Modern Chinese Foodways

An edited collection that explores the multifaceted experiences of Chinese culinary modernity both within and outside of mainland China from the mid-19th century to present.

Modern Chinese Foodways defines some of the major processes by which Chinese food and foodways have become modern, with a focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The editors, Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle T. King, and Jakob A. Klein, highlight four prominent areas of change: commodification of food production; the scientization of expertise and the development of new food technologies; the creation of new culinary identities based on gender, ethnicity, and nation; and the circuits of migration taking place since the nineteenth century.

This collection argues that Chinese food and foodways are very much modern—not a given in the face of the chorus of voices that insists on emphasizing its ancient roots—in ways that both recall the experiences of other cultures, as well as in ways unique to China’s own historical trajectory. 

The book combines incisive, original scholarship by thirteen leading voices in the field with editorial essays on the past and future of Chinese food studies to frame the field of inquiry for the next generation of Chinese food studies scholars. Demonstrating the significance of modern Chinese foodways to the phenomenon of culinary modernity writ large, which is still largely shaped by Euro-American perspectives and priorities, Modern Chinese Foodways is the first book of its kind.

Jia-Chen Fu is Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica. She is the author of The Other Milk and is on the editorial board for Re:Past—Studies in the History of Nutrition series at John Hopkins University Press.

Michelle T. King is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the editor of the award-winning Culinary Nationalism in Asia and the author of Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.

Jakob A. Klein is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Social Anthropology at SOAS University of London. He has coedited five volumes on anthropological approaches to the study of China and/or food, including Consuming China and Ethical Eating in the Socialist and Postsocialist World.