Jin Feng: Tasting Paradise on Earth

Transcript

Marshall Poe:

Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and you're listening to an episode in Grinnell College's Authors and Artists podcast. And today, I'm very happy to say we have Jin Feng on the show. Jin teaches at Grinnell. We'll talk a little bit more about that, and she's written a wonderful book called Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways, and we'll be talking about that in the course of the interview. Welcome to the show, Jin.

Jin Feng:

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Marshall Poe:

Absolutely, my pleasure. Could you begin the interview by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Jin Feng:

Sure. My name is Jin Feng. I'm professor of Chinese, and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Grinnell College, where I have been working for over two decades. I started in 2001.

Marshall Poe:

Wow, two decades. That's a long time. How did you make your way to Grinnell? How did you find yourself at Grinnell College?

Jin Feng:

Well, I will be honest with you, I came to Grinnell because that's what they offered. I found [inaudible 00:01:09] part of our school. Actually, before I came to Grinnell, I knew a little bit about liberal arts education, but not a whole lot, because I came from a background of undergraduate student in China from Fudan University, which is a big research university. Then I came to the United States for grad school. I went to Michigan, which was another big school, research university. I did teach one year at Swarthmore, so it was a similar kind of college. Then I came to Grinnell, where I stayed ever since.

Marshall Poe:

That's good. Was it a shock being in the middle of Iowa?

Jin Feng:

No, it's not so much, because I went to grad school in the Midwest, so I have been in the area. It's just I have not taught a lot at liberal arts college in the Midwest.

Marshall Poe:

Right, so you're an honorary Midwesterner by this point?

Jin Feng:

Yes, yes. I've actually stayed longer in Iowa than anywhere else in the United States. It's half my life, basically.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Can you tell us a little bit about what you teach at Grinnell?

Jin Feng:

Yes. I teach a variety of courses, including Chinese language at all levels, from first year to fourth year. I also teach Chinese literature and film courses, and of course I teach Chinese food. I also team teach with colleagues, and I've taught a course on freedom and authority, reproductive rights, and I've taught food courses collaborating with other colleagues as well, which we can talk more about as we go further.

Marshall Poe:

Absolutely. So your book and research is about food. How did you get interested in food?

Jin Feng:

Well, I have to say food has always been one of my passions. I just love food. I know there are two kinds of people, those who live to eat, and those who eat to live, and I think I'm those who live to eat. And I grew up in a region in China that's known for great food. So this goes into the title of my book, Jiangnan, south of the Yangtze river. This is a region historically known for material wealth, cultural elegance, and great food, great gardens, gracious living, that kind of thing. So the locals are very proud of their cultural heritage of food connoisseurship. Of course, it has always been a mark of social class, prestige, and things like that. I will say it's part of a cultural DNA of at least the elites throughout history in this region. And then of course, in my family, everyone really loves food. We love to talk about food. We love to cook. We love to eat. And interestingly, the men in my family cook better than the women.

Marshall Poe:

Really?

Jin Feng:

When my parents first got married, my mom actually did not know how to cook. My father trained her, and then of course, he stopped stepping into the kitchen anymore. So yeah, that's sort of the personal background. Of course, I came to this book also because of professional experiences. I've been in the United States now for over 20 years, grad school, and then teaching. But I go back to China every year, and I really realize the great shifts in cultural traditions and the social life in the last 20, 30 years in China. So I really feel the urgency to reflect on how foodways shift. I think they really reflect the ways of Chinese people, how they think about the world, how they live their lives. So many things have gone away already. And this also gets to the topic of my book, which is about food nostalgia.

So I thought it really needs to be recorded and reflected upon at this critical historical moment. So that's sort of the research [inaudible 00:05:14]. I also have to say I've been teaching Chinese food for a number of years at Grinnell College. I actually started with a first year tutorial. You're an alum, so you know what that tutorial is about. It's really to teach students the basic skills they would need to succeed at the college level. So I chose that topic of Chinese food in 2002, actually my second year at Grinnell College. So I thought that would be a relatable topic. People can have some fun.

