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The authors of this week discuss about the important position of food in Chinese culture. Swislocki states in his article that “few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese”. Indeed, for Chinese people, the meaning of food goes far beyond the notion of the feed. Dietary habit is closely connected with one’s self-identity. As the old saying goes, “the feed is the most important to people” (mín yǐ shí wéi tiān). China has a large population and the most diverse natural landscape in the world, which provides its people with numerous raw food materials. Although people in different regions have formed their own unique eating habits and styles, no Chinese will deny the importance of food in their lives. Thus, it is easy for the nation to promote national identities from the perspective of food.

In 2012, CCTV produced a documentary named A Bite of China, which enjoys tremendous popularity among the audience and raised hot debate on social media. One factor that contributed to the success of this documentary is that “eating” is an eternal shared topic and also an important factor of forming cultural identity. On the most superficial level, A Bite of China provides alternative satisfaction for people’s appetites. Since all the food displayed isordinary food, which creates a communicative platform without boundaries and eliminates class distinctions. Another important success factor is that the documentary adopts a “story telling” strategy. Unlike other food documentaries who focus on the culinary techniques, A Bite of China tells the stories of people involved in the process of food production, preparation and dining. A Bite of China reproduces the life of ordinary Chinese. In each episode, several groups of characters are selected, taking the actions of food producers as narrative clues. Their personal experiences are shown in the documentary centered around food. The characters in this documentaries are normal local people, such as farmers and small merchants. Through watching those stories, one could easily recognize him/herself with those people and resonate with them. As Benedict Anderson put, nations is a “imagined political community”. People identify themselves as the community member through participating some collective rituals. To my understanding, watching such documentary is just like joining a particular ritual, in which the audience could feel pride for their own culture and resonate with the image of the people in national memory.

From a political economic perspective, the production and export of A Bite of China carries the ideal image of the nation. According to the producers, they shot more than 70 locations for 13 months to create a great map of Chinese cuisines with a sense of rich cultural heritage. For China, this documentary promoted Chinese soft power. It not only shows China’s cultural history, but also reflects the current life of the Chinese people and the rapidly developing Chinese society. In this sense, A Bite of China is a perfect card to introduce China’s images to the world and show its process of modernization.

The tradition of culinary nostalgia continues today, in “old Shanghai” theme restaurants that link city residents to an image of Shanghai’s former glory, while the city itself is transformed into a global destination of the future (Swislocki, 2008, p. 2). The establishment of 1192 “Old Shanghai” Street is the place to recall a nostalgia especially among the old-age groups. Setting designed in an old Shanghai style and filled with local restaurants such as Dahuchun, Taikang and Xiaoshaoxing, ranging from formal dinner to pastries, 1192 street blurred time and space, appeal to Chinese, especially the old-age groups who have really witnessed the former glory.

The restaurants defined as authentic (Zhengzong) tastes in 1192 street are the childhood memories of the old. Dahuchun, opened in 1932, the oldest extant local restaurant famous for its traditional Pan fried bun is one example. Asking a Shanghailander where to eat Pan fried bun, the answer will be “Dahuchun”. Different with bun in other regions like Jiangsu, an authentic Shanghai pan fried bun should be made by leaven dough, sweet pork and no soup included. From 1932 to 2020, the huge change of Shanghai city erased not only the scenery but the lifestyle, and the old-age groups are unable to follow up. Yet there has been something left: food. So food-orientated as Chinese, this traditional taste really comforts people, recalling their connections with the past, the most familiar Shanghai that they have ever experienced. In this street, when they eat Pan fried bun, it is far more than a tasty bun, but a proof of their existence in this city and a means of maintain their local social identity. Because the remain of traditional Shanghai weidao is the symbol of old memory, within which a collective sentiment has generated, thus the old strengthen their relationship with Shanghai despite it runs forward without turning round.

