Martin Jacques - When China Rules the World

At the centre of East Asia’s food tradition, as with language, is China, which enjoys one of the world’s most sophisticated food cultures, with an extremely long documented history, probably at least as long as that of any other food tradition of similar variety. [383] [383] Ibid., p. 4. Chinese cuisine, like all food cultures, has been shaped by the ingredients available and China has been particularly rich in the diversity of its plant life. Since ingredients are not the same everywhere, Chinese food acquired an indigenous character simply by virtue of those used. [384] [384] Ibid., pp. 6–7. Given the country’s size and population, there are, not surprisingly, huge regional variations in the character of Chinese food; indeed, it is more appropriate to speak of Chinese cuisines rather than a single tradition, with four schools often identified, namely Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Guangdong; and sometimes eight, with the addition of Hunan, Fujian, Anhui and Zhejiang; or even ten, with the further addition of Beijing and Shanghai. [385] [385] David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung, eds, The Globalization of Chinese Food (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), p. 4. From very early on, Chinese cuisine incorporated foreign foodstuffs — for example, wheat, sheep and goat from Western Asia in the earliest times, Indonesian spices in the fifth century, and maize and sweet potato from North America from the early seventeenth century — all of which helped to shape the food tradition. [386] [386] Ibid., p. 3; Chang, Food in Chinese Culture , pp. 5, 7; Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization , 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 428. The preparation of Chinese food involves, at its heart, a fundamental division between fan — grains and other starch foods — and ts’ai — vegetable and meat dishes. A balanced meal must involve the requisite amount of fan and ts’ai .

The Chinese way of eating is characterized by flexibility and adaptability, a function of the knowledge the Chinese have acquired about their wild plant resources. When threatened by poor harvests and famine, people would explore anything edible in order to stay alive. Many strange ingredients such as wood ears and lily buds, and delicacies such as shark fins, were discovered in this way and subsequently became an integral part of the Chinese diet. Chinese cuisine is also abundantly rich in preserved foods, another consequence of the need to find a means of survival during famines and the bleak winters of northern China. [387] [387] Chang, Food in Chinese Culture , pp. 7–9. The Chinese attitude towards food is intimately bound up with the notion of health and the importance of eating healthily, the underlying principles of which, based on the yin- yang distinction, are specific to Chinese culture. [388] [388] Ibid., pp. 9-10. Arguably few cultures are as food-orientated as the Chinese, who, whether rich or poor, take food extremely seriously, more so even than the French. [389] [389] Ibid., p. 363. For thousands of years food has occupied a pivotal position in Chinese life. The importance of the kitchen in the emperor’s palace is amply demonstrated by the personnel roster recorded in Zhou li (the chronicle, or rites, of the Zhou dynasty, which ruled 1122- 256 BC). Out of almost 4,000 people who had the responsibility of running the emperor’s residential quarters, 2,271 of them handled food and wine. [390] [390] Ibid., p. 11. While a standard greeting in English is ‘How are you?’ the Chinese equivalent is not infrequently ‘Have you eaten?’ K. C. Chang suggests that ‘the Chinese have shown inventiveness in [food] perhaps for the simple reason that food and eating are among things central to the Chinese way of life and part of the Chinese ethos.’ [391] [391] Ibid., pp. 13–14. Jacques Gernet argues, with less restraint, that ‘there is no doubt that in this sphere China has shown a greater inventiveness than any other civilization.’ [392] [392] Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250 - 76 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 135.

To this picture we should add Chinese tea. No one is quite sure when tea-drinking in China began. It was already highly developed during the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) but it certainly dates back much earlier than that. Chinese tea culture is as sophisticated, multifarious, discerning and serious as European wine culture. A traditional tea-house has no equivalent in Western culture; the diversity of teas on offer is bewildering, the ways of preparing and imbibing are intricate, the rituals elaborate, and the surroundings often fine. Although coffee is becoming more popular, tea remains overwhelmingly the national drink. [393] [393] Fuchsia Dunlop, ‘Enthused by China ’s Tea Infusions’, Financial Times , 11–12 September 2004. With the growing appetite for things Chinese, it seems likely that Chinese tea-houses will become a common sight in many Western cities before too long.

It seems faintly absurd, therefore, to suggest that Chinese food (or drink, indeed) is being Westernized by the likes of McDonald’s. Of course, Chinese food has been influenced by the West, for example in terms of ingredients (the chillies characteristic of Sichuan food were originally introduced by the Spanish), but the impact has been very limited. The exceptional attachment of the Chinese to their food — in contrast to some other aspects of their culture, like clothing and architecture, which they have been largely prepared to relinquish — is illustrated by the fact that overseas Chinese communities, from South-East Asia to North America, continue to eat Chinese food as their main diet. [394] [394] Chang, Food in Chinese Culture , p. 375; Wu and Cheung, The Globalization of Chinese Food , p. 5; also Chapters 3, 8-11.

Japanese food has been subject to rather greater Western influence. Japan abounds with homespun, Western-based food, much of which was invented in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese elite sought to imitate French cuisine in the late nineteenth century, and after the First World War Western dishes began to enter middle-class kitchens, albeit in a highly indi genized form. Essentially, foreign dishes were accommodated into the Japanese meal pattern as side dishes — thereby also mimicking the ways in which Japanese society accepted, and also cordoned off, foreign influences more generally. [395] [395] Katarzyna Cwiertka, ‘Culinary Globalization and Japan ’, Japan Echo , 26: 3, June 1999, pp. 53-8. According to Katarzyna Cwiertka:

The basic rules concerning the blending of Japanese and Western foodstuffs, seasonings, and cooking techniques were set around the third decade of the twentieth century and have continued to be followed to this day, as Japanese cooks carry on with the adaptation of foreign elements into the Japanese context. Some combinations catch on to eventually become integral parts of the Japanese diet. Others are rejected, but they may reappear again a few decades later, advocated as new and fashionable. [396] [396] Ibid., p. 56.

While the languages of East Asia are still overwhelmingly spoken within the region but not outside, this is not true of its food. Poor migrants have taken their food with them — Chinese restaurants, for example, have been the mainstay business of Chinese migrants, certainly in the early decades of settlement, as any Chinatown in the world will testify. While European food had only a limited impact on East Asia, mainly as a result of colonialism, reverse migration, from East Asia to the West, much of it over the last forty years, has enjoyed far greater culinary influence. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean and Malaysian restaurants — and, of course, Indian — have become a familiar sight in the West. [397] [397] Wu and Cheung, The Globalization of Chinese Food , p. xviii. Over the last twenty-five years, Japanese food has become very popular on the West Coast of the United States, leading to the creation of new Japanese-American hybrid dishes like the California roll. [398] [398] Ibid., pp. 56-8.