Taking as its starting point the broad themes of globalisation and transnationalism, this paper focuses on what the author describes as an often neglected aspect of the growing interconnectedness of the late twentieth century: that is, the management of cultural influences moving between unequally positioned places within a single polity or region. In particular, the paper examines how the cuisine of Sichuan Province in south western China has been received in Guangzhou. Providing a summary of the historical background, the paper ends by outlining an agenda for further ethnographic research, which should look in particular at restaurateurs, restaurant workers, consumers and gastromic writers
Much of the recent anthropological scholarship on globalisation and transnationalism has emphasised the extent to which outside images and cultural forms are socially organised in new settings (Hannerz 1996), frequently paving the way for new diversity rather than simply implying global homogenisation (Miller 1995; Watson 1997).
Writers such as Ulf Hannerz (1996) have also paid attention to the unequal status of ‘cultural flows’ between centres and peripheries, albeit often with the problematic assumption that the centre is in North America and Western Europe (Ong 1996). In China, the reform policies initiated in the late 1970s have engendered not only increasing connectedness with the outside world and growing influences from centres of cultural production in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and the West, but also an awesome movement of people, goods and images between China’s regions.
Transnational capital investments are deeply implicated in much of this intra-national mobility, in particular in the labour migration from the inland to the coastal regions. Growing mobility and exacerbated economic differentiation between cities and the countryside and between different regions underpin recent Chinese discourses on spatial hierarchies which articulate places within and beyond China in a complex of centre-periphery relations (Liu 1997).
In this essay I wish to focus on an often neglected aspect of the growing interconnectedness of the late twentieth century: the management of cultural influences moving between unequally positioned places within a single polity or region.
Cantonese cuisine, i.e. the cuisine associated with Guangzhou (Canton) in Southern China and now also (and in some cases primarily) with Hong Kong, has long been considered one of China’s finest. Since the 1980s it has become increasingly popular in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei. Jocelyn Gamble describes the proliferation in early 1990s Shanghai of Cantonese restaurants and the increasing popularity of Cantonese-style morning tea there as a ‘culinary recognition of this region’s growing economic importance’ (1996:282). Even the restaurant at the airport in Chengdu, the political and culinary capital of Sichuan Province (Dunlop 1997), specialises not in the local, equally renown, cuisine, but serves instead primarily Cantonese-style tea and snacks (dimsam*).
The position of Cantonese cuisine in various parts of China and its impact on other regional cooking styles has recently been studied by David Y. H. Wu (1995) in the case of Taiwan. Wu compares the changing reception of Cantonese cuisine in post-war Taiwan to the recent interest in Taiwanese-style eating places in Hong Kong.
In this essay, I focus solely on how the cuisine of Sichuan Province in Southwestern China has been received in Guangzhou. Of the many regional cuisines on contemporary Guangzhou’s restaurant scene, Sichuanese is perhaps the most popular and numerically the most well represented. It is certainly the one most frequently written about in the Guangzhou press.
The rise of Sichuan cuisine in Guangzhou is a recent phenomenon but seems to have some historical precedent in the end of the Republican era (1912-1949). However, while Western-style restaurants were all the rage in Republican Guangzhou (Ho 1991:94-95), judging from contemporary guidebooks of the city, restaurants serving non-Cantonese Chinese food were something of a rarity prior to the 1940s, and may have been largely limited to the regional merchants’ guilds. This stands in sharp contrast to Republican Shanghai, a city of immigrants where ‘native-place identity was vigorously defined through cuisine’ (Goodman 1995:22). According to Bryna Goodman (ibid:23), while most Shanghai residents stuck to their own cuisines, by the 1930s local guidebooks were promoting culinary experimentation and both Cantonese and Sichuanese restaurants had become quite fashionable.
The situation in Guangzhou seems to have changed after the War ended in 1945, and Sichuan cuisine played a central role in this transformation. According to the official Guangzhou guidebook of 1948, ‘there are quite a few Hakka, Sichuanese, Jiang-Zhe [Lower Yangzi], Hui [Chinese Muslim], and [Buddhist] vegetarian restaurants’ (Liao 1948: 49).
