Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interview with Jin Feng: Chinese Foodways

Interviewer: Thomas David DuBois, Beijing Normal University

Recorded 27 March 2020, Beijing & Wuxi, China

In this episode, we speak with Jin Feng, Professor of literature at Grinnell College, Iowa, and author of a new book on Chinese foodways. Jin discusses how the experience of leading a study trip to China and Russia helped shape her personal interest in food into a research program, how she expanded her circle of foodie friends into a professional network of chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, and how themes of gender and nostalgia recur across centuries of writing about food.

Publications discussed in this episode

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways , 2019. University of Washington Press.

Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth.The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class ., 2017. Princeton University Press.

Music used with kind permission of guqin performer Yan Yiqiao.