Fuchsia Dunlop: preference

Transcript context

…Here’s a question one of your readers wrote to me by email. Maybe it’s a bit intangible, but I’ve had the same wonder. Given how much you love China, love Chinese food, work on projects that require your immersion in the food culture of China, just being away from China for as long as you sometimes are, how do you manage that intellectually, emotionally, otherwise, that sense of otherness? I mean, do you have that antsiness when you’re in London or Topeka, Kansas, and it’s like, “My goodness. I need to be in China now”? How is that? I would say that the two sides of my life are much more closely related. I do go to China very frequently now. I cook a lot of Chinese at home. My Chinese friends sometimes say that my London home is more Chinese than theirs because it’s so full of things from China. [laughs] Also, when I first came back from studying in China, I never heard Mandarin in Britain. It was too expensive to call friends in China. This was just before email. Now, I’m constantly chatting with chefs on social media. I can ask them questions about a dish that I’m making. My Chinese friends sometimes come here. Chinatown in London and Chinatowns generally have more and more Chinese food and Chinese restaurants. I would say there’s much greater integration of China in the West, and my personal Chinese life in my Western Chinese life, which I also like very much. You’ve written favorably about the 18th-century Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber. Most Americans haven’t read that. Tell us why it’s important.…

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