Marshall Poe:

Very relatable.

Jin Feng:

Well, they learned those basic stuff. And then after that, I also designed a seminar called Chinese Food for Thought, which I taught a number of times over the years, and I mentioned, maybe I have not, but in 2017, I actually team taught with a Russian specialist, Professor Todd Armstrong. This was a global tutorial, the global learning tutorial, part of our global engagement initiative. So as part of that course, we actually took 15 first year students to China and Russia, each for two weeks, each for four cities, basically, in addition to classroom instruction, assignments, and so on, and so forth. So that was also another way to think about Chinese food, to look how Chinese food changed abroad.

As a side note, it's one of my pet projects to check out every Chinatown when I go abroad, including United States of course as well. And the most recently, during the pandemic, I actually taught Chinese Food for Thought online in fall, no, spring 2001. And students were quite resourceful, actually. A group of them came up with a cookbook using Grinnell ingredients to cook Chinese. And just last fall, we taught a group of East Asian specialists here on campus. We taught a food in East Asia course. So my colleague in Japanese, Mariko Schimmel and I were the co-instructors, but we invited people in religion, East Asian religion, art history, education, literature, history, to come in as guest speakers, to explore East Asian food from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. So that was actually a lot of fun, too. So another different way of engaging with Chinese food.

Marshall Poe:

That sounds like a fantastic course of study. I'm kind of envious.

Jin Feng:

Oh, we had a lot of fun.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I bet you did. I'm a historian, and most of my reference points for trying to understand something like this have to do with Russia, where I've spent quite a bit of time, and I know the history well. And one of the things that I noticed when the Soviet Union fell, is that there was a tremendous efflorescence of Russian food, because the Soviets had tried to produce a kind of proletarian culture that was almost intentionally anti [inaudible 00:08:27] cuisine. They didn't like fancy food, fancy food was bad. It was politically marked as evil, somehow.

Jin Feng:

Right, right, right.

Marshall Poe:

And I assume a similar thing happened in China under Mao, is that right?

Jin Feng:

That's exactly right. And by the way, we did read some of the books and articles on Soviet and Russian food when I team taught with Todd Armstrong. So in China too, since 1949, that's when the People's Republic of China was founded. The government tried to, or the party tried to promote a kind of proletarian cuisine. They tried to level up the menu, so people would be eating the same kind of plain fare. If you paid too much attention to food, that's considered bourgeoisie, and that was denounced, basically. But of course, things are different nowadays.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, well, that's why I'm asking this question. Yeah.

Jin Feng:

Right, right, yeah.

Marshall Poe:

In the Russian case, the Soviets were not terribly successful at destroying these traditions. People continued to try to produce, I guess I would just call it good Russian food, in their own kitchens. Was that true in China before the 1990s? Were these traditions preserved?

Jin Feng:

Well, some of them, I would say in private homes, but in restaurants, I did see a sort of gap before 1949 and after 1979. 1979 was the time China was opened up to the outside world again, basically. And of course, with the introduction of consumer goods and lifestyle from the West, things are changing. And during my research in restaurants, I interviewed chefs, managers. Some of them lived through that period, and they would complain that nowadays, the young chefs lack the training they had gone through, and it was hard to teach them. And because some of the food stuff already disappeared, and some of the cooking methods, for example, also shifted. Some of that was due to the introduction of modern science, because it was considered not hygienic to produce food in some traditional way.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I see. One of the things that happened under the Soviets is that restaurant culture, I think it would call it that. The idea that you might occasionally go to a restaurant to eat was totally destroyed. In the Soviet Union, at least as I knew it, people went to a restaurant about once a year, and it was usually on somebody's birthday, because there really weren't any restaurants, so to say. There were places to eat, but they served what I guess I would call Russian fast food. Is that true in China as well before 1979?