In spite of the very efforts to rebuild the image of “Old Shanghai”, the setting is too artificial and more important, those old extant restaurants have to make changes to fit new fashionable tastes. As Swislocki stated, nostalgia can be a commercial strategy for restaurateurs (2008). To make a business success is to make profits as many as possible from the most potential consumers, among whom old-age groups are certainly excluded. New dishes have to be put out. For instance, Dahuchun, except for the traditional pork and crab bun, the trendy taste like rattan pepper shrimp bun is very popular among young generations. For the old, their pure memory has not existed any more, instead they need to seek the familiar elements in the mixture of the old and the new. While for the young generations, their culinary nostalgia is based on the imagination of Old Shanghai, which is from history textbook, TV series and films, and they may be even unable to recognize the old elements from mixture. From this sense, culinary nostalgia is not a pure yearning of the past but a connection between self and city even if the objects of nostalgia are the products of new days.

(links are on the pictures)

 

 

Swislocki mentioned Shanghai cuisine in Culinary nostalgia: Regional food culture and the urban experience in Shanghai. He believes that Shanghai Cuisine is Benbangcai, which is now also called Shanghai cuisine. However, is Benbangcai equal to Shanghai cuisine (Shanghaicai)?

The answer is no. If you ask an elderly Shanghai native, he will tell you that there is a difference between Benbangcai and Shanghai cuisine-although there is always a fusion between cuisines in Shanghai today, at least from their definition or judging from the appearance time, the two cannot be treated equally.

Benbangcai (Local cuisine): self-awareness created in the immigrant city

In Hangzhou, not far from Shanghai, the cuisine there is called “Hangbangcai”. “Bang” refers to faction, “cai” is cuisine, so Hangbangcai is a popular type of food in Hangzhou. But in Shanghai, no one would call Benbangcai “shangbangcai”, and even in the whole country, “Benbangcai” has become a Shanghai exclusive term. “Ben” originally refers to “us”, so this group of dishes is “our side dishes”. Why do Shanghai people pay so much attention to this “us” instead of using their place names instead?

Shanghai, as a city of immigrants, the “bang” of the local food has been very different from the current “Shanghai”. This “bang” does not refer to the current downtown area of ​​Shanghai, but the aboriginal residents of Shanghai about 200 years ago. After the opening of Shanghai in 1843, the “Sixteen Cuisine Factions” went into Shanghai, including Ben, Ning, Hui, Beijing, Sichuan, Suzhou, Xi, Zhenyang, Henan, Lu, Xiang, Tianjin, Guangdong, Fujian, Halal, vegetarian dishes, etc. Different catering genres of the Sixteenth Group gathered in the Shanghai booth. Later, in the era of 19C., the flow of people became more diversified, and Shanghai’s demographic structure has undergone earth-shaking changes: the foreign population far exceeds the original aboriginals, so Shanghai’s original “bang” has disappeared in history.

Therefore, we can even say that the local dishes are not the dishes of Shanghainese—even those who have Shanghai hukou now are mostly descendants of immigrants two hundred years ago, rather than their ancestors who settled in Shanghai. Under such a wave of immigration, the term Benbangcai can be said to be a term reserved by the indigenous Shanghainese to miss their eating habits. The meaning of “ben” in it reveals a kind of look at the fading pride of the region and hometown.

Past Shanghai is hard to be missed by people. When people think of the so-called “old Shanghai in the past”, they rarely turn their eyes to history two hundred years ago, or even earlier-what is the history of Shanghai? Neon lights, the big world, the Disney Ballroom, and the Huangpu River, people of different skin colors come and go. These “modern” histories quickly became worthy of comparison due to the rapid development of Shanghai.

Therefore, the longer history of Shanghai was quickly buried-yes, that Shanghai was just a small fishing village. Perhaps, that is what they call the “benbang”.

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Shanghai Cuisine: Shanghai-Western Food, Haipaicai- the so-called “Shanghai Style”

There are different opinions on the “haipai” of the “Haipaicai”. In Taiwan, “haipai” means “repatriated overseas”, which means those rich; while Shanghai’s Haipai is a “Shanghai’s hai”, a feature that is exclusive to Shanghai-of course, As mentioned above, this blended culture didn’t show up until the opening of the port in 19 century. This is the difference between Shanghai cuisine and Benbangcai.

