Fuxia Dunlop, a British girl, came to China for research in 1990s. At that time, she still wanted to study the history of Chinese ethnic minorities for the purpose of academic research, so she chose Chengdu, Sichuan and became an international student at Sichuan University. Unexpectedly, girls are not interested in academic research. She played a trick when she applied for a scholarship. Academic research is fake, and Sichuan cuisine that comes to mind is her real hobby.

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After the "tip of the tongue" era, a large number of food documentaries were born, including Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Shunde flavor and Xinjiang flavor.

These food documentaries satisfy the appetite of a large number of food lovers, and many people follow these documentaries and fly to these food capitals, punching cards in one store and another. But these documentaries will be boring if you watch them too much. Frankly speaking, the suspicion of advertising is getting heavier and heavier, and the part of accounting for food is getting more and more anticlimactic.

Food hidden in the streets and lanes

However, there are two food documentaries worth mentioning recently: one is a street food fighter, which was shot by Koreans. The protagonist is Zhongyuan Bai, a famous gourmet in Korean variety shows. He led a team to find street snacks in cities all over the world. In the first season, * * * filmed six episodes, three of which involved China, including Chengdu, Hongkong and Harbin. Koreans have first-class skills in making variety shows, and Zhongyuan Bai has done a lot of research work on food and snacks in various parts of China in advance, so wherever he goes, the street shops he looks for are the favorite foods of local people. Therefore, this food variety show is convincing.

The second food documentary is called "A String of Life", which, as its name implies, is an inventory of the most famous kebabs in China. Don't underestimate kebabs. This seemingly unpretentious street snack, accompanied by cold beer in summer, is our best companion to spend the hot summer.

The biggest feature of "A String of Life" is, of course, not counting ordinary mutton skewers such as mutton skewers, grilled fish, ribs and meat tendons. There are such kebabs all over the street, and there is nothing to take stock of. The biggest feature of this program is to take stock of the "dark food" hidden in the streets.

You should catch your breath after watching several episodes. What are roasted silkworm chrysalis, silkworm excrement, sheep whip, pig eye, pig nose tendon, blood vessel and sea sausage? Let's just say that these foods set off the roast brain flower and lamb loin that you usually eat, which are very naive.

In short, there is almost nothing in our mouths and stomachs that can't be baked.

Why should I recommend these two food documentaries? First of all, Street Food Fighter involves a topic: What do foreigners think of China's food? When watching this program, you will find that food has no national boundaries.

For example, the host Zhongyuan Bai is Korean, but he speaks Chinese in Chengdu, Cantonese in Hong Kong, Thai in Thailand and Japanese in Japan. It seems that he has many languages at his fingertips, which makes people admire him.

But he said modestly in the program that his Chinese is actually "menu Chinese", that is, he learned Chinese when ordering from the menu. Chinese can't reach the point of daily communication. He can only read menus, and other languages are also learned in this form of "menu", which is the best explanation that food has no borders.

Secondly, another topic involved in a series of life is: Can China people eat anything? This is actually what foreigners think of China people. Of course, some people will think that this is an orientalist prejudice. It seems that China people are uncivilized barbarians, and the degree of civilization is worrying. When something comes into our hands, the first attribute that comes to mind is whether it has edible value. Starting from this prejudice that is not prejudice, it will cause another voice to question. The dark food invented by China seems hard for foreigners to accept.

Probably because of cultural barriers, westerners are timid and afraid to try anything after coming to China.

China cuisine in the eyes of westerners

But the author of the book recommended today is an exception. The English girl's name is Fuxia Dunlop. She wrote a book about cooking in China, called Shark's Fin and Pepper. If you look through her resume, you will find that she not only studies China cooking, but also writes Sichuan cuisine recipes and the land of fish and rice: China Jiangnan cuisine. This is impressive. As far as I can remember, the last time I read that China's cooking was introduced to westerners in the form of cookbooks, it was Yang Buwei's China Cookbook.

Yang Buwei is the wife of Zhao Yuanren, and Zhao Yuanren is the father of China's language. At that time, Zhao Yuanren taught at Harvard University with his wife. His wife, Yang Buwei, is a woman of a new era and doesn't want to be a housewife. She has been in contact with westerners for a long time and found that these people are very ignorant of China's food culture. So she wrote a China cookbook in her spare time. She doesn't know English herself. She wrote the book in Chinese, her daughter translated it into English and her husband took notes for her. It can be described as a book completed by the whole family.

She wrote about the cultural differences between the East and the West from the cooking principles and dining etiquette of China food, and introduced the traditional customs in various parts of China. After publication, it was reported by The New York Times, which was very popular and reprinted more than 20 times.

Fu Xia is an English girl who grew up in Oxford and graduated from the Literature Department of Cambridge University. She is interested in China culture. When I came to China to do research in 1990s, I still wanted to study the history of Chinese ethnic minorities for the purpose of academic research, so I chose Chengdu, Sichuan, and became an international student in Sichuan University. Unexpectedly, the girl has no interest in academic research at all. She played a trick when she applied for a scholarship. Academic research is fake, and Sichuan cuisine that comes to mind is her real hobby.

Most international students, if interested in China's delicious food, are limited to being a foodie, but Fu Xia is different. She is more ambitious about food. Besides eating, she also wants to learn to cook. She even signed up for a chef training class and became the only foreign girl in Sichuan cuisine college at that time. She not only became a professional chef, but also really studied food as a culture. I studied Sichuan cuisine in my graduation thesis, and later wrote a recipe for Sichuan cuisine, which changed me from a pure foodie to an authentic China gourmet.

Shark's fin and Chili peppers are her mental journey of learning China cuisine in recent years: a westerner who was disgusted at the sight of preserved eggs from the beginning has become a gourmet who likes spicy food, rabbit head, Sichuan cuisine and hot pot, and dares to eat anything.

Dietary prejudice between east and west

Do people in China really dare to eat anything? This is not so much a cultural prejudice as a misunderstanding. We can look at this problem from two angles.

First, whether it is admitted or not, China's food culture is really very old. For example, Yi Yin, the legendary chef of Shang Dynasty, was even appointed as prime minister because of his rich cooking knowledge. This is the ancestor of chef China. In the history of China, there are countless stories about literati, gourmets and chefs. After so many years of historical accumulation, people can't satisfy their simple appetite when eating, so the purpose of our diet is what Confucius mentioned in The Analects of Confucius and The Land of Industriousness. Ordinary ingredients can't satisfy people's pursuit of food, so we need to find a sense of existence in richer and even bizarre ingredients, which is probably the reason why the so-called "China people dare to eat anything".

There is another reason of the times worth mentioning. Like our parents, we all experienced famine. In the last century, the situation in China changed. Political movements and natural and man-made disasters made the people live like ants. In the famine years, people can eat anything, dare to eat anything, and have to eat everything, and invented various practices and eating methods-don't underestimate this formalism of "eating". Usually, eating is to fill the stomach, but in that era when there was nothing to eat, there were many ways to eat a little food. Those invented "eating methods" allow people to retain the elegant human scale without losing the basic civilization.

A generation from the famine years has memories of the lack of food and the difficulty in eating in the past. The most important thing for them is not to waste food. In other words, an ingredient, whether it is meat or bones, must be thoroughly understood; Whether it is fat or internal organs; Both the leaves of Chinese cabbage and the help of Chinese cabbage can be wasted, which is the most basic respect for food.

Before food, everyone is equal. China people dare to eat anything, which shows their respect for food. To borrow a sentence from Fu Xia's book, we like food, in the final analysis, because we can find comfort from eating: "Life is bitter, but food can bring a little temporary sweetness."

Fu Xia has been in China for many years. She has written many food articles and has her own understanding of Chinese and western food culture. In her opinion, it is as difficult to introduce China's food culture to westerners as it is to make China people accept western food.

Fu Xia wrote a chapter in Shark's Fin and Pepper about the gap between Chinese and Western food cultures. When it comes to food culture, we always have endless reasons to be proud. There are eight major cuisines in China, including various techniques of frying, boiling, frying and steaming, exquisite craftsmanship and cooking. We even spread China's wok to the whole world. According to Fuxia's data, 65% of British families now have Chinese woks, and Chinese food even surpasses Indian food, becoming the British favorite "national dish". Of course, these are all worthy of our pride, but they are not the reason why we breed arrogance.

Westerners are biased against China's food, so aren't we biased against western food?

In our minds, western diets are hamburgers, pasta, salads, barbecues and so on. We will not consider Italian food, French food and English food in detail. In our prejudice system, they are all the same. We are a big gourmet country, and we should also be tolerant of the cuisines of all countries in the world and treat them equally.

You know, in the culture of eating, we have a history, and others can catch up. Our culture is real, and others can assimilate it. Everyone else is learning, but we are insisting. This is our narrowness.

Editor in Charge: Ma Rongrong