Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food

by Fuchsia Dunlop

What is ‘Chinese food’ anyway? It’s too often conflated with the culture and character of the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese, especially in an age of Han Chinese nationalism. But China has always been a palimpsest of peoples, languages and flavours. In ancient times, the cultures of the north and northwest were already infused with foreign influences, while the south was inhabited by a variety of different tribes. The great empires of the Qing Dynasty and its republican successors have encompassed not only the old Han Chinese heartlands of the Yellow River Valley but also the vast regions of Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia. In contemporary China, the southwestern province of Yunnan is an elaborate patchwork of different cultures and cuisines, many of which have more in common with those of people across the borders of neighbouring Vietnam, Laos and Burma than they do with the people of, say, northern Xi’an. And the Hui, of course, live, work and eat all over China.