Culinary Nostalgia : Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai

__Culinary Nostalgia__is the first Western-language book to explore the unique significance that the Chinese people attach to their country's many distinct regional foods, as well as the shifting roles that Western food plays in urban life. Author Mark Swislocki focuses on Shanghai—a food lover's paradise—as a rich intersection of urban, regional, and national identities, and examines how tastes registered change and continuity at pivotal moments throughout the city's history. From the earliest accounts of Shanghai's specialty foodstuffs to the dazzling variety of regional cuisines and restaurants in the metropolis of today, this book uncovers how city residents have constructed their relationship to the city itself, to other parts of China, and to the wider world. This new history of Shanghai develops an original framework for studying food culture as an intrinsic part of the way Chinese people connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine a future. 'Culinary Nostalgia' is the first Western-language book to explore the unique significance that the Chinese people attach to their country's many distinct regional foods, as well as the shifting roles that Western food plays in urban life. Author Mark Swislocki focuses on Shanghai—a food lover's paradise—as a rich intersection of urban, regional, and national identities, and examines how tastes registered change and continuity at pivotal moments throughout the city's history. From the earliest accounts of Shanghai's specialty foodstuffs to the dazzling variety of regional cuisines and restaurants in the metropolis of today, this book uncovers how city residents have constructed their relationship to the city itself, to other parts of China, and to the wider world. This new history of Shanghai develops an original framework for studying food culture as an intrinsic part of the way Chinese people connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine a future. -- Publisher "Culinary Nostalgia is the first Western treatment of the unique significance that the Chinese people attach to their country's many distinct regional foods, as well as of the shifting roles that Western food plays in urban life. Author Mark Swislocki focuses on Shanghai as a rich intersection of urban, regional, and national identities, and examines how tastes registered change and continuity at pivotal moments throughout the city's history. From the earliest accounts of Shanghai's specialty foodstuffs to the dazzling variety of regional cuisine and restaurants in the metropolis of today, this book uncovers how city residents have constructed their relationship to the city itself, to other parts of China, and to the wider world. This new history of Shanghai develops an original framework for studying food culture as an intrinsic part of the way Chinese people connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine a future." --Book Jacket Introduction : thinking about food in Chinese history "Only available in Shanghai" : the honey nectar peach and the idea of Shanghai in late imperial China A tale of two cities : food culture and the urban ideal in late Qing Shanghai From modernity to tradition : Western food in late Qing and early Republican Shanghai "Where the five directions come together" : regional foodways, the nation, and consumer culture in Republican Shanghai Serve the people : socialist transformations of Shanghai food culture Epilogue : Shanghai cuisine past and present : between benbangcai and haipaicai. This book argues that regional food culture is intrinsic to how Chinese connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine their future. It focuses on Shanghai—a food lover's paradise—and identifies the importance of regional food culture at pivotal moments in the city's history, and in Chinese history more generally.