Zhou Hong-cheng
PhD Candidate, Department of Humanities, Zhejiang University
The Period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was a revolutionary time of Sino-foreign food culture exchange. With many American crops moving from the New World into East Asia and being planted in China, this was the most intense period of food exchange between the Old World and the New. We will discuss the movement and ways of production of food materials, comparing the psychological state and eating behaviors during the process of food production, distribution and consumption. Mutual records and communication issues between the different cultures in different geographies and different national dietary knowledge will be thoroughly studied.
Western literature on food is a mirror in which we can find how they assessed and recorded Chinese food ways from the past. This is a way to uncover the traditional Chinese food civilization which represents the national characteristics. The exchange of Chinese and Western food culture during the Ming and Qing Dynasties was a world-wide food revolution that created a paradox between increasing food production and a declining quality of food and nutrition, which is the basic contradiction of today's world food culture. The core of this paradox is how to protect human health and the safety of life and its quality today. The pursuit of food health and nutrition in modern society does not mean there is a need to forget traditional food culture, although perhaps healthy and nutritious food just existed on the table of the ancient Chinese people.
(Presented in the 2012 Asian Food Heritage Forum: Harmonizing Culture , Technology and Industry, 20-21 August 2012, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Chinese Dietary Culture Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, and Ministry of Culture, Thailand)