Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China

264 Pages·2005·1.21 MB·English

by  Roel Sterckx (eds.)

Of Tripod and Palate
This page intentionally left blank
Of Tripod and Palate
Food, Politics, and Religion in
Traditional China
Edited by
Roel Sterckx
OFTRIPODANDPALATE
© Roel Sterckx,2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6337-6
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 and
Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom
and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-52746-5 ISBN 978-1-4039-7927-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403979278
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conference on Food and Religion in Traditional China (2004 :Cambridge,England).
Of tripod and palate :food,politics,and religion in traditional China /
edited by Roel Sterckx.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Food habits—China—History—Congresses.2.Food—Political
aspects—China—Congresses.3.Food—Religious aspects—China—Congresses.
I.Title:Food,politics and religion in traditional China.II.Sterckx,Roel,1969–
III.Title.
GT2853.C6C66 2004
394.1(cid:2)2(cid:2)0951—dc22 2005045942
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:October 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Roel Sterckx
One Moonshine and Millet:Feasting and Purification
Rituals in Ancient China 9
Constance A.Cook
Two Food and Philosophy in Early China 34
Roel Sterckx
Three When Princes Awake in Kitchens:Zhuangzi’s Rewriting
of a Culinary Myth 62
Romain Graziani
Four The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order:
The Practice of Sacrifice in Early China 75
Michael Puett
Five Eating Better than Gods and Ancestors 96
Robert F.Campany
Six A Taste of Happiness:Contextualizing Elixirs
in Baopuzi 123
Poo Mu-chou
Seven Feasting Without the Victuals:The Evolution of the
Daoist Communal Kitchen 140
Terry F.Kleeman
Eight Pleasure,Prohibition,and Pain:
Food and Medicine in Traditional China 163
Vivienne Lo
vi Contents
Nine Buddhist Vegetarianism in China 186
John Kieschnick
Ten Buddhism,Alcohol,and Tea in Medieval China 213
James A.Benn
Eleven The Beef Taboo and the Sacrificial Structure
of Late Imperial Chinese Society 237
Vincent Goossaert
About the Contributors 249
Index 251
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Contributions to this book were presented,in various stages of gestation,at
the conference “Food and Religion in Traditional China,” hosted by the
East Asia Institute and the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Trinity College,
Cambridge,in April 2004.The event was made possible through generous
support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation,the British Academy,the
Society for the Study of Dietary Culture (Taipei), and the Wing Yip &
Brothers Charitable Trust.
A toast of thanks and appreciation is due to all those who contributed to
the meeting and this volume.First of all I would like to thank the authors.
Their enthusiasm and cooperation before and during the publication process,
amidst hectic institutional and other commitments,were truly exemplary.
The book has benefited from comments by Robert Chard, Christopher
Cullen, Glen Dudbridge, Geoffrey Lloyd, Michael Loewe, and Marco
Ceresa.Fongyee Walker and Sungwu Cho assisted in the smooth running of
the Cambridge meeting.For assistance along the way,I owe a debt of grat-
itude to David McMullen, Joe McDermott, and my colleagues in the
Chinese section in the Faculty of Oriental Studies.At Palgrave,Toby Wahl
and Heather Van Dusen provided expert support. John Moffett and Ang
Chengeng provided assistance with work on the final proofs and index.
Editorial work was supported by a publication grant from the Faculty of
Oriental Studies,Cambridge University.
Roel Sterckx
Cambridge,Autumn 2004
Introduction
Roel Sterckx
Food and foodways provide an effective lens through which to illuminate
human life.Its role in ancient and contemporary societies has been the sub-
ject of study by scholars working in a variety of fields over the past few
decades.Studies that examine food as nutrition or explore the economic
and technical aspects of food production through themes such as famine,
land use,health,and poverty reflect a long-standing interest by historians
and archaeologists in the material aspects of food in ancient societies.Today,
historians studying the role of food and commensality in societies in the
past increasingly acknowledge an intellectual debt to pioneering sociologi-
cal and anthropological work.1The results have been rewarding:the biocul-
tural relationship of humans to food and eating is now firmly implanted as
