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The Globalization of Chinese Food ANTHROPOLOGY OF ASIA SERIES Series Editor: Grant Evans, University ofHong Kong Asia today is one ofthe most dynamic regions ofthe world. The previously predominant image of 'timeless peasants' has given way to the image of fast-paced business people, mass consumerism and high-rise urban conglomerations. Yet much discourse remains entrenched in the polarities of 'East vs. West', 'Tradition vs. Change'. This series hopes to provide a forum for anthropological studies which break with such polarities. It will publish titles dealing with cosmopolitanism, cultural identity, representa­ tions, arts and performance. The complexities of urban Asia, its elites, its political rituals, and its families will also be explored. Dangerous Blood, Refined Souls Death Rituals among the Chinese in Singapore Tong Chee Kiong Folk Art Potters ofJapan Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics Brian Moeran Hong Kong The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis Edited by Grant Evans and Maria Tam Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania Jan van Bremen and Akitoshi Shimizu Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore WOng Heung wah The Legend ofthe Golden Boat Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma Andrew walker Cultural Crisis and Social Memory Politics of the Past in the Thai World Edited by Shigeharu Tanabe and Charles R Keyes The Globalization of Chinese Food Edited by David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung The Globalization of Chinese Food Edited by David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS HONOLULU Editorial Matter © 2002 David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung Published in North America by University of Hawai'i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 First published in the United Kingdom by Curzon Press Richmond, Surrey England Printed in Great Britain Library 0/ Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data The globalization of Chinese food / edited by David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung. p. cm. - (Anthropology of Asia series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2582-9 (alk. paper) I. Food habits-China. 2. Cookery, Chinese-Social aspects. 3. Chinese-Ethnic identity. 4. Chinese-Foreign countries. I. Wu, David Y. H. II. Cheung, Sidney C. H. III. Series. GT2853.C6 G56 2002 394.1'0951-dc21 2001053967 Contents List of Contributors Vll ~if~~ ~ List of Tables IX Acknowledgements X Foreword: Food for Thought Xll Sidney w," Mintz Introduction: The Globalization of Chinese Food and Cuisine: Markers and Breakers of Cultural Barriers 1 David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung I Sources of the Globe 1 Food Culture and Overseas Trade: The Trepang Trade between China and Southeast Asia during the Qing Dynasty 21 . Dai Yifeng 2 Sacred Food from the Ancestors: Edible Bird Nest Harvesting among the Idahan 43 Mohamed Yusoff Ismail 3 Improvising Chinese Cuisine Overseas 56 David Y. H. Wu II Chinese Food and Food for Chinese 4 The Development of Ethnic Cuisine in Beijing: On the Xinjiang Road 69 Zhuang Kongshao 5 Cantonese Cuisine (Yue-cai) in Taiwan and Taiwanese Cuisine (Tai-cai) in Hong Kong 86 David Y. H. Wu v THE GLOBALIZATION OF CHINESE FOOD 6 Food and Cuisine in a Changing Society: Hong Kong 100 Sidney C. H. Cheung 7 Food Consumption, Food Perception and the Search for a Macanese Identity 113 Louis Augustin-Jean III Globalization: Cuisine, Lifeways and Social Tastes 8 Heunggongyan Forever: Immigrant Life and Hong Kong Style Yumcha in Australia 131 Siumi Maria Tam 9 Chinese Dietary Culture in Indonesian Urban Society 152 Mery G. Tan 10 The Invention of Delicacy: Cantonese Food in Yokohama Chinatown 170 Sidney C. H. Cheung 11 Chinese Food in the Philippines: Indigenization and Transformation 183 Doreen G. Fernandez Index 191 vi List of Contributions Dr. Louis Augustin-Jean, Honorary Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Professor Sidney C. H. Cheung, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Professor Dai Yifeng, Professor, Department of History, Xiamen University, People's Republic of China. Professor Doreen G. Fernandez, Professor, Department of Commu­ nication, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Professor Mohamed Yusoff Ismail, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Professor SidneyMintz, Emeritus Professor, Department ofAnthropology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A. Professor Siumi Maria Tam, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Professor Mely G. Tan, Professor, Social Research Department, Atma Jaya Catholic University, Indonesia. Professor David Y. H. Wu, Professor, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Professor Zhuang Kongshao, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Central University of Nationalities, Peking, People's Republic of China. vii List of Figures 1.1 Map of trepang trade between China and Southeast Asia 22 2.1 Map of the limestone caves of Sabah 