Overview

China in Seven Banquets ranges through 5,000 years of China's food history in seven iconic meals, from the opulent Eight Treasures fete to the 'Tail-Burning' banquet of the Tang Dynasty and the Qing court's extravagant 'complete Manchu-Han feast'. We also experience lavish repasts from literature and film, a New Year's buffet from 1920s Shanghai and a delivery menu from the hyper-global twenty-first century, and even peek at the tables of the not-so-distant future. Drawing upon decades of experience eating his way around China, Beijing-based historian Thomas David DuBois explains why culinary fashions come and go, as well as recreates dozens of historical recipes in a modern kitchen. From fermented elk to absinthe cocktails, this is Chinese food as you've never seen it before.

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9781789148619

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Reviews

"""China in Seven Banquets is a wonderfully pleasurable insight into the long history of Chinese food. DuBois's delightful prose is quite a banquet to feast on. This book will take pride of place in my library of cookery books, as it will in yours!""--Ken Hom OBE, author, chef, and TV presenter"

"""Anyone who wants to understand China's food culture needs to read this book. With the eye of a historian and experience in the kitchen, DuBois strips away the myths of China's culinary history, not only showing the evolution of recipes but explaining the problems that modernization has brought to China's diet. Much more than a history of food, this book is a history of China with a seat at the dining table.""--Rongguang Zhao, author of ""A History of Food Culture in China"" ""Take a seat at some of the greatest banquets in the history of China! Using resources from the period and first-hand accounts, this book brings the history and culture of China to life.""--Max Miller, New York Times-bestselling author of ""Tasting History"" ""China in Seven Banquets is a wonderfully pleasurable insight into the long history of Chinese food. DuBois's delightful prose is quite a banquet to feast on. This book will take pride of place in my library of cookery books, as it will in yours!""--Ken Hom OBE, author, chef, and TV presenter"

"""This book confronts the undoable--it characterizes China through several thousand years of changing foodways. The seven banquets selected--historical, literary, imagined and filmic, even a fast-food delivery feast--make for a micro-history of excess in a culture which famously celebrates its myriad regional cuisines. The writing bristles with menus, recipes and tales of ordinary and unlikely ingredients. DuBois is a great storyteller. What I love the most is his joyous engagement in the kitchen, with records of his experiments with the culinary unknown, both successful and not quite so.""--Vivienne Lo, director, UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity ""A brilliant piece of food history by a scholar who knows all about changes in commodities, tastes, values and techniques, but also conveys his love and first-hand experience of cooking in China. It powerfully debunks prejudices and preconceptions that there is one unique Chinese cuisine, and opens worlds of exquisite differences.""--Vincent Goossaert, professor of Daoist studies, �cole Pratique des Hautes �tudes, Universit� PSL, Paris ""Anyone who wants to understand China's food culture needs to read this book. With the eye of a historian and experience in the kitchen, DuBois strips away the myths of China's culinary history, not only showing the evolution of recipes but explaining the problems that modernization has brought to China's diet. Much more than a history of food, this book is a history of China with a seat at the dining table.""--Rongguang Zhao, author of ""A History of Food Culture in China"" ""Take a seat at some of the greatest banquets in the history of China! Using resources from the period and first-hand accounts, this book brings the history and culture of China to life.""--Max Miller, New York Times-bestselling author of ""Tasting History"" ""China in Seven Banquets is a wonderfully pleasurable insight into the long history of Chinese food. DuBois's delightful prose is quite a banquet to feast on. This book will take pride of place in my library of cookery books, as it will in yours!""--Ken Hom OBE, author, chef, and TV presenter"

Author Information

Thomas David DuBois is professor in the Folk Culture Research Center of Beijing Normal University. He is the author of numerous books on China's history and religion.

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