jobs in food industry. However it is worth noting that the culinary culture of Shunde might not necessarily benefit from it. With more and more tourists come to town, the restaurants have to adjust their dishes to cater to different customers. One of the methods they use is to put heavy seasonings on the foods to create strong scents and tastes so they can stimulate customers in attempt to retain significant memory of the dishes. Such cooking method deviate from the original purpose of preserving the original flavor of the foods and give up the spirit Shunde Cuisine. On the other hand, the restaurants that got promoted in the documentary became the hotspots for tourists and people need to queue for hours to get in. Such phenomenon has made restaurants less motivated to improve their quality as they do not have to worry about the customer flow while the culinary experience deteriorated for customers who are mainly tourists. If they are satisfied with the experience, they might never come back and worst of all, they might tell other people not to come because the foods are overrated. It is a dilemma that are faced by many regional foods and should be addressed to achieve healthy development of a culture. 

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?