The Silver Thread of the Deep: A Cultural History of Shark Fin in China and Beyond (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Often gracing the tables of weddings and banquets, shark fin symbolizes opulence and prestige in China and beyond. Yet its rise from offcut to delicacy reveals a complex history of how value is constructed and transformed. Drawing on sources in Chinese and English, as well as materials in French, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian, The Silver Thread tracks how this oceanic product came to have symbolic and material value, particularly during the Ming and Qing periods when domestic affluence deepened and became entangled with transregional commerce. Each chapter revolves around a question, such as: How did shark fin make its way from sea to banquet hall? Who advocated for its classification as a delicacy? How were taste, medicine, and ethics intertwined in its consumption?

In The Silver Thread, taste constitutes a language of social and moral distinction rather than sensation per se. Shark fin is both an object and an idea at the crossroads of nature and culture, where ritual and economy are mutually implicated, and where excess and moderation coincide. This book is hardly an apologia for shark fin consumption. It is, in part, a use of history to revisit tradition. Extending his analysis beyond cuisine, Ronald C. Po reconsiders “maritime China” less as a venue for trade, war, or navigation than a porous space formed through meaning and identity.