Fuchsia Dunlop: evaluation

Transcript context

…You’ve noted very well, Fuchsia, that Chinese cuisine has a bit of an elitist bias. These eight great, great cuisines are very much concentrated in more rich, coastal provinces. I wonder, can you just turn towards what a people’s history of Chinese cuisine could look like? How do we actually incorporate these folk traditions a little bit better into our conception of Chinese food so it is not so Cantonese and Jiangnan-focused? The first thing to say is, the eight great cuisines is a very recent scheme. People talk about it as if it is something really old, but as I’ve said in my book, I think it only goes back to about 1980 or something. There are many different ways of trying to express the regional diversity of Chinese food, all of them totally inadequate because it’s such a food-intricate culture. I think already, as you said, Jiangnan, which is the food of the eastern region around Shanghai, very elitist. Fine Cantonese food is very elitist, but Szechuanese already has a reputation for being a party folk cuisine, so it is represented. The eight great cuisines incorporate Anhui, which is not regarded as a very great culinary region now. I think the categorization of that scheme is actually quite irrelevant. If people took a fresh look at it, they would include . . . Also in the eight great cuisines, Hunan cuisine is one of them, but they’re talking about elitist Hunan food and not the wonderful spicy home cooking. I think in terms of what people actually want to eat, it’s not elitist. The cuisines that are most popular now — Szechuan, what else? Hunan. The spicy ones are more popular right now.…

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