Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-s5tfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-03T23:03:12.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - “Bridging” food cultures in the world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Q. Edward Wang
Affiliation:
Rowan University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Real Chinese food is delicate and rare; supposed to be tasted rather than eaten, for the number of courses is stupendous. If really to the manner born, you reach into one general dish with your chop-sticks; it is a clean and delicate way to dine. Unless you go in for too much bird’s nest soup and century-old eggs, the prices are reasonable. Bird’s nest soup is delicious, but anyone can have my share of the heirloom hen fruit.

Harry Carr, Los Angeles: City of Dreams (New York, 1935)

If you do not take your courage in hand, click your chopsticks together a few times to satisfy sceptical Chinese dinners that you can operate them, and plunge head first, so to speak, into real Chinese food, you cannot say that you have understood and savoured the taste of China.

George McDonald, China (Thomas Cook guide book) (Peterborough, 2002)

Chopsticks are pronounced the same as “bridge” in Japanese, as mentioned previously. Since the mid-nineteenth century, after Asia became incorporated into the modern world, the eating tool has indeed played such a part in bridging food cultures in that continent and those around the globe. As Chinese food moves from “China to Chinatown,” to borrow the title of J.A. G. Roberts’s recent book, chopsticks have also traveled along the pathway to regions outside the chopsticks cultural sphere of Asia. For a non-Asian customer, using chopsticks to convey food, perhaps, is the culmination and crystallization of the dining experience in a Chinese/Asian restaurant. To cater to and cultivate such interest, many Chinese restaurant owners also use “chopsticks” to name their restaurants outside China, for example “Golden Chopsticks” and “Bamboo Chopsticks” are popular. Of course, chopsticks are not only found in Chinese restaurants, they are also provided for customers at Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and sometimes Thai restaurants. As such, chopsticks use adds to the global appeal of Asian foods. If chopsticks are a “bridge,” they bring together food cultures not only between Asians and non-Asians but also among Asians.

Type
Chapter
Information
Chopsticks
A Cultural and Culinary History
, pp. 144 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Lach, Donald F., Japan in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 688Google Scholar
Ricci, Matteo, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583–1610, trans. Gallagher, Louis J. (New York: Random House, 1953), 66, 64Google Scholar
Temple, Richard Carnac, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667(Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967), vol. 3, 194–195
Macartney, George, An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney during His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794, ed. Cranmer-Byng, J. L. (London: Longmans, republished, 1972), 71Google Scholar
Hunter, W. C., The “Fan Kwae” at Canton: Before Treaty Days, 1825–1844 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1882; reprinted in Taipei, 1965), 40–41Google Scholar
Oliphant, Laurence, Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan, with an introduction by Gerson, J. J. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), vol. 1, 67–68Google Scholar
Lamb, Corrinne, The Chinese Festive Board (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985; originally published in 1935), 14–15Google Scholar
Rogaski, Ruth, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 104–164Google Scholar
Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin, “Moral Community of Weisheng: Contesting Hygiene in Republican China,”East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 3:4 (2009), 475–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin, “Habituating Individuality: The Framing of Tuberculosis and Its Material Solutions in Republican China,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 84:2 (Summer 2010), 262Google ScholarPubMed
Yip, Ka-che, Health and National Reconstruction in Nationalist China (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 1995), 10Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. & Isherwood, Christopher, Journal to a War (New York: Random House, 1939), 40Google Scholar
Yichang, Zhang, “Guoren buweisheng de exi” (The unhygienic habits of my countrymen), Xinyi yu shehui jikan (Journal of new medicine and society), 2 (1934), 156Google Scholar
Avieli, Nir, “Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe: Food and Cosmology in Hoi An, Vietnam,” Everyday Life in Southeast Asia, eds. Adams, Kathleen M. & Gillogly, Kathleen A. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 218Google Scholar
Libiao, Tang, “Han’guo de shili” (Eating etiquette in Korea), Dongfang shiliao yu baojian (Food medicine and health care in the East), 9 (2006), 8–9Google Scholar
Morrison, Ann M., “When Nixon Met Mao,” Book Review, Time, December 3, 2006Google Scholar
MacMillan, Margaret, “Don’t Drink the Mao-tai: Close Calls with Alcohol, Chopsticks, Panda Diplomacy and Other Moments from a Colorful Turning Point in History,” Washingtonian, February 1, 2007Google Scholar
“With Nixon in China: A Memoir,” The Digital Journalist, January 2005
Bird, Isabella, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 193–194Google Scholar
“Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forest,” New York Times, October 24, 2011
Zheng, Yang, “Chopsticks Controversy,” New Internationalist, 311 (April 1999), 4Google Scholar
Yang, Dabin, “Choptax,” Earth Island Journal, 21:2 (Summer 2006), 6Google Scholar
Moore, Malcolm, “Chinese ‘Must Swap Chopsticks for Knife and Fork’,” The Telegraph, March 13, 2013Google Scholar
Nuwer, , “Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forest” and “Life-Cycle Studies: Chopsticks,” World Watch, 19:1 (January/February 2006), 2Google Scholar
Spencer, Jane, “Banned in Beijing: Chinese See Green over Chopsticks,” The Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2008Google Scholar
Nuwer, , “Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forest”; “Life-Cycle Studies: Chopsticks”; and Yuan Yuan, “Yicixing kuaizi tiaozhan Zhongguo guoqing” (Disposable chopsticks challenge China as a country), Liaowang zhoukan (Outlook weekly), 33 (August 13, 2007)Google Scholar
Spencer, , “Banned in Beijing: Chinese See Green over Chopsticks”; “Chopped Chopsticks,” The Economist, 316:7665 (August 4, 1990)Google Scholar
Chiang, Kung-Yuh, Chien, Kuang-Li & Lu, Cheng-Han, “Hydrogen Energy Production from Disposable Chopsticks by a Low Temperature Catalytic Gasification,” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 37:20 (October 2012), 15672–15680CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiang, Kung-Yuh, Chen, Ya-Sing, Tsai, Wei-Sin, Lu, Cheng-Han & Chien, Kuang-Li, “Effect of Calcium Based Catalyst on Production of Synthesis Gas in Gasification of Waste Bamboo Chopsticks,” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 37:18 (September 2012), 13737–13745CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Cheanyeh, Chiang, Kuo-Chung & Pijanowska, Dorota G., “On-line Flow Injection Analysis Using Gold Particle Modified Carbon Electrode Amperometric Detection for Real-time Determination of Glucose in Immobilized Enzyme Hydrolysate of Waste Bamboo Chopsticks,” Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 666 (February 2012), 32–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asada, Chikako, Kita, Azusa, Sasaki, Chizuru & Nakamura, Yoshitoshi, “Ethanol Production from Disposable Aspen Chopsticks Using Delignification Pretreatments,” Carbohydrate Polymers, 85:1 (April 2011), 196–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shih, Yeng-Fong, Huang, Chien-Chung & Chen, Po-Wei, “Biodegradable Green Composites Reinforced by the Fiber Recycling from Disposable Chopsticks,” Materials Science & Engineering: A, 527:6 (March 2010), 1516–1521CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×