CHIN3813: Chinese Food Culture
Head image: Song Dong, Edible City, Beijing 01, 2003
In China, food has long been seen as integral to governance, social order, and cosmological balance. The saying “food is the equal of heaven” (民以食为天) encapsulates the centrality of food in shaping Chinese cultural norms and intellectual traditions. This course examines the dynamic relationship between food, culture, society, and the environment, with a particular focus on how food mediates between tradition and modernity, philosophy and politics, medicine and science, identity and globalization in the Chinese context.
In Spring 2025, we also examine Chinese food culture and history through the lens of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) and Chinese foodways in Atlanta through engagements with local communities.
Spring 2025 schedule
Week 1 (Jan 6-8) Introduction & Movie watching: The Search for General Tso
Fuchsia Dunlop, “A Kind of Chinese Food: Sweet-and-Sour Pork Balls”
Week 2 (Jan 13-15) Principles
Videos on the cuisines of Shandong and Sichuan
Selections from Yuan Mei/袁枚, Recipes from the Sui Garden/随园食单
Supplementary reading on food in Analects, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi
Week 3 (Jan 20-22) Staple Food
Videos on the cuisines of Hunan and Anhui
Thomas Talhelm, “The Rice Theory of Culture” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KWM7Shy4BQ
Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban, “China: Pasta’s Other Homeland” (selection)
A Bite of China: Stories of Staples
Week 4 (Jan 27-29) Festival
Making Dumplings this week!
Lao She/老舍, New Year in Beijing/北京的春节
Group Presentation 1 (Jan 27): Noodle in other East Asian countries
George Solt, “Street Life: Chinese Noodles for Japanese Workers.”
Kyung-Koo Han, “Noodle Odyssey: East Asia and Beyond.”
Week 5 (Feb 3-5) Soybean
Videos on the cuisines of Fujian and Guangdong
Hsiang Ju Lin, “Bean Curd,” “The Invention of Soy Sauce”
Wang Zengqi/汪曾祺’s writings on tofu
Presentation 2: Soybean Milk
Jia-chen Fu, “Which Milk? Soybean Milk for Growth and Development,” “Doujiang as Milk: Hybrid Modernity in Soybean Milk Advertisements.”
Week 6 (Feb 10-12) Cooking Techniques
At least one cooking lab project is due.
Videos on the cuisines of Zhejiang and Jiangsu
Edward Yang, “Dish, Rice or Noodle? The Changing Use of Chopsticks.”
E. N. Anderson, “Some Basic Cooking Strategies.”
A Chinese vocabulary of cooking methods
Presentation 3: Umami
Ole Mouritsen & Klavs Styrbak, “The Fifth Taste: What Is Umami?”
Jordan Sand, “A Short History of MSG: Good Science, Bad Science, and Taste Cultures”
Week 7 (Feb 17-19) Family Ties
Eat Drink Man Woman/饮食男女 (dir. Ang Lee/李安, 1994) in class
Week 8 (Feb 24-26) Food and Medicine
Vivienne Lo, “Pleasure, Prohibition, and Pain: Food and Medicine in Traditional China.”
Selections from Materia Medica/本草纲目
Chinese cookbooks on therapeutic food
Presentation 5: Tea
Lawrence Zhang, “Becoming Healthy: Changing Perceptions of Tea’s Effects on the Body.”
James A. Benn, “Buddhism and Tea during the Tang Dynasty.”
Week 9 (March 3-5) Food Safety
Yunxiang Yan, “Food Safety and Social Risks in Contemporary China.”
Wen Tiejun/温铁军’s interview on food sustainability and agricultural production modes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQuuJYRby8
Presentation 4: Meat and Vegetarianism
Jakob Klein, “Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurants and the Changing Meanings of Meat in Urban China,”
Brain Lander et al., “A History of Pigs in China: From Curious Omnivores to Industrial Pork.”
Week 10 (March 10-12) Chinese Food in America
Please start scheduling food ethnography and the oral history project with your group members and your interviewee.
Haiming Liu, “Who Owns Culture?”
Week 11 (March 17-19) Spring Break!!!
Week 12 (March 24-26) Food Ethnography Week
Week 13 (March 31-April 2) Food and Hunger
Lu Wenfu/陆文夫, The Gourmet/美食家
Presentation 6: Food and Memory in Contemporary China
Mark Swislocki, “Shanghai Cuisine Past and Present”
Jennufer Hubbert, “Revolution Is a Dinner Party”
Week 14 (April 7-9) Food from Afar
Selections from Book of Creating Foreign Cuisines/造洋饭书
James Farrer, “Red (Michelin) Stars Over China”
Presentation 7: Taiwan Food
Yujen Chen, “Taiwanese Cuisine and Nationhood in the Twentieth Century.”
Shuenn-der Yu, “Hot and Noisy Taiwan’s Night Market Culture.”
Week 15 (April 14-16) Final Presentations
Week 16 (April 21) Instruction Day