ABSTRACT
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Shantou in southern China, this chapter explores how rural migrants in urban China experience home in the context of food, ranging from buying to tasting, consuming to socialising. The chapter shows that the industrialisation and urbanisation of Shantou has ‘scaped’ the foodways of its inhabitants (locals and migrants) in new ways that reveal a subtle sense of place, the constant negotiation of belonging, and vexed attachments to ‘home’. Through visual evocations of taste – a tour of a marketplace, where one can ‘taste’ ethnic mixing and different foodways – we gain a glimpse into how locals and migrants shop for, identify, and experience food. The chapter argues that, along with other practices in the urban setting, rural migrants can experience home momentarily through everyday interactions in purchasing food in marketplaces. Constituted by the migrant vendors’ shouts, the greetings exchanged between vendor and customer, the unique manner of food presentation, and the subtle sense of being at ease, the foodscapes provide a social space for the migrants to feel at home away from home in their everyday interactions in marketplaces. It is through these interactions – physical as much as social – that the migrant experiences home as a sensory totality.
