Culinary Nostalgia Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai [Hardcover]

Culinary Nostalgiais the first Western-language book to explore the unique significance that the Chinese people attach to their country's many distinct regional foods, as well as the shifting roles that Western food plays in urban life. Author Mark Swislocki focuses on Shanghaia food lover's paradiseas a rich intersection of urban, regional, and national identities, and examines how tastes registered change and continuity at pivotal moments throughout the city's history. From the earliest accounts of Shanghai's specialty foodstuffs to the dazzling variety of regional cuisines and restaurants in the metropolis of today, this book uncovers how city residents have constructed their relationship to the city itself, to other parts of China, and to the wider world. This new history of Shanghai develops an original framework for studying food culture as an intrinsic part of the way Chinese people connect to the past, live in the present, and imagine a future.

This remarkable, path-breaking book maps the parameters of a new fieldfood studiesas an integral part of the socio-cultural history of modern China. It is his subtle methodology, coupled with his superb knack for storytelling, that will cement Mark Swislocki's reputation as one of the most sophisticated cultural historians of his generation. Within a few pages,Culinary Nostalgiaestablishes itself as one of the most original, serious and thought-provoking contributions to the growing body of literature on Chinese culinary culture. This is a fascinating and highly original study of Shanghai based on personal reminiscences and meticulous research into newspapers and magazines, local gazetteers, sociological urban studies, and municipal archives. Aptly locating the history of restaurant culture in Shanghai within the larger history of the city, the author has created that rarity: a fine work of scholarship that is truly enjoyable to read. In meticulously tracing expressions of culinary nostalglS(