Cheng Zhizheng, writing for the Shanghai-based magazine China Traveler, feels that ‘although the Guangzhounese pay much attention to the art of eating, yet their taste cannot satisfy us non-Guangdongnese. Friends from Shanghai find Cantonese cuisine as boring as English food’ (Cheng 1947:73). He reports that after the War, more and more people from outside the province were visiting Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Because of this, Sichuanese restaurants have sprung up to meet the demand; now Guangzhou already has two establishments, the Sichuan [Sichuan Fandian] and the Secondary Capital [Peidu Fandian], and Hong Kong has two restaurants, the Great China [Dahua Fandian] and the Happiness, Success, Longevity [Fu-Lu-Shou]. Some Cantonese restaurants, finding that business is not good, have adopted an original approach and now lay equal stress on ‘Cantonese’ and ‘Sichuanese’. Thanks to this, travellers from out-of-town can eat with great relish, and [the saying] ‘eat in Guangzhou’ has now really become appropriate! (ibid).
These sources support Endymion Wilkinson’s contention that Sichuanese cuisine became nationally significant only during World War II, ‘when people from the rest of the country moved to the wartime capital of Chongqing’ (1998:633), i.e. the ‘Secondary Capital’. However, in the materials I have found so far there is no indication of whether Sichuan food was actually popular among locals or only among Shanghainese and other ‘ex-pats’.
The transformation of Guangzhou’s restaurant industry after communist liberation in 1949 has not yet been properly documented. Nonetheless, it is clear that teahouses and winehouses in Guangzhou were either closed down, taken over by the state or collectivised between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s, part of the government’s efforts to transform China’s cities from centres of consumption into centres of industrial production (Whyte and Parish 1984:33-34,98). To my knowledge none of the small number of pre-liberation establishments which still exist in the city have ever specialised in Sichuan cuisine.
The reforms in the late 70s involved a shift in economic policy from ‘production first, livelihood later’ to production led by commerce and consumer demands, and Guangzhou was among the very first cities in China to become retransformed into a consumption centre (Vogel 1989). The quickly growing number of restaurants and teahouses run as state, collective, private, foreign or joint-venture enterprises catered to a variety of budgets, not only to the nouveaux riches. Moreover, by the early 1990s, Guangzhou’s restaurant goers could choose from a growing variety of culinary styles, including foreign fast food and Chinese regional cuisines. By the late 90s, the three major local dailies, the Yangcheng Evening News, the Guangzhou Daily and the New Express, were all carrying regular food sections disseminating to readers the latest trends in home cooking and dining out. The leading article in the first number of Cuisine (Meishi), the Yangcheng’s weekly food section, is entitled ‘Guangzhounese Open Wide to Eat Food from Near and Far’. It begins:
It used be the case that in Guangzhou one could get nothing to eat but Cantonese food. But now things have changed. Today’s culinary market is no longer dominated by Cantonese cuisine. One after another, cuisines from other provinces and countries have come on stage. Even supermarket aisles are now stocked full of goods from near and far. (Huang 1996).
It is hardly coincidental that the Yangcheng chose to start off its food section with an article about regional and foreign cuisines. Like the ‘Eating Out’ columns in the 1980s periodical Bombay: The City Magazine, which according to Frank Conlon ‘offered instructions that would encourage or enable middle-class Indians to consume new cuisines and innovative restaurant styles’ (1995:108), the new Guangzhou food media do not only describe the new diversity, they attempt to organise it for potential consumers. And like the nineteenth and twentieth century gastronomes of France and England discussed by Stephen Mennell (1985:266-290), Guangzhou’s culinary journalists attempt to lay down the norms of correct taste and disseminate these to the public.
Their frequent use of Cantonese colloquialisms, incomprehensible to most Chinese readers, strongly suggests that these journalists address themselves primarily to a local Cantonese-speaking readership. Like journalists in Bombay and the 1930s Shanghai press, they encourage locals to experiment with different tastes. At the same time, I suggest, by repeatedly juxtaposing ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ tastes, they attempt to reaffirm culinary boundaries and Guangzhouneseness in a Guangzhou which has rapidly been transformed by the arrival of goods, tastes and people from near and far. The aim is to educate Guangzhounese consumers to become both ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘locals’ (Hannerz 1990).