Jin Feng:

I would say it varies from region to region. So in my part of China, so close to Shanghai, it's traditionally a more cosmopolitan area, maybe than some of the inland places. There were still a variety of restaurants. Some of them of course were more higher class, and so forth. But there were a variety of eateries that would provide, I guess you can call it fast food, but snacks and things. So a lot of Chinese people still enjoy going to those places, even though they maybe [inaudible 00:12:02].

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's true in Russia as well. These places are holdovers from the Soviet period, and they're still popular. Yeah.

Jin Feng:

Right. Yeah.

Marshall Poe:

So then after 1979, and into the '80s, well, in the Russian case what happened is there was this, as I say, efflorescence of restaurants. Suddenly there were lots of restaurants, and these traditions were revived. I don't know the extent to which the revival was invention, or actual revival. I have no way of knowing, but it became, at least in the big cities in Russia, Moscow, St. Petersburg, it became a thing to go to a restaurant. Did that happen in China as well?

Jin Feng:

Well, since the late 1970s, the economic reform took place. So the economy became more market oriented, and the government also actively encouraged consumption, because they were trying to shift the economy from export driven to more consumption driven. So of course, the rise of the middle class in the Chinese situation also contributed to that, I guess, restaurant boom. And then in my book, I talked about this idea of hometown food, or the boom of hometown cuisine, which was also part of the food nostalgia movement. And people really wanted to sample what they thought as authentic traditional foodways that may have been wiped out by the cultural revolution. And it was of course part of the effort to construct their identity, basically, in a new era. Since the modernization pace was so fast, everybody was feeling a little dizzy and unsure about their place in the world, and also about China's place in the world, basically. And that's why people started frequenting those restaurants and the businesses, local governments collaborated to try to generate this buzz about good living, cultural capital, that kind of thing.

Marshall Poe:

So during this restaurant boom, if we can call it that, and we will for shorthand, how did the restaurateurs decide what sorts of restaurants to open? You mentioned food nostalgia. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Jin Feng:

Sure, sure. Yeah. So food nostalgia I think was part of a big picture of cultural nostalgia in China. So you can see it everywhere, like on TV, there were TV dramas about time travel back to the past. The government promoted a kind of red tourism, what they called, which is to pay tribute to pilgrimage sites that played important roles in the communist revolution, like when the Communist party had a big conference that played a role in their victory. So their workplaces will organize these tours to take people to these places to pay tribute. And then in some restaurants, they serve what they call rural food, get to the roots of your past, and so forth.

So in my part of the country, people basically try to invoke the cultural traditions about good living, gentry living, some of them to play up their connection to the imperial past. Like one city I wrote in my book, Hangzhou, that's the provincial capital of Zhejiang province. By the way, Xi Jinping used to be the governor of that province a while ago, but that city was the capital of the southern Song dynasty in the 12th, 13th century. So the restaurant businesses there really wanted people to know they had this connection to the imperial past. They said they had cuisines that were reproductions of meals consumed by the royal family, and aristocracy, that sort of thing. And people thought that was fun. It was novel, even though people may not totally believe it. So that's just an example. And this happened in other places as well in China.

Marshall Poe:

And the Communist Party itself encouraged this sort of thing?

Jin Feng:

Well, they encourage the business. They do not care really what you serve if you can attract customers, if you can raise the profile of your city. They encourage export too, cultural export as well. So some of the restaurants I interviewed actually got invitations to go abroad to demonstrate their cooking, and to help other countries to reconstruct what they ate back then. I'm thinking of this restaurant in Suzhou, which is my hometown in the Jiangsu province, pretty close to Shanghai. It's about 20 minutes by high speed train to Shanghai.

So there's this restaurant that's famous for reproducing the imperial banquets that the emperor of the Qin dynasty, which was 18th century. He visited this town six, seven times all the way from Beijing. That was a big undertaking back then. He had to ride a boat all the way from Beijing down south, and they claim they had revived some of the dishes that the emperor had eaten, and they put those on the menu for contemporary audiences. They got invited to Japan, to Okinawa, to reconstruct what they called imperial banquets that the envoys from Japan used to eat with the emperor of the Qin dynasty. And it was broadcast on TV, and they published in local media, which was of course helpful for the business, and also helpful for the municipal government to raise their GDP and their cultural profile, basically, domestically and abroad.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I noticed that you used the word claim. They claimed to reproduce these imperial banquets. To what extent should we believe that claim, and how would they know? Are there good records about what these people ate, and did they have the skill and the ingredients that they needed to do it?