The most famous Haipaicai can be said to be the fried pork cutlet. It is served with the unique spicy soy sauce of Shanghainese. It has a unique taste and the large ribs are very crispy. Besides, the famous French dish, seared snails, has been adapted to seared clams, which makes full use of the abundant and fresh characteristics of Shanghai’s aquatic products. At the same time, Shanghai cuisine has become more sweet and greasy under the influence of Suzhou, Wuxi, and other places, and a large amount of soy sauce and rock sugar are used for flavoring-all of which constitute today’s Shanghai cuisine.

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We might as well imagine the culinary nostalgia in Shanghai cuisine, which not only contains geographical factors, but also contains rich time factors, because Shanghai has had two periods of history, no matter which period, it is different from the current international city, but No matter which part, there are certain foods as nostalgia.

Last weekend, I went to the supermarket with my mother. She bought a piece of pork and a box of eggs and headed for the check-out counter. I was waiting to take over the goods, then suddenly I heard the checker said, “138 RMB in all.”

“What??” I couldn’t cover up my shock on my face, “Why do this tiny piece of pork and this box of eggs so expensive?”

My mother replied calmly, “this is Iberico pork, it’s different than the normal pork. These kinds of black pigs are not fed by normal fodder, they only eat corn or wheat bran, so…”

“So what? They are still pigs!”

“Of course they are different from the normal domestic pigs”, my mother look me into her eyes, “they are raised more naturally, so they are having higher nutritional value…”

“Then what about this box of eggs? Ten eggs for nearly 40 RMB? I guess the little chicken lived inside haven’t got the chance to eat any high nutritional corns…” I asked sarcastically.

“No, but their mums did”, my mother explained, “they are farm eggs, the hens breed them were living in pure natural fields and eat wild vegetables and insects. They are not like hens that lived in cages, fed by a mixture of corn and fodder made from animal byproducts.”

“But how do you know that? Only because the labels on it told you that there are farm eggs inside? What if they are faking?”

My mother pondered for a few seconds, then she replied with a shrug, “still they must be better than the normal eggs. The price is high for a reason.”

In fact, there is no clear and unified standard for the definition of farm eggs in the market. In the consumers’ imagination, the normal eggs are laid by hens living in crowded and messy cages; and the farm eggs are laid by hens live in a fresh and natural environment, surrounded by green mountains and beautiful rivers. But the fact is that its’ the formal and modern farms have strict hygienic standards, systematic management of feeding environment and means of epidemic disease prevention. The feed of the hens is also scientifically proportioned to ensure the nutrition balance and the quality of eggs. And for the hens grew up in open areas, their food, drinking water, and living conditions are out of control. If they are kept near industrial pollution sources for a long time, the contents of toxic substances or harmful microorganisms would be dreadful.

The package of the farm eggs are always full of words such us “pure natural”, “raised in family farm”…

Consumers were too far away from the origin of the food, and too close to the commercial propaganda. In Fabio’s words, “much of what we eat is harvested or slaughtered in distant places we are not familiar with,” and the distance between producers and consumers “create power inequalities” and bring profits to the “food packagers”. They wrap up the food with “naturalism” packaging, set a high price, and claiming that “it’s because our products are more natural!” This method proves effective in the market, an increasing amount of people are willing to pay for the “nature” of the food. But what about the people who produce the food? Do they get their proportional pay-back? Or, do they know their food is labeled as “nature” in the market? They probably don’t even have the entrance ticket to it. Just as Raj Patel stated, “the process of shipping, processing, and trucking food across distances requires a great deal of capital—you need to be rich to play this game. It is also a game that has economies of scale … when the number of companies controlling the gateways from farmers to consumers is small, this gives them market power both over the people who grow the food and the people who eat it.”

Wenjun Fang（wf646）

Live streaming–a new opportunity for local farmers in China

Online purchasing today became the primary way of shopping among the young population in China. After the rise of many different shopping platforms, live streaming became the new way of shopping. Recently, live streaming has also become a new opportunity to sell fresh farm products and establish a new selling-buying system for more people.

