Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai
"In this book, a historical study of restaurant food and its meanings in Shanghai, Mark Swislocki brings fresh and interesting material to the field of modern Chinese history and, simultaneously, to the rapidly expanding field of culinary history . . . Swislocki's research builds on earlier histories of native-place in Shanghai, but takes the reader into hitherto unexplored domains of this hybrid city. Readers will enjoy the journey. Original, engaging, and stimulating, this is the first book-length English-language study of a local food culture in China. It extends by a wide margin the existing body of research in this area."—Antonia Finnane,American Historical Review"While there are a great many books on Chinese cooking, collections of recipes, and the like, far rarer are scholarly studies of Chinese foodways in broader terms and on the position of foodways and food in the general cultural history of China and of its regions. Swislocki has not only contributed one of these very rare books but he has done so in considerable style and with great originality to produce a book that is not only superb food history but makes a major contribution to Chinese history in general."—Paul D. Buell,Journal of Asian History"Mark Swislocki's well-researchedCulinary Nostalgiarepresents a sophisticated and comprehensive study of Shanghai, a harbinger in China's quest for modernity and cultural exchange. In lucid prose, the book analyzes the ways in which the city's residents coped with rapid change and defined its identity in different periods."—Yong Chen,Journal of World History"This is a significant book which offers a refreshing new approach to the study of China through the history of food, showing how city residents construct their relationship to the city, the rest of China  and the world by the way that they discuss and remember food and restaurants."—Chee-Beng Tan,The China Journal"Mark Swislocki'sCulinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghaiis one of a large number of recent monographs dealing with Shanghai's encounter with modernity, but it is the first to approach Shanghai with the argument that 'regional food culture was intrinsic to how Chinese connect to the past, lived in the present, and imagined a future.' . . . [Swislocki] offers much to consider and admire to anyone interested in the study of food as a lens through which to examine larger cultural and historical issues."—Christopher Nugent,Gastronomica: The Journal of Food & Culture