Jin Feng:

Well, that's really a great question. Of course, they said... Well, some of those were recorded in history. That's for sure. You can go to the Forbidden City and find in the archives what the emperor ate every day, because that was our record, right? But you may not necessarily know how it was cooked, or what exactly were the ingredients. And they actually collaborate with some of the scholars or professors at universities, try to reconstruct those. This happen in Suzhou, also happened in Hangzhou.

Marshall Poe:

That's a good job for a historian. Why don't I ever get that job?

Jin Feng:

And then of course, they also did their own research. I'll give you examples. So I went to this Suzhou restaurant, which I mentioned was famous for producing imperial banquets. They served this one dish, which was a fish dish, which was called squirrel shaped mandarin fish. So this was a mandarin fish that was deboned, cut into little, well, not cut completely, but sliced into pieces, and coated with flour, and then dried. And then traditionally, or not traditionally, in contemporary restaurant, they usually use some, I would say tomato sauce on top of it, just to make it sweet and sour, which is actually a famous signature tradition of Suzhou restaurants. But this restaurant, they said they don't use tomato sauce, or tomato paste, or whatever, because tomato was not a native...

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, there were no tomatoes when the emperor was eating.

Jin Feng:

No, it was imported, [inaudible 00:20:18]. So what they used was apricot sauce. So it did the same job, but they said apricot was traditional, and it was on record from thousands of years ago. That's why they use apricot instead of tomato. They wanted to show people they were authentic, right, traditional. They did not use ingredients that were not native to China.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm very familiar with this. We have this even where I live. Locally produced food, very big thing here in the United States right now. So how expensive is it to eat the emperor's banquet, and is it available to ordinary... So I want to call them working class, or middle class Chinese people. Can they go eat the emperor's banquet?

Jin Feng:

Well, they could, if they could pay.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, right. How much does it cost?

Jin Feng:

I would say not exorbitant actually, considering. So it is trying to market to the middle class Chinese, I would say. So if you are say from the working class, or you are a migrant, you may not be able to afford it, but for middle class family, you could eat it once in a while, maybe not every day. And they also sell the lifestyle, basically, of the aristocracy, because they always advertise this garden style living, because Suzhou is famous for gardens. Those used to be private residences built by retired officials, and so forth. So they serve the meal in a very nice environment. They wanted to show elegant living, cultural heritages, and so on, and so forth. And of course, there are other variety of dishes that can appeal to mass consumers, not necessarily the wealthy, because Suzhou is also famous for its soup noodles. So this is basically street food, but gentrified. So it can still be authentic, so to speak, traditional Suzhou meal that people can afford to eat.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. The reason I asked this question is it kind of gets to the further question of status and class. And every American knows there are some really fancy restaurants that you cannot afford to go to, or at least I can't. Maybe other people can. And then there are other restaurants which you can afford to go to. Is there a similar sort of hierarchy in Chinese restaurants in the place that you studied?

Jin Feng:

Yeah, that's for sure. And I would say I visit those where middle class and lower class people visit. I don't really go to exclusively five star hotel, and that kind of restaurant, but there certainly is that hierarchy as well. I think for the ordinary Chinese, now I have to talk about the middle class again, because I guess middle class is the most anxious of all social classes. They want to climb up, they are afraid to fall back to the working class, or lower class bracket. So it is essential for them to consume the right thing, to show people they belong, basically. So I think this kind of restaurants really appeal to that anxiety, so they can help these people perform their identities. They could eat this particular type of thing. It's not only a material thing, it's not just a symbol of material wealth. It's also a symbol of cultural knowledge. So I know this is authentic. I'm consuming it, that means I know the cultural heritages, traditions, and so forth. That means I'm high class, basically.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I see just what you mean. Is it the case that there are... I'm trying to think how best to put this. Who is excluded from this system? I guess that's my question. Who doesn't get to visit these restaurants, and who wouldn't visit these restaurants?

