Gendered Foodways in Modern Chinese Literature, 1890S–1940S
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations Fall 2020 Digesting Gender: Gendered Foodways in Modern Chinese Literature, 1890s–1940s Zhuo Feng Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Feng, Z.(2020). Digesting Gender: Gendered Foodways in Modern Chinese Literature, 1890s–1940s. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6121 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DIGESTING GENDER: GENDERED FOODWAYS IN MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE, 1890S–1940S by Zhuo Feng Bachelor of Arts Xi’an International Studies University, 2007 Master of Arts Capital Normal University, 2013 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2020 Accepted by: Jie Guo, Major Professor Michael Hill, Major Professor Catherine Keyser, Committee Member Meili Steele, Committee Member Tan Ye, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Zhuo Feng, 2020 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION To Feng Guoding, Fan Yuxiang, Feng Ximin, and Paul iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my two chairs Jie Guo and Michael Hill, for their years support and guidance. Jie Guo taught me how to be an honest writer, and Michael Hill was always there to guide me in my Ph.D. studies. I would like to seize this opportunity to thank them, for their helpful suggestions, comments, and criticism. Also, a heartfelt thanks to all my committee members: Catherine Keyser, Meili Steele, and Tan Ye, who, in many ways, supported me in this endeavor. I am deeply indebted to all my professors in the Comparative Literature Program. Yvonne Ivory, who gave me a lot of helpful advice; Jeanne Garane, who was my first graduate advisor and always offered me warm words of encouragement; and Gregory Patterson, who gave me helpful feedback on my writing. Special thanks to my former supervisors Bill Fairchild and Henning Liese in the Ted Mimms Foreign Language Learning Center, as well as fellow graduate students and staff members at the University of South Carolina. I am happy to have spent a part of my life with them, and this experience at University of South Carolina will always stay with me. iv ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I investigate Han Bangqing (1856–1894), Lao She (1899– 1966), and Su Qing’s (1914–1982) works to study the literary representations of how people purchased, prepared, shared, and ate food in different social contexts allowing them to adapt to new gender norms. I contend that the intersection of food, gender and literature stages the process through which people reconciled different and sometimes conflicting gender norms through their everyday eating practices. When encountering new cooking and eating practices in these literary works, people reflect upon their past lives and, wittingly or unwittingly, begin to accept different gender norms, and modify their subjectivities. This all culminates in the process of “digestion,” which refers not only to the bodily function, but also how individuals internalize cultural norms through culinary and alimentary practices. These authors’ own personal conflicts with food and gender are reflected and negotiated in their writings about how characters establish gender relations by participating in various eating acts. The literary representations of everyday eating acts offer new ways to interrogate and revise how gender relations were imagined, and also shows a fluid understanding of gender in modern Chinese history. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1 1.1 FOOD AND GENDER IN CHINESE CULTURAL TRADITION ........................................5 1.2 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................15 1.3 GENDER IN FOOD STUDIES ..................................................................................28 1.4 CHAPTER SUMMARIES .........................................................................................38 CHAPTER 2: EATING AND GENDER RELATIONS IN THE SING-SONG GIRLS OF SHANGHAI .....45 2.1 BACKGROUND .....................................................................................................50 2.2 FROM MIGRANTS TO SHANGHAI CITIZENS ..........................................................68 2.3 FROM GARDENS TO COURTESAN HOUSES ...........................................................88 2.4 FROM FEMININE VIRTUE TO BUSINESS ETHICS ....................................................96 2.5 A GAME OF LOVE: BUSINESS AND ROMANCE ....................................................103 2.6 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................115 CHAPTER 3: GLUTTONOUS DEVIANTS IN RICKSHAW BOY ................................................119 3.1 “GOOD WOMEN” AND “BAD WOMEN” ..............................................................124 3.2 FOOD AND WORK ETHIC FOR A RICKSHAW PULLER ..........................................127 3.3 GLUTTONY, WOMEN AND MASCULINITY ..........................................................133 3.4 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................149 vi CHAPTER 4: COOKING AND EATING IN SU QING’S WORKS ...............................................154 4.1 WILD FOOD IN CHILDHOOD ...............................................................................161 4.2 COOKING AND EATING IN MARRIAGE ................................................................168 4.3 HOMETOWN TASTE IN THE CITY ........................................................................180 4.4 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................191 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION .................................................................................................194 REFERENCES .....................................................................................................................200 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When eating, people take food’s nutritional value, digest and absorb it, and then excrete the rest. During this process, we also accept certain cultural norms, interpret and internalize them, and meanwhile refuse to follow others. The food we eat, the way we cook, and the company we keep while eating, helps us to establish bonds with different social groups, local cultures, histories, and traditions. Through cooking and eating, people transform “nature” into “culture.” In this dissertation, I focus on how Chinese people, particularly new city migrants, shaped their understanding of gender and gender relations during late Qing and Republican periods through changes in cooking and eating practices. From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, China experienced dramatic social and cultural changes. It transitioned from an agrarian to a developing capitalist society, while experiencing several foreign invasions and domestic rebellions.1 Many people, who were formerly elites, businessmen or farmers in the countryside, moved to Beijing and Shanghai to escape violence or seek new opportunities. The different social settings, infrastructure, and customs in the city profoundly influenced how people prepared and consumed food. I analyze several modern Chinese literary works to study representations of how people purchased, 1 These include The First Opium War (1839–1843), The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), The Second Opium War (1856-1860), The First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and The Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). 1 prepared, shared, and ate food in different social contexts allowing them to adapt to new gender norms. Specifically, I focus on how these literary works interacted with everyday life to inform people’s subjectivities. In this dissertation, I focus on the gendered aspect of subjectivity, and I believe that these novels show that through the experiences of cooking and eating, the knowledge, feelings, and memories surrounding food and foodways, call people’s previous understandings of gender into question. With the modification of subjectivity, the characters actively oppose or promote certain gender norms to direct their gender relations. The reason why I use the term subjectivity instead of identity is that subjectivity describes many different ways for individuals to understand themselves, their realities, and their relations to others and the world around them. Subjectivity captures the ambiguities in self, which is not neatly unified, but is always in the process of being formed according to people’s experiences. I select works in this time span from Han Bangqing 韓邦慶 (1856-1894), Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966) and Su Qing 蘇青 (1914-1982), who