ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the variegated urban foodscapes with sustainable, as well as unsustainable, dimensions and asks how the culinary heritage of China and the habits of routine create a dynamic set of “ordinary ethics”. Examining various values and understandings of “good food”, consumption of food in practice is shown to be always laden with sustainable dimensions of all sorts, enabling us to think of the possibilities for more sustainable outcomes. The conclusion offers approaches that go beyond the notion of individualized consumers embedded in various neo-liberal, market-led approaches, but also encoded in much of the literature that sets out to address a “values-action” gap in terms of “willingness to pay” a premium for sustainably sourced food. Instead, it shows how evolution in food consumption in China is embedded in wider cultures as an evolving “habitus” shaping practices.