48 viii List of Tables 1.1 Imported trepang of China in the Qing Dynasty (1867-1900) 30 1.2 Imported trepang of Shanghai and Xiamen (1865-1900) 35 1.3 The re-export of trepang from Shanghai and Xiamen (1870-1900) 36 ix Acknowledgements This book began to take shape at the 5th Symposium on Chinese Dietary Culture in 1997 under the theme of'Chinese Foodways in the 21st Century: Prospects of Globalization of Chinese Food and Cuisine', which was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-sponsored by the Eoundation of Chinese Dietary Culture and the Department of Anthropology, CUHK. Several papers presented at the Symposium are now included in the book (Chapters 3, 8, 9, and 10). The book took much of its present form, however with the additional inclusion of papers presented at a workshop on 'Food and Ethnography', held in the summer of 1998 also at CUHK. We would like to thank the Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture (Taipei) for funding the Symposium of 1997, from which we were able to select several papers for inclusion in our book. For organizing the symposium we would also like to thank Ms. Chang Yu-hsin and other staffmembers ofthe Foundation, the Former Chairman ofthe Foundation, Mr. George Chau-shi Wong, and many attendants and discussants from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and other institutions around the world. We also would like to extend our gratitude to the Hong Kong Universities Grants Council for sponsoring the research project under which the Food and Ethnography workshop was funded. The project was entitled 'Cooking Up Hong Kong Identity: A Study of Food Culture, Changing Tastes and Identity in Popular Discourse (CUHK 314/95H)', and David Y. H. Wu, Maria S. M. Tam, Sidney C. H. Cheung, and Grant Evans were the investigators. Finally, this book would not have been possible without the support and constructive comments of the following people: Grant Evans of the University of Hong Kong for enthusiastic encouragement of putting the selected English papers ofthe conference and workshop into a book; Maria S. M. Tam and Tan Chee Bengfor spending considerable time and energy in x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS organizing the conference and workshop; Chen Sea-ling and Tong Ho Van for their research assistance, Mary Day for excellent and patient copy editing, Doris Lee for spending time on the final version, and Lam Hiu-yin and Joyce Chan for their secretarial assistance. D. Y. H. Wu and S. C. H. Cheung xi Foreword: Food for Thought! Sidney W Mintz Students offood - social scientists, nutritionists and humanists alike - face a serious challenge in their work. The anthropologists among us need to gather data among living, active persons, observing and recording how people engage in all of the concrete tasks that lead up to, and that follow, the consumption of food: the gathering and hunting of wild plants and of animal foods; the planting and harvesting of vegetable foods; the care, breeding and raising of domestic animals for food; the processing by dehydration, canning and otherwise of those substances that become foods, such as bean curd, pickled vegetables, salted fish, and the distilled or fermented sauces and liquors that accompany them (Thompson and Cowan 1995); and - once the meal is consumed and the social relationships that mark it have been strengthened, and renewed - the cleaning up, the disposal of waste, the laundering of linens, and the washing of cooking instruments, plates and chopsticks.2 We engage in the hard work of careful observation and recording because we want to understand, in a concrete and particular manner, how food is produced, distributed and consumed, in all of its many forms. The history of eating is precisely that, a history - tied to environment, ecology, technical achievement and evolving cultural forms. All other life feeds; the human species eats; the foods ofall other species are part ofnatural history; the foods of the human species have both a natural history and a history. The comparative history of human foods, like the comparative history of any other cultural achievement, thus forms an essential chapter in pan-human experience. Accordingly, we aspire to understand what - other than as nourishment - food and its consumption mean for the life ofhumankind. That requires us to rise above the carefully-gathered materials we possess in order to analyse, on a much wider canvas, where our specific case fits, within the great range of variability that characterizes human eating xii FOREWORD: FOOD FOR THOUGHT behaviour. We recognize that cultural variety is typical of our species: variety in what we eat, in how we eat, in what meanings we bestow on our foods, or derive from them. There follow in this volume contributions on the trepang or beche de mer and birds' nests, on the ethnography offood behaviour, on street foods and coffee shops - the down-to-earth food substances, material culture and locational detail that allow us to come close to real people, satisfying real hungers.

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