According to Huang Zhihai, the author of the aforementioned Yangcheng report, regional Chinese cuisines began to become popular in Guangzhou around 1990, with Sichuan cuisine leading the way. He maintains that the majority of the regional restaurants are middle-range establishments. The first were opened by the Guangzhou offices representing the various provincial governments, primarily to supply fellow regionals with a taste of home, not unlike the regional guilds in late Imperial and Republican times. Since then, more and more restaurants have been established, many of them attracting local clientele. Huang points to a central concern in Guangzhou culinary writings, a concern undoubtedly shared by many restaurateurs: how to adapt flavours to local standards without losing those customers, such as fellow regionals and local culinary pundits, who demand ‘authenticity’ (van den Berghe 1984).
This is particularly at stake with Sichuanese foods, not only the ‘outside cuisine’ most frequently discussed in the print media, but also one which is almost diametrically opposed in flavour to that of Cantonese, albeit sharing with it many characteristics assumed to be basic to Han Chinese food, such as the ‘complementary dualism’ between fan (grain staple) and cai (usually supplementary vegetable and meat dishes) (Thompson 1994:10).
Sichuanese cuisine is characterised by the heavy use of chillies, often combined with prickly ash to create the region’s famed mala, or ‘numbing and hot’, flavour (Dunlop 1997:7). According to Fuchsia Dunlop (ibid), the ability to eat chillies is frequently employed by Sichuanese and outsiders as a marker of Sichuneseness vis-à-vis other Chinese. By contrast, Cantonese cuisine is often described as being the most subtly flavoured of Chinese regional styles, with a huge emphasis placed on the freshness and quality of foodstuffs, especially fish and seafood (Anderson 1988: 207-217; Han 1992: 338-341). In numerous newspaper articles it is pointed out, invoking Chinese dietetics, that Guangzhounese are particularly wary of ‘heating’ (shanghuo, reqi) foods and can therefore not cope with the chillies and heavy flavouring of Sichuan food.
Nonetheless, some writers maintain that Guangzhounese are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their appreciation of regional cuisine. Huang Zhihai interviews Chen Xiaolin, manager of the popular Sichuanese restaurant Little Heavenly Abode (Xiao Dongtian). Chen is quoted as saying: ‘Actually Guangzhounese are increasingly accepting authentic Sichuan food. It used to be that [our] cooks would accommodate the Guangzhounese, now they let the Guangzhounese get used to the numbing and hot flavour.’ (Huang 1996). In a review of the recently opened fourth branch of the Sichuanese restaurant Red Sorghum, Lin Lin (1997) argues that the Guangzhounese have become used to regional cuisines and have ‘already come over their initial curiosity for novel tastes and have now matured to a point where they pursue authenticity (zhengzong).’
Ju Guokun (1997) goes even further in his assessment of Guangzhounese tastes. He asserts: ‘Cantonese cuisine, which has always been lightly flavoured and mild, has now begun to move towards spiciness’ (ibid). Ju maintains that this is a development of the last three years, and explains that Guangzhounese have begun to add chillies to quick-fried (jiang-bao) and claypot-fried ( je-je bou*) dishes, to mini-casseroles (boujai*) and to certain kinds of fish which have a particularly muddy flavour (niwei).
According to Ju Guokun, the foremost reason behind this trend is the impact of the recent flourishing of regional restaurants, in particular from Sichuan and Hunan. Not only do these restaurants cater to people from their home regions, he explains, but many Guangzhounese, ordinarily so afraid of heating (pa shanghuo), ‘have discovered that spicy food is really something else’ (ibid). Despite his assertions about changes in Guangzhounese tastes, Ju makes sure to clarify the boundaries between Cantonese cuisine and that of other regions: he emphasises that in Sichuan and Hunan restaurants, the ‘degree of spiciness’ (ladu) has to be reduced for many Guangzhounese customers. Moreover: the Cantonese spiciness is not the same as Sichuanese or Hunanese spiciness. It musn’t get too spicy and there is no interest in ‘numbing and hot’ flavouring. Spiciness in Cantonese cuisine comes principally from chilli, and sometimes a bit of ground pepper is used. Flower pepper, star anise and such things are rarely touched. (ibid).
