ABSTRACT
It seems appropriate to begin with an ancient Chinese aphorism that captures something of the theme of this essay. The historian Sima Qian put it this way: “When the people are eating, they are in heaven” (Min yi shi wei tian). In other words, for most of Chinese history there can be nothing more important than a steady supply of food; all social life derives from this irreducible principle. A full stomach is the elemental definition of the “adequate life,” as defined in the introductory essay by Everett Zhang. Those who have lived and worked in China know that there is more behind Sima Qian’s adage than a concern for material subsistence. K. C. Chang, the leading scholar on this subject, argued “that Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable … [but] few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese” (1977: 11). During my four decades of field research in south China I have learned that the surest way to break the ice in unfamiliar settings is to broach the topic of food: “Last year I was in the mountains of western Jiangxi and I had steamed bean curd with catfish.” Or, another surefire conversation starter: “Two years ago I was just in time for the harvest of first-crop rice, served with pop-eyed shrimp in the Pearl River Delta, just south of Guangzhou.” After a few minutes of this, even the most hard-bitten, suspicious party secretary will be waxing lyrically about the noodles he had eaten as a youth in Shandong Province-and there will be tears in his eyes.
