In this episode, we speak with Jin Feng, Professor of literature at Grinnell College, Iowa, and author of a new book on Chinese foodways. Jin discusses how the experience of leading a study trip to China and Russia helped shape her personal interest in food into a research program, how she expanded her circle of foodie friends into a professional network of chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, and how themes of gender and nostalgia recur across centuries of writing about food.

Publications discussed in this episode:

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (University of Washington Press, 2019).

Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class (Princeton University Press, 2017)

Music used with kind permission of guqin performer Yan Yiqiao.

Copyright 2020 by Asian Ethnology Podcast