a valuable tool to explore aspects of a society’s social,political and religious
make up.For Graeco-Roman antiquity,work on what Peter Garnsey has
coined the “food and non-food uses of food” has yielded results hardly
digestible in one comprehensive bibliography.2 Likewise, an increasing
number of studies on food,cuisine,and eating in medieval and early mod-
ern Europe have seen the light in recent years (Carlin 1998,Bober 1999,
Scholliers 2001,Effros 2002);and enduring biblical scholarship on sacrifice
and food taboos has recently been supplemented with comprehensive stud-
ies on foodways in the Islamic world (Feeley-Harknick 1994;Van Gelder
2000a,2000b;Kueny 2001).
When asked to identify one aspect of Chinese culture that has character-
ized so much of the cultural capital it has fostered within its own borders
and beyond,a preoccupation with food would no doubt rank among the
most likely answers.To quote the late Chang Kwang-chih:“That Chinese
cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrel-
evant.But few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures
are as food oriented as the Chinese”(Chang 1977,11).Indeed few societies
have put more emphasis on the central role of food preparation and food
consumption in both a secular and religious context.For many today,the
globalization of Chinese culture still begins with the stomach (Wu and
Cheung 2002).
2 Roel Sterckx
The most original contributions to the study of food culture as a biocul-
tural phenomenon in China were initiated by anthropologists (Ahern 1973;
Chang 1977;Anderson 1988;Thompson 1988).Much of their work was
motivated by interests in the study of kinship as reflected in mortuary prac-
tice,sacrificial religion and community rituals.More recently the focus of
enquiry has broadened to include the role of food as a marker of social
identity or modernity in contemporary China and the Chinese diaspora
(Jing 2000;Farquhar 2002;Watson 2004).
It is in a pioneering collection of essays published in 1977,directed by
Chang Kwang-chih,that the anthropological questioning of food culture
amalgamated with an evaluation of food semantics in Chinese historical
sources,both texts as well as archaeological evidence.Around the same time
encyclopedic surveys compiled by Shinoda Osamu, Hayashi Minao and
others brought together invaluable data for the material and economic his-
tory of food in a diachronic and/or synchronic perspective.Chang’s volume
has remained the main introductory text on the subject in the English lan-
guage to date.It combines a descriptive account of food habits and attitudes
toward food within a sociohistorical context from the Shang period
through the end of the Mao era.Although its methodology,thematic organ-
ization (a chronology),and use of sources reflect the state of the field three
decades ago,it will no doubt remain a foundational collection of data on
Chinese food culture.A number of scholars, mainly in China and Japan,
have continued to explore culinary history from a technological and
economic perspective.3
In the meantime, as the bibliographies appended to the essays in this
volume suggest,new sources have become available for the study of food
culture and the intellectual approaches adopted to examine both transmit-
ted and newly recovered sources have evolved.The past few decades have
witnessed the discovery of numerous hitherto unknown textual and
archaeological materials excavated from tombs across China.To give due
account of the variety and sheer quantity of new texts and objects would
require several separate volumes.In addition,interpretative work on food
culture in cognate disciplines and focused on other civilizations,past and
contemporary,has inspired scholars of China to channel their attention to
the subject beyond cataloguing its material and technological history,
although great advances continue to be made with respect to the latter
(Huang 2000).To highlight just a few significant developments,students of
early China have now at their disposal detailed tomb inventories,sacrificial
and divinatory records and, most recently, have even been alerted to the
discovery of a Western Han gastronomic cookbook. Steady advances in
Dunhuang studies have allowed scholars of medieval China to compare
social life and habits in the western periphery with those of heartland
China. Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have gained an interest in the
material aspects of life both among monastic and lay communities.
Likewise,historians of Chinese medicine no longer rely solely on the trans-
mitted medical canon for their analyses but have embraced a great variety