FOOD IN CHINESE CULTURE

FOOD IN CHINESE CULTURE

Food in Chinese Culture

To say that the consumption of food is a vital part of the chemical process of life is tostate
the obvious, but sometimes we fail to realize that food is more than just vital. The only
other activity that we engage in that is of comparable importance to our lives are to the life
of our species is sex. As Kao Tzu, a Warring States-period philosopher and keen observer
of human nature, said, "Appetite for food and sex is nature."1 But these two activities are
quite different. We are, I believe, much closer to our animal base in our sexual endeavors
than we are in our eating habits. Too, the range of variations is infinitely wider in food than
in sex. In fact, the importance of food in understaning human culture lies precisely in its
infinite variability -variability that is not essential for species survival. For survival needs,
all men everywhere could eat the same food, to be measured only in calories, fats,
carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins. But no, people of different backgrounds eat very
differently. The basic stuffs from which food is prepared; the ways in which it is preserved,
cut up, cooked (if at all); the amount and variety at each meal; the tastes that are liked and
disliked; the customs of serving food;the utensils; the beliefs about the food's properties
-these all vary. The number of such "food variables" is great.

An anthropological approach to the study of food would be to isolate and identify the food
variables, arrange these variables systematically, and explain why some of these variables
go together or do not go together.

For convenience, we may use culture as a divider in relating food variables'hierarchically.
I am using the word culture here in a classificatory sense implying the pattern or style of
behavior of a group of people who share it. Food habits may be use as an important, or
even determining, criterion in this connection. People who have the same culture share the
same food habits, that is, they share the same assemblage of food variables. Peoples of
different cultures share different assemblages of food variables. We might say that
different cultures have different food choices. (The word choices is used here not
necessarily in an active sense, granting the possibility that some choices could be imposed
rather than selected.) Why these choices? What determines them? These are among the
first questions in any study of food habits.

Within the same culture, the food habits are not at all necessarily homogeneous. In as a
rule they are not. Within the same general food style, there are different manifestations of
food variables of a smaller range, for different social situations.People of different social
classes or occupations eat differently. People on festive occasions, in mourning, or on a
daily routine eat again differently. Different religious sects have different eating codes.
Men and women, in various stages of their lives, eat differently. Different individuals have
different tastes. Some of these differences are ones of preference, but others may be
downright prescribed. Identifying these differences, explaining them, and relating them to
other facets of social life are again among the tasks of a serious scholar of food.

Finally, systematically articulated food variables can be laid out in a time perspective, as
in historical periods of varying lengths.