Jin Feng:

Yeah, I would also say there's a generational shift as well. Because if you go to what they call the old and the famous restaurants, [Chinese 00:24:39] in Chinese, those were certified by Ministry of Commerce as historical brands, basically. And then older generations like to go to these restaurants, because it reminds them of their useful years, what they used to eat. But for the younger generations, those who are, I would say millennials or Generation Zs, they may not like those restaurants so much because it seems to be too straight-laced, and not fun, basically, boring. They would really try more fusion cuisine, or more Western influenced. Starbucks is really popular in China.

Marshall Poe:

Starbucks.

Jin Feng:

Yes. It's-

Marshall Poe:

I don't know whether to be proud of that or not.

Jin Feng:

And they want to try more fun dining style, more entertainment instead of the food itself. So of course, the kind of restaurants I featured more in my book really require a certain amount of, I would say, material wealth. If you have to work for a living, and you are basic scrape by, it's hard to frequent those restaurants, and you probably just cook for yourself, basically.

Marshall Poe:

That's what I do. I cook for myself. I can't remember the last time I was in a restaurant. I had takeout a few times, but I don't go to restaurants, really. In the American market, especially in big cities, there's tremendous turnover, or churn in the restaurant industry. A restaurant will start, it will be popular, it will last eight years, and then it goes away, and a new one pops up. Is that true in the place that you studied?

Jin Feng:

Well, some of the restaurants actually are historical brands. So they've been there for many years, even maybe before the Communist revolution, at least they try to reclaim that brand. The location may have been changed because of expansion of the urban space, and road building, and so on, and so forth, but they wanted to hold onto that brand. Some of the restaurants are, I guess more fashionable in a way. And then of course, due to the pandemic, lots of them had downturns, because it was forbidden to dine in.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, what did they do during... I mean, there was a tremendous lockdown.

Jin Feng:

Yes.

Marshall Poe:

I don't know if it's still going on. And that must have been very hard on the restaurant industry. It was here.

Jin Feng:

Exactly, exactly. And I know some of the restaurants I did my field work in turned to takeouts. So you could order using an app, and then they deliver. That's how they try to get by. But it is hard, because China still goes into frequent lockdowns. If there's one case, then everybody is in lockdown, and the restaurants are not allowed to have dine in guests. They can do takeouts, that's it. For some of the smaller businesses, it's extremely difficult to survive in this environment.

Marshall Poe:

So do people go to these heritage restaurants as a matter of course, or do they only go on special occasions, somebody's birthday, or something to celebrate, or something like that?

Jin Feng:

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say it attracts tourists a lot from outside of town. So it's a brand. So it's a quick way for them to get a taste of the local flavor, so to speak. And for the locals, I know in Suzhou, there are some restaurants who are famous for birthday celebrations, because of auspicious sounding name, basically. And they do serve more traditional dishes that appeal to older generations. And some of them are famous for weddings, for example. It also has a lot to do with parking space, all these other things not related to food directly. Yeah, so that is true for that type of restaurant.

So another type of restaurants that are basically snack shops, serving noodles and, I don't know, dumplings, and that sort of thing. Those are for everyday consumption. You can just go by, and eat something on the go, and leave. So that's also popular. And there are also restaurants that are housed in those high rise department stores. In China, they don't usually have malls, because there's not so much space, you cannot spread out. They just do one in a big high rise. And the restaurants, and shops, and even movie cinemas you can go to. So you go to those places to eat as well. And some of them are chain restaurants. They claim to be traditional food, but of course, it's already modified to suit modern tastes.

Marshall Poe:

It used to be the case. I'm 60 years old, so I remember when, and I grew up in the Midwest, when to go to a restaurant was kind of a big deal, and you dressed up. You actually put what we called go to meeting clothes on. You'd go to church in these clothes too, but you would dress up to go to... Do people dress up to go to these restaurants?