It is also important to point out that the Cantonese dishes described by Ju to have been influenced by Sichuan and Hunan cooking are those likely to be found only at the lower end of the spectrum of Cantonese restaurants, in the so-called daaipaaidong. In the articles I have read, trends in up-market Cantonese establishments are never described as influences from regional cuisines. By contrast, David Wu (1995) describes how since the 1980s Hong Kong-style Cantonese cooking has increasingly set the standards for haute cuisine on the island, profoundly influencing cooking styles in Taiwanese and other regional-style restaurants. Chengdu’s finer restaurants serve lighter versions of Sichuanese street food (Dunlop 1997), an alteration which might have to do with Cantonese influences (Fuchsia Dunlop, personal communication).
In the Guangzhou press, Sichuan cuisine is occasionally described as being somewhat ‘refined’ (jingzhi) in comparison to many other regional cooking styles (Lin Lin 1997). However, it is usually bunched together with Hunanese, Northwestern, Shanxi, Northeastern and other styles from China’s poor inland provinces as being simple, hearty, heavy rural cuisine in contrast to light dishes of Guangzhou, served in small, delicate portions. In fact, the adaptations Sichuan and other regional restaurants make to Guangzhou tastes are sometimes presented as ‘improvements’. The common distinguishing feature of Guangzhou’s regional restaurants is: while preserving their own characteristics they also try to adapt as much as possible to Guangzhounese taste. From décor to the improvement (gaijin) of the dishes, everything is seeped not only in exotic fragrances (yixiang wei), but also in the fusion with Guangzhou culinary culture. Here, outsiders come to taste their native places, while Guangzhounese eat novelty. (Hu et al. 1998).
As in Western cities, where knowledge of ‘authentic’ restaurants and ethnic foodways has become important cultural capital among certain classes (Zukin 1995), the food columns in Guangzhou newspapers give us the impression that ‘mature’ consumers do not shun even the ‘numbing and hot’ flavours of Sichuan. However, in the Guangzhou food press, adaptation to local styles is not necessarily seen negatively, but sometimes as a refinement. There is a strong local culinary pride expressed in the reports. As I noted, outside influences are accepted, but only at the lower end of Cantonese cuisine and only if they do not seem to threaten established boundaries between regional foodways. If food is an important resource used to define regional identities in contemporary Guangzhou, then the local food media seem to be encouraging mutual interaction and borrowing, as long as boundaries do not become too blurred and as long as native Guangzhounese stay on top of the situation.
The Guangzhou food media are only one part in the city’s restaurant scene. They might indeed have an impact on the meanings of Sichuan cuisine to the city’s diverse consumers and may be important sources of the cultural capital aspiring Guangzhounese must accumulate to set themselves apart from others. The media may also be employed in the strategies of restaurateurs to promote their businesses. This may be done through advertising (in 1997 one Sichuan restaurant frequently advertised in the Yangcheng) or by more indirect means, such as sponsoring reviews, either with or without informing the readers of this sponsorship. Sponsoring has become a common phenomenon in Chinese newspapers (Zhao 1998:59-61), which are increasingly dependent on advertising and sales for their revenue, although they are still owned entirely by the state (Zhao 1998; Latham forthcoming).
The commercial aspect of media production is quite apparent in the writing of food sections. In addition to providing spaces for the promotion of specific restaurants and cuisines, the food media are themselves forms of entertainment through which delicacies can be vicariously consumed even by those who lack the wherewithal to physically indulge in the latest fashions. In other words, newspapers have their own economic agendas in writing about exotic cuisines and restaurants: their interest in managing the culinary diversity engendered by new regional and foreign restaurants does not necessarily reflect the gastronomic concerns of most Guangzhounese, who may be little interested in these novelties other than as a kind of spectacle. Moreover, gastronomic journalists entirely ignore the majority of the city’s Sichuan restaurants: the hundreds of simple, cheap holes-in-the-wall in the villages and neighbourhoods along Guangzhou’s urban-rural periphery, run by recent migrants and attracting primarily – but not exclusively – fellow regionals and other non-Guangzhounese. A more thorough understanding of the management of culinary diversity in Guangzhou might be achieved through ethnographic research among the actors that make up the city’s restaurant scene, in particular restaurateurs, restaurant workers, consumers (both native Guangzhounese and ‘outsiders’) and gastronomic writers.
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Jakob Klein is currently undertaking fieldwork in tea-houses in China.