It has been observed that while all other life feeds, the human species eats.¹ The act of ‘eating’, which distinguishes humans from other forms of life, has brought about the phenomenon of different cultures pursuing dissimilar diets and having distinctive ways of preparing food. Since for each culture, food is symbolic in a unique way, the study of one’s cultural gastronomical practices enables an introspective examination of one’s own cultural traditions as well as facilitates the understanding of other cultures around the world.

The Chinese take pride in their food culture and the fact that their ethnical culinary excellence is...

Wine has emerged as a recurring theme in classical Chinese prose in its three thousand years of historical development. At least three points of general significance may be kept in mind in studying early prose writings related to wine. First, wine was a luxury in ancient China; making wine required a lot of labour and grain. Second, the consumption of wine can produce diametrically opposite effects: duly enjoyed on ceremonial occasions, wine may foster a harmonious feeling between a ruler and his ministers and subjects, yet excessive drinking may cause chaos and even ruin human relationships or corrupt government in...

The symbolic significance of alcohol and drunkenness is ambivalent, encompassing both its intense pleasures and unruly consequences.² We find this ambivalence stated neatly in the definition of ‘alcohol’ given by Xu Shen 許慎(c. 58–147 CE):

‘Alcohol’ (jiu) means ‘to achieve’ (jiu). It is what is used to achieve the good and evil in human nature. It is composed of 水 and 酉, and 酉 is also the phonetic. It also means ‘to produce’, since it is what produces good and bad fortune. In ancient times Yi Di invented unfiltered ale. Yu tasted it and found it excellent, but then...

Wine has been a motif in Chinese poetry since the Classic of Poetry (Shi jing 詩經, eleventh–sixth century BCE).¹ In its early days, wine was mostly associated with the aristocracy’s sacrificial rituals and social feasts, for it was a luxury product predicated on the surrender of precious grains. In due course it took on various functions and meanings in literati culture: as social catalyst and moral corruptor, emotional anaesthetic and intensifier, later as psychological liberator, artistic inspiration and spiritual transporter. Exciting and numbing the rational mind chemically, wine can be an aid to merriment and an agent of social-emotive...

This chapter examines the treatment of tea in Tang and Song dynasty poetry. We find a very clear shift in the way poets write about the drink. This shift is more subtle, complicated, and nuanced than the dynastic change from Tang to Song, but it does roughly correspond with that change. The shift is most obvious when comparing poems of the mid-and late Tang periods (roughly 780–900) with those of the mid-eleventh century (the literary ‘height’ of the Northern Song). These two periods are the focus of this chapter. What we find is that poets adopted distinctly different approaches...

Of the various books that the late Ming dynasty historian and essayist Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597–1684?)⁵ either wrote or compiled over the course of the long and prolific second half of his life, many did not safely negotiate that passage from manuscript to imprint that so often spelled the difference between survival and loss of text in China.⁶ Although, somewhat unusually in this respect, the late 1980s and 1990s saw the first publication of a number of his manuscripts, found preserved in various libraries,⁷ sadly, given both Zhang Dai’s privileged upbringing and his finely-honed instincts for fine living, one...

Food and sex are commonly perceived as two of the most dominant neurotic compulsions in any living creature—a phenomenon that is substantiated by different disciplinary investigations. The anthropologist Richard Leakey, for example, acknowledges the importance of such compulsions and comments that ‘[i]f our ancestors had not invented the food-sharing economy of gathering and hunting around three or so million years ago, we would be neither as intelligent as we are today, nor so interested in each other’s sexuality.’¹ In psychology, the significance of these two compulsions is similarly recognized as libidinal drives. In China, the association of food with...

Cao Xueqin’s 曹雪芹 mid-Qing masterpiece, The Story of the Stone or The Red Chamber Dream (Honglou meng 紅樓夢), is frequently referred to as a treasure of China’s ‘food and drink culture’ 飲食文化¹ Celebrated as the great classic Chinese novel of manners, Honglou meng provides readers a rich scope in which to appreciate the culinary luxuries of mid-Qing aristocratic life. Throughout the novel’s 120 chapters readers are introduced to over 180 different types of foodstuffs and beverages described through dozens of meals and banquets ranging from simple snacks and invalid meals to elaborate banquets. Previous scholarship has celebrated Cao Xueqin’s skill...