The Unlikely Journey of a Chinese Food Expert
In the mid-2000s, American writer Leslie T Chang experienced an annual autumn ritual with her friend Scarlett Li in Shanghai – the celebrated hairy crab feast. These crustaceans, prized from Yangcheng Lake near Suzhou, represented more than just seasonal delicacy. They embodied centuries of Chinese culinary tradition that British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop has spent decades exploring and explaining to both Western and Chinese audiences.
Bridging Culinary Worlds
Fuchsia Dunlop's remarkable journey into Chinese cuisine began in 1994 when she arrived in Chengdu on a scholarship to study ethnic minority policies. Instead, she found herself captivated by Sichuan's distinctive flavours, eventually abandoning her original studies to enrol at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine as one of its first foreign students. Over three decades, she has built a career interpreting Chinese cooking for Western readers, initially focusing on Sichuan before expanding to other regions.
More surprisingly, Dunlop has gained significant influence within China itself. Her memoir Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper sold approximately 200,000 copies in China upon its 2018 release, while her latest work, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, has sold 50,000 copies since its publication there last year. Among Chinese food enthusiasts and professional chefs, she's known affectionately as "Fu Xia" and praised for her deep understanding of the country's culinary heritage.
Preserving a Disappearing Culinary World
Dunlop's authority stems from her meticulous documentation of Chinese food traditions during a period of rapid modernization. As China transformed into a modern industrial nation, traditional eating habits and cooking methods began disappearing. Dunlop arrived during what she calls a "prelapsarian world of cooking" – when families in Chengdu still cooked over charcoal braziers, made their own pickled cabbage and smoked sausage, and shopped daily in open-air markets.
Her Chinese translator, He Yujia, noted the profound impact of Dunlop's work: "It kind of shames us, because it's our own culture. She helps us rediscover what we've neglected for too long." This sentiment reflects how an outsider has become the voice for China's authentic culinary past.
In Invitation to a Banquet, Dunlop traces Chinese food history through 30 dishes, demonstrating how many supposedly modern food concepts have existed in China for centuries. The emphasis on fresh, seasonal, local ingredients dates back to the earliest dynasties, while concern for ingredient provenance and terroir has been a Chinese preoccupation for over 2,000 years – long before French or Californian gourmets embraced these ideas.
The Transformation of Chinese Eating Habits
The changes Dunlop witnessed extend beyond physical landscapes to fundamental shifts in how Chinese people eat. A generation ago, most Chinese knew how to cook, with men in some regions like Sichuan often being primary family cooks. Today, rising living standards and competitive work culture have altered this tradition. Recent surveys indicate over half the Chinese population now eats most meals outside home or relies on food delivery services.
Nutritional patterns have shifted dramatically. According to a 2021 Public Health Nutrition journal article, Chinese people now get 30% of calories from animal products and 29% from industrially processed foods – a stark increase from 1990 figures of 9.5% and 1.5% respectively. Obesity rates have increased fivefold, with corresponding rises in diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
This disconnect from traditional eating habits has created a yearning for simpler, healthier times, reflected in popular media like the television series A Bite of China and social media star Li Ziqi's videos depicting rural cooking traditions. Dunlop's work resonates because it documents what's being lost while celebrating the sophistication of Chinese gastronomy.
Through her scholarship and personal experience, Dunlop challenges Western perceptions of Chinese food as merely "popular, but cheap, low-status and junky." She traces this misconception to early Chinese restaurateurs abroad – uneducated labourers during the 1840s Gold Rush who created simplified versions of Cantonese dishes unlike the sophisticated cuisine back home.
Dunlop's legacy extends beyond cookbooks and memoirs. She represents a bridge between cultures and eras, preserving culinary knowledge through words when the physical reality – like Boss Xie's noodle shop in Chengdu – has disappeared beneath modern development. Her work stands as a testament to Chinese culinary ingenuity and a reminder of what endures when places and practices vanish.
