Talk:History of Chinese cuisine

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tze Xiang Lim.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:32, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Questions about History of Chinese Cuisine

Friends -- this article has a great deal of useful and interesting material, but it still needs a great deal of work and use of recent reliable synthesis, such as those I have added as references. As it stands, there is also much which is misleading, especially in giving the impression that modern cuisine had direct early origins.

In the opening section, for instance, it seems doubtful that we can trace "Chinese cuisine" in a useful sense back to Peking Man, since the Wikipedia article itself questions whether modern Chinese are his descendants and even questions whether he used fire at all.

If nobody objects, in a while I will try to rework the early sections, add more on Yuan and Qing, and fill out the 20th century.

Any comments or suggestions will be welcomed. ch (talk) 06:00, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Pimentos

I doubt they were using Pimentos in the Song Dynasty, since those originate in the Western Hemisphere, and were not globally available until after Columbus.

I don't have access to this source, but either the author is wrong, it's mistranslated, or the contributor misread it:

Gernet, Jacques (1962). Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276. Translated by H. M. Wright. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0720-0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.203.51.2 (talk) 23:19, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I've just searched the source you just quoted and found it here. --Cold Season (talk) 01:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Wilkinson points out that the English translation of Gernet's "pimentee" should be "highly spiced," not "pimento," since pimento was imported into China only 500 years later. Endymion Wilkinson. Chinese History : A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institue Monograph Series New Edition, 2012; ISBN 9780674067158 ISBN 0674067150), p. 762. ch (talk) 02:26, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Intro

I kept an existing over-broad quote from before but, obviously, it needs a thorough writing up, not just replacement with another over-broad quote. :)

I would hope as we add material to the dynastic sections that we'll be able to get a handle on a good overview. See a rough draft here, which could use sources, tightening up, and (hopefully) more info on the development of Chinese dietary 'medicine' (=TCM) and (where possible) specific dishes. — LlywelynII 09:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Good news that such an attentive and well-informed editor as Llywelyn is focusing on these two articles! Other careful editors have also made good edits recently, so things are looking up. I have been making piece-meal, stop-gap, and rag-tag edits, trying not to undercut or duplicate material that I publish elsewhere for actual money (or at least undying fame). I will chip in as we go along.

As Llywelyn suggests, the History section of Chinese Cuisine is a good start. One move would be to amalgamate it with the "Overview" section of "History of Chinese Cuisine," which I lifted from my lecture notes as one of those stop gaps. It makes important points but is not in good form.

I'm sort of sorry to see the lively Lin Yutang quote go, though I have to agree. But I don't see the improvement in the lede by removing KC Chang's comments and leaving only one sentence which does not do the work called for in WP:Lead, that is, to summarize and introduce the article. Chang trained both as an archeologist and an anthropologist, and taught both subjects, so if a "Sinologist" is just someone who studies China, then identifying him as one doesn't tell us anything we don't know. So we should identify him as an "anthropologist," which tells the reader what his discipline is. As another "stop gap" measure I will restore some of his language for the time being. If anyone disagrees, please cite policy.

A few random points on this and "Chinese Cuisine#History.

• "The history of Chinese cuisine extends to the earliest records of China." We should not read (putative) modern attitudes back into Peking Man. Just because something happened in what is now "China" does not mean that it is automatically "Chinese" except by circular reasoning. OK, an encyclopedia article doesn't have to get all theoretical, but let's find a lede that finesses the question. We don't want to be weaselly, though ("Chinese, like all early peoples, ate food."). Maybe something like: "The origins of Chinese cuisine go deep into history and range widely. The earliest records ..."

• "Gastronomy" is not the same as interest in food. David R. Knechtges, "A Literary Feast: Food in Early Chinese Literature," Journal of the American Oriental Society 106.1 (1986): 49-63. [1], is grand but misleading and needs to be read in conjunction with later work by global food historians who take Jack Goody's analysis into account. "Gastronomy" is more useful when reserved for the cultural changes which take place in the Song and after, as laid out in Freeman's article in KC Chang's Food and Chinese Culture. More later.

• The quote from Confucius ("the rice could not be white enough") is a tough passage and has been translated in the opposite sense to show that he didn't care.

• The observations on Taoism and the Ijing reinforce the point that not all was "gastronomy." If people ate something for cosmological reasons, it wasn't "gastronomy." Bravo to Llywellen for making the strong, strong point that food and medicine have to be treated together.

• The sentence about chopsticks and spoons is at best anachronistic and, well, just wrong, and the bit about dim sum is just off the wall.

• The paragraph starting "Under the Qing..." might be near the top of the hit list.

More later. Cheers ch (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

History of Chinese Cuisine

- The introduction of this topic is lacking important descriptions. For instance, it is a good way to tell the readers what you are going to talk about for the body paragraphs so that the readers are aware.

- In the overview section, the significant foods that impact Chinese cuisine are not clearly stated, however you have pointed out the importance of imports and exports, Chinese chopstick, and wok.

- The descriptions of Tang and Song dynasties are full of good information. On the other hand, the rest of the dynasties are lacking significance developments in its era.

- This article is involved in WikiProject food and drinks, and WikiProject China/history. This article is "start" rated in both of the WikiProjects. Overall, this is a good written article but it needs more research and development.

Tze Xiang Lim (talk) 19:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

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