Local Food and Meanings in Contemporary China: The Case of Southwest Hubei

Abstract

This article focuses on local food and the associated meanings in the ethnic area of central China and is based on field research in Enshi prefecture, a Tujia-Miao autonomous prefecture that lies in the southwest Hubei province. As in many other areas in contemporary China, the local food in south west Hubei, central China, known as hezha food, has been integrated into the urban restaurant system and has acquired a variety of meanings. In Enshi prefecture, special varieties of local food, such as hezha, baogufan (a dish made of maize flour and rice), tularou (smoked pork) and zhaguangjiao (a preserved food made of maize flour and red chili pepper) had long been treated as markers of local regional food or of “coarse” country cuisine. A combination of maize’s reliable high yield in mountain fields and local people’s culinary wisdom, has meant that hezha food has played a key role in the modern history of this mountain area. Up to the early 1990s, the common dish made of maize has served as the marker of mountain life (described as miserable life sometimes). In the early 1990s, when the Chinese government launched a nationwide rural development project, Enshi’s officials went to villagers’ kitchens to check if a maize dish was being replaced with that of rice. However, such food of the poor people did not disappear at all with rural development. Many farmers said that they had easier access to meat (pork) and rice (which symbolize a higher standard of living and is often associated with Han, the majority) than ever before, but since the mid-1990s, Enshi prefecture has witnessed a conspicuous phenomenon of local people returning to “coarse” local food despite an abundance of meat and rice. What is more, such local food has found its way into the urban restaurant system: as food in the Hezha restaurants, Ethnic restaurants, as well as Farmhouse Joy restaurants. The standardization of local food in these restaurants has involved both cuisines and their associated meanings, and has highlighted the local ways in which food is procured. For instance, plant cultivation, animal husbandry, and gathering; the general meal structure (of core dish fan, vegetable-meat dish cai, and drinks); the general features of local food’s flavor pattern (sour, sweet, glutinous, and spicy); and the commonly used cooking methods. Diverse meanings surround hezha food now; meanings that emerged at different historical periods. In local media and mass discourses, hezha food now signifies ordinary daily meals, farmers’ food, poor people’s food, mountain people’s food, famine food, ethnic food, tasty food, healthy food, delicacies on foreigners’ dinner-tables and so on. This article outlines the history of hezha food and examines how and why it has been integrated into and standardized by restaurants. It also analyzes the reasons behind the coexistence of so many contradictory meanings, and reflects on how the constructions of ethnic images, the promotion of agricultural modernization and the promotion of tourism in contemporary Enshi prefecture have influenced these meanings.