A Study of Eating
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Summary
Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author carefully cites, analyzes, and organizes his material, weaving together food, folk customs, and the broader history of popular culture into a rich body of knowledge that is also full of cultural interest.
In structure, the book begins with the "kitchen god" worshipped in Chinese folk tradition, then discusses basic food elements such as water, fire, oil, and salt, before moving on to staple foods like bing, mantou, and noodles, then to local delicacies, and finally concluding with the "Manchu-Han Imperial Feast"—together forming a distinctive "history of Chinese food."
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers with a strong interest in traditional Chinese culture, folk history, and food culture.
- Readers who enjoy tracing historical threads and cultural origins in the details of daily life.
- Readers who seek substantive reading and appreciate essays that blend erudition with readability.
- Readers who wish to deepen their cultural literacy and are curious about the cultural logic behind the pursuit of refined cuisine.
Not a good fit for
- Readers looking for practical recipes, cooking techniques, or the latest restaurant recommendations.
- Readers seeking light entertainment and fast-paced reading who lack patience for extensive citations of historical documents and textual research.
Reading tips
- It is best not read cover to cover; keep it as a bedside or desk book and dip into entries that interest you at your own pace.
- While reading, relate the book's textual research to your own experience and compare it with contemporary food customs to appreciate cultural continuity and change.
- The book quotes many ancient texts; if something is unclear, skip it for now—grasping the overall context and core ideas matters more, and the pleasure lies in the process of inquiry itself.
About the publisher
Zhonghua Book Company is a publisher known for collating ancient texts and academic publishing, with its output centered on Eastern philosophy, culture, classic works, art, and historical reading. Its library contains 532 titles, including Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms, Guo Qingfan's Collected Commentaries on Zhuangzi, the four-volume Chinese Literature: Four Great Classical Novels, and the two-volume Table of Seal and Clerical Script Forms from Qin, Han, Wei, and Jin. These titles span historical classics, commentaries on the philosophers, classical novels, and philological reference works. Representative authors include Chen Shou, Guo Qingfan, Wu Cheng'en, Shi Nai'an, Cao Xueqin, Luo Guanzhong, Xu Wenwu, and the Hanyu Dazidian character-form group, reflecting a focus on primary sources and scholarly editors. Its publishing character lies in combining authoritative editions and annotated texts with both accessible classics and specialized research. Public information on its fuller catalog is limited; this note describes only the directions evident in the library's holdings.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 新版序
- 自序
- 厨神
- 灵水
- 火
- 油
- 盐
- 酱
- 醋
- 糖
- 羹
- 八珍
- 饼
- 馒头
- 面条
- 粽子
- 饆饠
- 米线
- 馄饨
- 豆腐
- 熊掌
- 烧鹅
- 吃羊
- 金齑玉脍
- 鲤鱼
- 鲥鱼
- 鲫鱼
- 河豚
- 鱼丸
- 食蟹
- 潘鱼
- 吃蛇
- 东坡肉
- 东坡羹
- 荠菜
- 马兰
- 鲃肺汤
- 佛跳墙
- 豆芽
- 面筋
- 皮蛋
- 痀偻承蜩
- 餐菊
- 竹笋
- 涮肉
- 燕窝
- 北京烤鸭
- 吃素
- 腊八粥
- 冰食·冰酪
- 谭家菜
- 满汉全席
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About the author
Zhu Wei, born in Shanghai in 1951, is a veteran media professional. He began working as an editor at China Youth in 1978 and served as deputy director of the fiction department at People's Literature from 1983 to 1993, during which he helped bring out writers such as Mo Yan, Yu Hua and Su Tong. In 1993 he founded the magazine Philharmonic, and from 1995 to 2014 he was editor-in-chief of Sanlian Life Weekly. His eleven works in the collection fall roughly into two groups: annotated English editions of foreign classics such as The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, A Poem Collection of Tagore and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, aimed at study and exam preparation; and social-science and cultural essays such as Cultural Anthropology and Intangible Cultural Heritage and On Quality, along with technical titles such as Numerical Computation Methods (3rd Edition) and An Introduction to Sound Reinforcement Technology. His editing and writing span both humanities popularization and technical subjects.