Jin Feng:

Well, for some traditional brands, maybe a little bit, but not totally nowadays. So for-

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, well now, nobody does that in America, even.

Jin Feng:

Well, for snack shops, no, no, nobody does that. You know, you can just go in. And especially for younger generation, and they use their phone so much, they maybe take a few pictures, post them on Instagram, well, not Instagram in China, WeChat, basically, share with their friends, and then go away. And actually, that's one of the complaints I heard from one of the famous noodle restaurant in Hangzhou. This was a manager of that restaurant, and he was complaining that younger generations really do not care about food. They just want entertainment. They just want to go to a fashionable place, snap a few pictures, and that's it.

Marshall Poe:

So I'm interested in the restaurant tours. I've worked in kitchens, actually, I did a long time ago. What would a middle class Chinese father and mother say to a kid who said, "I'm going to go open a restaurant. My career choice is restaurants. I'm going to go into restaurants." What would they say about that?

Jin Feng:

I don't think they would take it very kindly. Chinese parents usually are very ambitious for their kids. They want their kids to realize the dreams they themselves did not fulfill in their use. So the kids have to study hard. They have to do cram school after regular school days. And then, actually restaurant work traditionally, I think still is considered as more working class. We do have some celebrity chefs now, but not so much. Not even to the same extent as it happens here in the United States. I did interview a chef, this was a famous chef from a Hangzhou restaurant. I asked him, "Do you want your daughter to be a chef?" He said, "No." It's hard work.

Marshall Poe:

It's a lot of work.

Jin Feng:

And he wanted his daughter to be a white collar worker, to get paid more, and for a better working environment, basically.

Marshall Poe:

Are there culinary schools in China? I'm sure there are.

Jin Feng:

There are public occupational education. So it's not the same here. Say, here, you have culinary institutions in [inaudible 00:32:41] America, and so on, so forth. But in China, it's not as glamorous, I would say.

Marshall Poe:

I see what you mean. So these nostalgia restaurants, or heritage restaurants, has there been any attempt on the part of the Chinese entrepreneurs to enter the American market, or any other market, in the hopes that maybe Americans would love this?

Jin Feng:

Yeah. Well, some of them actually tried. I know there's this hot pot chain in China, maybe there are two already. One of them was [inaudible 00:33:14]. It was actually quite popular outside of China, not just in Hong Kong, in other East Asian countries. And I think they tried to open one in California. I don't know how successful it is now because of the pandemic, but it was quite successful for a while. This was a couple of years back, before the pandemic broke out. So they did try to appeal to American audiences. Some of the dishes Chinese people love may not be as popular here. People here don't want fish with bones or skins, and they don't want chicken feet, or any organs, and so forth. But some of these are considered delicacies for Chinese palate, right? So hot pot actually goes over pretty well, I would say, all over the world.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Well, I grew up eating liver, so... For the Midwest though, so liver's just fine with me. So some of the proprietors of these restaurants have been to the United States, and what do they think about the state of American Chinese food? Do they have any opinions on that?

Jin Feng:

They normally don't like it. They don't consider it Chinese food, basically. And this is no judgment on Chinese restaurants here in the United States, because they have to adapt to local tastes, obviously, and there are some classic dishes that everybody considers to go to in here. And that's part of immigration history, basically.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, General Gao's chicken. I think that's a totally American thing.

Jin Feng:

No, it's American. It was invented by a Taiwan chef in New York City.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, exactly.

Jin Feng:

Yeah, yeah. And also, I think this was actually helpful for the cultural pride. I interviewed one of the restaurant managers who actually visited United States and Canada to demonstrate, basically, cooking. And she said that this really gave her a good feeling about Chinese cuisine, because even though America was very famous for technology, and science, and all these advancements, Chinese people really know how to eat. She said-

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Well, one of the things I told you is that I spent a couple of summers teaching students from the People's Republic of China, and I asked them what they thought about Chinese food in America. And they said they thought it was okay. But what they were very insistent about was that McDonald's in China was much better than McDonald's in the United States.

