The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China by Jia-Chen Fu (review)

This book chronicles the promotion of soybean milk as a modern, nutritious food item against the backdrop of emerging nutritional science in Republican China. It gives an engaging narrative on how soybean milk was chosen by Chinese "nutrition activists" to reform the "Chinese diet." Jia-Chen Fu criticizes earlier scholars of "food and diet in China" for generally considering nutrition science "either as a Western import or as a modern manifestation of older dietetic knowledge" (p.6). In a sense, the book can be read as Fu's attempt at elucidating the dialectics between the traditional and the modern in the social life of soybean in China.

Drawing on recent scholarship and key primary texts, the first two chapters give a panoramic view of soybeans throughout the long history of China and their ultimate emergence as an economic crop in the nineteenth century. In practice, soybeans must be properly treated to become nutritious and palatable. Fu succinctly provides an informative account of the various methods devised by the Chinese, such as grinding, cooking, and fermentation. Initially, soybeans were considered an inferior crop and famine food. Subsequently, they were used to extract cooking oil, and the residues therefrom were used as fertilizers. As a result, large-scale cultivation in Manchuria and exports in the nineteenth century ensued. In the aftermath of China's repeatedly failed attempts to defend itself against foreign powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese intellectuals experienced a deep sense of crisis that drove them to examine social ills of the newly founded republic. Reformers were concerned with food-health relations, believing that most Chinese were not physically fit to compete against Western counterparts. Fu analyzes how nutrition scientists such as Wu Xian (1893–1959) and Tao Menghe (1887–1960) constructed the notion of the "Chinese diet" through their nutrition research and social surveys. Although these were conducted mainly in places close to Beijing, the findings were extrapolated to indicate the entire inadequacy of the "Chinese diet."

The key inadequacy in the "Chinese diet" uncovered by the said nutritional scientists was the lack of necessary protein intake. In chapters 3 and 4, Fu looks at the methods adopted by Chinese nutrition scientists to appropriate, sometimes selectively, Western scientific knowledge and used it to criticize Chinese diet and launch a reform. They found that inadequate meat consumption was prevalent. Given the general public's purchasing power, this indeed was a nearly insolvable problem. Equally insufficient was the consumption of cow milk, a food item identified by Western scientists at that time, especially in the USA, as an important source of protein and vitamins for children. Drinking cow milk was rare in China, and there was hardly any infrastructure for diary industry. As nutrition scientist Zheng Ji (1900–2010) put it, "it behooved Chinese researchers to advance scientific understanding of the nutritional value of plant proteins, especially those found in soybeans and grains" (p. 88). In this spirit, these Chinese nutrition scientists began promoting consumption of fortified soybean milk produced by modern methods.

In chapter 5, Fu examines soybean milk advertisements by two competing local companies, and she finds that they adopted both modern and traditional dietary concepts. Similar mixture can also be found in medical advertisements of the same era. In the last two chapters, the author looks at nutrition activism during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On the one hand, the war brought public nutrition to a crisis point. On the other hand it engendered opportunities for promoting fortified soybean milk and testing its merits. Fu provides a detailed account of field experiments conducted by the Refugee Children's Nutritional Aid Committee in wartime Shanghai. Soybean milk was provided to children seeking refuge at the International Settlement. While there, their health and growth were monitored. The objective is twofold—to free young refugees from dire nutritional conditions and to encourage consumption of soybean milk through ascertaining...