It has been a huge challenge for farmers to sell their products during the pandemic time. Usually, local farmers will sell all the farm products they produced to buyers. The buyers will sell those raw products to food factories, and after farm product processing, they will be sold to the market. The farmers do not have a direct communication way to the food factories. Therefore, during the pandemic time, it is hard for buyers to get into every village like usual and finally caused the overstock of farm products. Though the consumers have buying demand for fresh food, the farmers have no way to communicate with the food factories or the consumers, which makes the trading hard to happen. In this case, live streaming became a new opportunity for both farmers and consumers. Start from 2017, the live streaming became the new and most popular way of selling goods online. Leading by Taobao, a famous shopping app in China, live streaming began to appear on different social media platforms, and all attract a huge number of audience. During the pandemic time, the government and Taobao began to sell the farm products directly by live streaming to help the farmers, which gained a huge success. According to Taobao’s data, more than ten tons of fruits in 14 days and helped farmers from nearly 20 provinces in China. In one live streaming broadcast by Taobao’s official account, they had sold nearly 5,000 kilograms of tomatoes, more than 7,000 kilograms of cucumbers, and 2,500 kilograms of strawberries. Because there is no mediator or factory processing, the price is much lower than in the supermarket. After paid online, products will deliver to your home in a few days. The consumers are also willing to purchase fresh fruits or vegetables since it is cheaper, more comfortable, and more convenient than usual.

On the other hand, selling fresh farm products makes the elderly population focus on live streaming and online purchasing. It is a much easier way for older people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but they are not familiar with the new shopping way and not believing in such a way. The pandemic makes older people try such a new way of shopping, which also received a good result. For farmers, they can also earn more money by selling products directly to the customers. However, it is also a challenge for the logistics system, which needs more discussion in the future.

       No matter in New York or Shanghai, many restaurants and bars are super popular on social media such as Instagram and Xiao hong shu (小红书). Bloggers love to go to those restaurants and take nice photos and post them on social media. In China, people called them as internet-famous-restaurant or WangHongCanTing (网红餐厅), which means that they are popular online. Internet-famous-restaurant usually have three common features. First, they must look “Instagramable.” They usually have fancy decorations or themes so customers can take nice photos and post them online.  Second, they must have some signature dishes so customers have another reason to come, but those signature recommendations don’t have to be delicious or unique. They just need to be popular on social media. Last but not least, there’s always a long waiting list to go inside the restaurant.

       When Jeffrey Pilcher talks about culinary infrastructure in his article, he defines culinary infrastructure as “the basic facilities and technologies used to convey food, and knowledge about food, not only from the proverbial field to the fork, but also across continents and cultures.” He divided culinary infrastructure as physical infrastructure and knowledge infrastructure. If I apply his arguments to popular restaurants on social media, I don’t know why those restaurants exist as a symbol of food culture, because I believe owners open those restaurants as an entertainment rather than a place for customers to enjoy food.

      In Shanghai, there are many must-eat restaurant list on social media such as crab noodles (蟹家大院) and bullfrog hotpot (哥老官). If you want to eat inside, you have to wait at least 2 hours.  Crab noodles in XieJiaDa Yuan is branded as the best crab noodle in Shanghai, and it’s famous for its authenticity. Just as Pilcher says about the physical infrastructure, “restaurants pursue customers by promising the unique creations of the untrammeled authenticity of ethnic cuisines” However, most customers only come here once, and more than 60% of customers don’t think it’s very delicious or unique. Most of them just think the price is too high, just like the Hermes in the noodle industry. I use this example to say that some innovations in restaurants are not creation but promotions. Some infrastructures are necessities such as delivery system or supply chain in food system, but others such as restaurant decorations and creative ideas for promotions are only accessories. It also raises the question if social media can count as the part of culinary infrastructure, especially at the age of technology. Without social media, will customers come to certain restaurants? Without social media, will some restaurants survive?