Jin Feng:

I hear that a lot. That was also adapted to Chinese tastes. They serve Chinese desserts, basically, that you cannot get in the United States. And they have like this, I don't know, spicy chicken patty, whatever, hamburger that people really love there. That's what people say. That's what-

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, they were very insistent. They were very disappointed by American McDonald's. They thought it was terrible.

Jin Feng:

Yeah, that's actually part of my Chinese food course, about fast food in China, American fast food in China.

Marshall Poe:

So are there, and this is not related to your book, but I'm just interested, are there particularly popular sorts of American fast food in China? Are there ones that people really love?

Jin Feng:

I think Kentucky Fried Chicken's actually more popular than McDonald's.

Marshall Poe:

Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Jin Feng:

Yes. I'm talking about fast food, cheap. And Starbucks is still very popular in China. And some people say they like steak, but it's not the kind of steak you get here. It's cooked the Chinese way, with lots more sauces, and smaller portion.

Marshall Poe:

So again, this is just a demonstration of my ignorance. We have this category in the United States, Chinese food, which is kind of a ridiculous category. Let's admit it. There's a lot of kinds of Chinese food. Do Chinese people have a category American food?

Jin Feng:

Well, I think they associate like fast food, McDonald's-

Marshall Poe:

Great.

Jin Feng:

[Inaudible 00:37:26] American brand, because they don't know much, right, about [inaudible 00:37:30] food, like Midwestern fare, they may not have it.

Marshall Poe:

Great. America's great contribution to world cuisine, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's. That's very funny. Well, it's been really enjoyable talking to you. We have a kind of traditional final question on the New Books Network, and that is what are you working on now? What is your current project?

Jin Feng:

Yeah, I'm working on something else in addition to Chinese food. I'm still in conversations with practitioners and researchers of Chinese foodways, obviously. I actually recently, just last November, published an article as a follow up to my book, which is about female Chinese restaurant managers. They were not chefs. They were basically administrators, but it was a fun article to write, to get to interview these women again and talk about their experiences, which was not featured very much in my book. And I did a round table on Chinese foodways [inaudible 00:38:32] teach Chinese food in the United States this January with a group of scholars, both here and in China, and Australia, and so forth. It's online, so it's [inaudible 00:38:42]. And I am actually currently working on the institutionalization of creative writing in China. This was really about how Chinese intellectuals and writers adapted American model of creative teaching, creative writing, the Iowa Writers' Workshop International Writing Program.

So I'm very interested in learning what they actually kept, what they changed to suit Chinese needs, and why was it so popular all of a sudden in China. This was a new phenomenon. The first MFA in Creative Writing came about around 2009, so it was about a decade or so ago, but more than a hundred writing programs sprung up in China ever since then. Yeah. So I'm interesting knowing why did they adopt this model, what they changed, what it meant for Chinese cultural production, and how that is related to their own identity, and so on, so forth. And my tentative title is still a food metaphor, American as Apple Pie. This is... With a question mark, with a question mark.

Because this is a tribute to the book written by [inaudible 00:39:53], who wrote about Iowa Writers' Workshop and other writing programs. The title of his book is American as Apple Pie, because he thought it was a unique American contribution, the coupling of the profession of authorship and institution of higher education. China is trying to go the same route, basically, to hire professional writers to come into universities, colleges, to teach creative writing, which was not done in the past. So that's what I'm working on right now.

Marshall Poe:

Well, it sounds fascinating, and we'll have to have you on again when that book is done.

Jin Feng:

Thank you.

Marshall Poe:

Okay. All right. All right. Let me tell everyone, we've been talking with Jin Feng of Grinnell College today about her book Tasting Paradise on Earth. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and you're listening to an episode of Grinnell College's Authors and Artists podcast. I hope everybody has a great week. Bye, Jin.

Jin Feng:

All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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