Description:
Culinary Nostalgia is the first Western-language book to explore the unique significance that the Chinese people attach to their country's many distinct regional foods, as well as the shifting roles that Western food plays in urban life. Author Mark Swislocki focuses on Shanghai--a food lover's paradise--as a rich intersection of urban, regional, and national identities, and examines how tastes registered change and continuity at pivotal moments throughout the city's history. From the earliest accounts of Shanghai's specialty foodstuffs to the dazzling variety of regional cuisines and restaurants in the metropolis of today, this book uncovers how city residents have constructed their relationship to the city itself, to other parts of China, and to the wider world. This new history of Shanghai develops an original framework for studying food culture as an intrinsic part of the way Chinese people connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine a future.
Review Quotes: "This remarkable, path-breaking book maps the parameters of a new field--food studies--as an integral part of the socio-cultural history of modern China. It is his subtle methodology, coupled with his superb knack for storytelling, that will cement Mark Swislocki's reputation as one of the most sophisticated cultural historians of his generation."--Dorothy Ko "author of Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding"