Globalization of Chinese Food

Sidney Cheung, David Y. H. Wu, Sidney Cheung, David Y. H. Wu

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415338301
• eBook ISBN: 9781136002946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Does Chinese food taste the same in different parts of the world? What has happened to the Chinese diet in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau? What has affected the foodways of Chinese communities in other Asian countries with large Chinese diasporic communities? What has made Chinese food popular in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan? What has brought about the adoption and adaptation of western food and changes in Chinese diets in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Peking?

By considering the practice of globalization, this volume of essays by well-known anthropologists from many locales in Asia, describes changes, variations and innovations to Chinese food in many parts of the world, paying particular attention to questions related to how foods are introduced, maintained, localised and reinvented according to changing lifestyles and social tastes.

The book reviews and broadens classic social science theories about ethnic and social identity formation through the examination of Chinese food and eating habits in many locations. It reveals surprising changes and provides a powerful testimony to the impact of late twentieth-century globalization.

PART II

Chinese Food and Food for Chinese

CHAPTER FOUR

The Development of Ethnic Cuisine in Beijing

On the Xinjiang Road

Zhuang Kongshao

Many taxi-drivers know that there is a Xinjiang Road at Weigongcun (lit., Weigong Village – Weigong is a homonym of Uygur) in the Haidian District of Beijing, but they do not like to drive there for reasons unknown. The east end of the road leads to the Baiyi Road (a new name for the Baishiqiao Road). On the northern side in the middle section of the road there are about ten Xinjiang restaurants. Some of them have been operating for a dozen years. For example, the Avanti Restaurant has been running since the late 1970s; it is one of the three Xinjiang restaurants that have the longest history there. Over the past twenty years so many people from Xinjiang have moved to this road that it has been called Xinjiang Road. A number of other ethnic restaurants have been opened over the past few years, so some people say that the term Xinjiang Road is no longer correct. The media generally call it Ethnic Food Street, although the term is not popular. Today it is officially named Northern Road of the Central University for Nationalities. Will this name replace the unofficial term Xinjiang Road once and for all? One purpose of this chapter is to answer this question.

Why do Uygur people like to operate Xinjiang restaurants at Weigongcun? It seemed difficult to find an answer to this question. I found accidentally a record about the Uygurs in the Yuan capital from some six or seven centuries ago, and became more interested in digging into historical records of the Yuan dynasty in order to see whether the present site is related to that past dynasty and how it is related. The record indicates that there was a Uygurcun (Uygur Village) located to the northwest of Dadu, the capital of the Yuan dynasty in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Wang Gang 1996:108).

The village got its name from the Uygurs who lived there in compact communities and the place was later renamed in Chinese as Weigongcun (lit. Weigong Village; ‘Weigong’ in Chinese might refer to ‘Uygur’ because of its homophony). Some local elderly people said there was a temple called Weigong Temple here in the past, and a big Chinese scholar tree standing by the side of it. The temple cannot be found today; it exists only in oral tradition. Whether it was a tiny temple housing a village god or was a Uygur mosque needs further study. Many scholars have suggested that there would have been many more mosques in China during the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368); some records mentioned: ‘There are about ten thousand mosques in the capital city and the seats of all the circuits, for people worshipping the heaven westward’ (quoted from the Record of Rebuilding the Mosque at Dingzhou). Therefore, I would like to put an emphasis upon how the emergence of ethnic food business in this ancient ‘Uygur Village’ as well as the present ‘Weigong Village’ shows the socio-historic development of Beijing City.

The capital city of Dadu in the Yuan dynasty represented an urban and rural scene of mixed communities of members from various ethnic groups. The Qidans (Khitans) and Nüzhens from the northeast, Mongols from the north and Uygurs from the northwest lived in mixed communities with Han people. As a result of the three westward expeditions launched by the Mongols and the overlordship of the Yuan emperor in the four khanates in Central and Western Asia, there were many immigrants from central Asia in the city of Dadu. They were called the Semus, consisting of Kanglis, Qinchas (members of the Golden Horde Khanate), Russians, Asurs, Turks and Iranians, etc. Commonly, they were also called the Huihui. There were 2,953 Huihui households in Zhongdu Circuit alone (Wang Yun n.d.). This shows that there were a great number of immigrants from the west and north. In the later years of the Yuan Dynasty, the Uygur in Dadu suddenly decreased significantly. This was probably because a number of high-ranking Semu officials lost favour in the imperial court and lost their positions (History Department of Peking University 1990:132).

Other than the decline in numbers of households reflected by historical archive, it is almost impossible to see any constant community of Uygurs over the years. Some six or seven centuries later, at the beginning of the 1980s a few Uygurs began to move into Weigongcun to open restaurants. In mid-1980s, the number of restaurants increased to about ten. The narrow lane where the restaurants were located began to be referred to as Xinjiang Road. There were two questions regarding its historic development. One question was how the ‘significant history’ held by one ethnic group could be activated and spread out across different space-time continuums under certain appropriate objective conditions (Najam 1990). And the other question was the process of the historical extension and changes to its significant history, as Gilbert (1988) mentions: ‘The new situation is not simply added to the old one; the new is interrelated and interacts with the old one, adapts to it and even modifies it’. Furthermore, the rebuilt location and space has been redefined by social culture, and is quite suited for a definite living practice and a pattern of interaction. By looking at the night market in Taiwan society, Yu (1995:396) suggests that space is media which involves participants in a set of social relations, and even lets them adapt to the local sentimental situation; the process of cognition of space is also the process of perceptual knowledge.

Two Kinds of Xinjiang Restaurant

As far as I know, some young Uygurs were selling mutton barbecues at Weigongcun some twenty years ago. They grilled barbecues along the roadside, fanning the coal fire while calling out for customers. They wore gorgeously coloured small floral caps all year round, even in the cold winters. Now twenty years later, there are still Uygurs selling barbecues there, but the street scenes have long changed greatly and their small floral caps are not often seen.

In the 1970s many of the Uygurs selling barbecue resided in the area were traders involved in the costume business between Xinjiang and Beijing. At the beginning of the 1980s, some Uygurs earned money by selling lamian, a kind of special Xinjiang flavoured noodle. Among them was a Mr. Litipur, who opened the first lamian eating house on the Xinjiang Road. He was the pioneer of the Xinjiang restaurants in Weigongcun. Soon afterwards, seeing that there was a market among many Uygurs living at Weigongcun, another Uygur named Aniware decided to open a Xinjiang restaurant there. On his menu was not only lamian, but also other special Uygur dishes. Owing to its good location, and by serving regular dinner and supper dishes in addition to lamian, the restaurant took the upper hand in the lamian eating-house trades. Recurring competitions between the two earliest restaurants were so fierce that they were unable to reach a compromise until the public security personnel and the Biding Office of Xinjiang came to mediate between the two parties. The keen competition forced Litipur, owner of the first noodle house, to close his Uygur eating-house and leave the Xinjiang Road. Apart from this earlier type of eating-house, I would like to draw your attention to the following one which emerged in the 1990s.

T restaurant, opened in 1990, is now the largest Xinjiang restaurant in Weigongcun. When we went to the restaurant to investigate, the owner together with his wife had gone back to Xinjiang to observe the Corban Bairam, leaving the owner’s sister in charge of the restaurant during his absence. She proudly told us that the restaurant enjoyed a good reputation and increased earnings. The restaurant has an outer hall, a middle hall and three inner rooms. The outer hall is next to the road, with an Islamic proverb pasted on the window. An Arabic verse from the Koran with a Chinese translation is on the wall of the middle hall. It says: ‘With Allah’s help, you will overcome all difficulties’. I actually felt a strong Islamic atmosphere in the outer and middle halls. However, the inner rooms were different. They were decorated with a few Chinese-style portraits of Uygur women by Uygur artists. Although the pictures portrayed the rich flavour of Uygur life, their representations do not exactly tally with Islamic doctrine. In any case, the dominant Uygur Islamic aspect for visitors is clear. Several nearby Uygur restaurants display conspicuous signboards and Uygur men tend to stand outside the door to solicit customers. So, in the eyes of passers-by, these restaurants first are more symbolic of an ethnic group and its cuisine than they are symbolic of a religion of Islam.

