Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond edited by Tan Chee-Beng (review)

Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond deals with the anthropology of food in Southeast Asia and, in particular, examines how variants of Chinese food are transferred, reproduced and localized by overseas Chinese communities. Almost all of the contributors to the volume are anthropologists. Yet this is hardly a typical ethnographic project. Ethnographies are usually based on the stuff that “makes” anthropology: case studies, detailed descriptions of particular rituals and events, careful analysis of observed practices, and specific observations. The chapters in this book are much broader, based on many years of academic research, and on long-term engagement and personal experience that for most of the contributors go way beyond the academy.

Most importantly, virtually all of the contributors are Southeast Asian Chinese, and their chapters are complex culinary autobiographies based on first-hand experience. In many ways they are both researchers and informants, producing texts that do justice to the experience of eating by going beyond the observed and intellectually analysed, into the felt, embodied, liked and longed for. Jean Duruz and Nancy Pollok, the non-Chinese contributors, rely on their many years of academic and bodily involvement with Chinese foodscapes. And though their texts are written differently from the rest of the chapters, they contribute to the sense of comprehensiveness that characterizes the volume.

The first section, called (somewhat awkwardly) “Overview and Chinese Food in Diaspora”, sets the ground for the entire project. In the first chapter, Tan Chee-Beng discusses Chinese Malayan (i.e., Malaysia and Singapore) food and argues that Chinese food in Southeast Asia goes through processes of reproduction, invention and globalization. Together with Nancy Pollok’s chapter on the influence of Chinese gastronomy on the Pacific region, and David Wu’s essay on his encounters with Chinese restaurant food in many different places in and beyond Southeast Asia, the first section offers an “overview of Chinese food in Southeast Asia and its globalization” (p. 4).

The second section, “Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia”, includes four chapters on Chinese food in Indonesia (Myra Sidharta), the Philippines (Carmelea Ang See), Myanmar (Duan Ying) and Vietnam (Chan Yuk Wa). The chapters on Indonesia and the Philippines are as wide in scope as the chapters in the first section of the book, while those engaging with Chinese food in Myanmar and in Vietnam are more ethnographically “orthodox” — bounded in space, time and gastronomic landscapes.

These four chapters further enhance the sense of sweeping movement conveyed in the previous section of the book by demonstrating the prominence of Chinese food throughout Southeast Asia. They also highlight two main empirical findings of the project as a whole: that Chinese foodways in different communities in Southeast Asia have many similarities and that the cooking and eating practices of each community display specific characteristics that have been shaped by the gastronomical traditions of the regions of origin (e.g., Fujian, Guangzhou, Hainan, Yunnan, and Chaoshan) as well as by the ethnic and regional cuisines of their respective host societies.

Chinese foodways in Myanmar, for example, and the Qingming offerings at the Cantonese congregation and wedding banquet at the Yunnanese association in Mandalay described by Duan Ying are very similar to the feasts and weddings of the Chinese communities that I studied in Vietnam’s Hoi An. However, these feasts always display what I term as “culinary nuances”: modifications in the ingredients, cooking modes, presentation or consumption. These nuances draw on local culinary customs, hence distinguishing the food of each Chinese community in each town in Southeast Asia.

The third section of the book explores the expansion of Southeast Asian Chinese food into the Western hemisphere and specifically to Las Vegas (Jiemin Bao) and Adelaide (Jean Duruz). While Veronica Mak’s chapter is included in this section, it can double as a concluding chapter for the volume as a whole, as it revisits the theme of Southeast Asian Chinese food in China introduced...