Culinary Nostalgia
Douban
Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai
Mark Swislocki
overview
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.
contents
List of Illustrations
List of Weights, Measures, and Currencies
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Thinking about Food in Chinese History
1. “Only Available in Shanghai”:
The Honey Nectar Peach and the Idea of Shanghai in Late Imperial China
2. A Tale of Two Cities:
Food Culture and the Urban Ideal in Late Qing Shanghai
3. From Modernity to Tradition:
Western Food in Late Qing and Early Republican Shanghai
4. “Where the Five Directions Come Together”:
Regional Foodways, the Nation, and Consumer Culture in Republican Shanghai
5. Serve the People:
Socialist Transformations of Shanghai Food Culture
Epilogue: Shanghai Cuisine Past and Present: Between Benbangcai and Haipaicai
Notes
Bibliography
Index