The T restaurant was established, the owner told me, when he left his family in Xinjiang and came to Beijing with a recommendation letter from the Xinjiang Industrial and Commercial Management Bureau after the launch of China’s Opened Door policy. As there was a preferential policy for Uygurs and members of other minority ethnic groups, his restaurant business was successful. He said: ‘As we are now here in Beijing instead of our hometown, we have to do our best to make adequate arrangements for the daily life of our shop helpers.… The name Uygur means “unity” or “alliance”’. The Uygurs are accustomed to living in compact communities. According to our investigations, the Uygurs at Weigongcun like to rent and share a house jointly.

He has hired six ethnic Han women for his restaurant: two serve as waitresses in the front hall, two cut up vegetables and slice meat, and the other two do odds and ends. They came from Henan and Sichuan provinces. They are allowed to prepare cold dishes, but hot dishes must be done by Uygur cooks. One of the reasons that Uygur restaurants hired ethnic Han waitresses was that there were few Uygur women in Beijing. A second reason was that Uygur women in Beijing did not speak fluent Putonghua and so they could not communicate very well with Han customers. Also, some Uygur youths did not know how to make out bills or write receipts. However in another restaurant interviewed, they hired an ethnic Han young man named Wu. While he was employed by the restaurant, he was required to abstain from non-Islamic food, as a condition of his employment. Also, he was not permitted to bring non-Islamic food into the restaurant. His duties included doing odds and ends in the restaurant, but he was not allowed in the kitchen.

Despite the competition among the Uygurs in the Weigongcun Xinjiang restaurants, they still help supply each other’s needs and their ethnic consciousness and religious beliefs are probably the main source of cohesion among the Uygurs in the area of Weigongcun. As one mentioned:

The Xinjiang Road and the areas around it are places where we usually meet, so our style of life and religious beliefs can be easily preserved. Men go to the mosque to worship Allah and abstain from drinking alcohol every Friday. There are no Moslem clergy in Beijing. When somebody dies, a funeral is carried out for the dead in accordance with the customs of their homeland. A Nezir ritual is performed to call back the spirit of the dead. Generally, the dead are buried in the Muslim cemetery; only a few rich families are able to transport the body to its hometown in Xinjiang. The Uygurs in Weigongcun help each other even when they are not of the same religious sect. They like to get together with their townsmen, especially when they go to mosque on Fridays.

Wayiti, head of the Uygur in Weigongcun, has no registered permanent residence in Beijing. He said:

A temporary resident permit is enough for a Xinjianger. I have no intention of staying in Beijing for long. Now I have many friends in Beijing and I have close contacts with the Xinjiang Office in Beijing, the State Nationalities Commission and all the related government departments of the Weigongcun community. When we run into trouble, we prefer to settle the disputes in private, because we have the ability to mediate between two parties. But to serve as the ‘chief’ of the Uygurs in Weigongcun is not easy, because in doing the work it is likely to offend people.

Xinjiang Road is under the rule of the local neighbourhood committee; the position of a ‘chief’ has even been set up in the Uygur residential area. The chief should be a man who enjoys great prestige among the masses; he is appointed by a leading body of a higher level. His duties include convening conferences and settling disputes among the Uygurs, and those between Uygurs and members of other ethnic groups. As it was mentioned by one aged owner of a house located in Xinjiang Road

Uygurs have rented my house. My family has been living here for several generations already. Our relations are not bad. I only wish that they would not turn on their loudspeaker so loud and would not take drugs. Several of them live in a room. Their boss pays for their lodgings and board. They all came from Xinjiang to serve as helpers in the restaurants and they like to live together.

In most cases the Uygurs use their own language, which decreases the chances for them to mix with and communicate with the Beijing Han residents. Thus, food serves as the tool of communication between the two ethnic groups. In this case, the Uygurs like to add a strong-flavoured seasoning called ziran (cumin in English) when they bake or stir-fry mutton. At first Beijingers were not accustomed to the taste, but now many Beijingers cannot do without it. To Beijingers’ taste, some Uygur dishes are a little too sour, and have too much toma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: Food for Thought
• Introduction: The Globalization of Chinese Food and Cuisine: Markers and Breakers of Cultural Barriers
• I Sources of the Globe
• II Chinese Food and Food for Chinese
• III Globalization: Cuisine, Lifeways and Social Tastes
• Index