China in Seven Banquets

China in Seven Banquets ranges through 5,000 years of China’s food history in seven iconic meals, from the ancient Eight Treasures fête to the ‘Tail-Burning Banquet’ of the Tang Dynasty and the Qing court’s extravagant ‘Complete Manchu-Han Feast’. We also experience lavish repasts from literature and film, a New Year’s buffet from 1920s Shanghai and a delivery menu from the hyperglobal twenty-first century, even peeking into the tables of the not-too-distant future. Drawing on decades of experience eating his way around China, Beijing-based historian Thomas David DuBois explains why culinary fashions come and go, and recreates dozens of historical recipes in a modern kitchen. From fermented elk to absinthe cocktails, this is Chinese food as you’ve never seen it before.

China in Seven Banquets ranges through 5,000 years of China’s food history in seven iconic meals, from the ancient Eight Treasures fête to the ‘Tail-Burning Banquet’ of the Tang Dynasty and the Qing court’s extravagant ‘Complete Manchu-Han Feast’. We also experience lavish repasts from literature and film, a New Year’s buffet from 1920s Shanghai and a delivery menu from the hyperglobal twenty-first century, even peeking into the tables of the not-too-distant future. Drawing on decades of experience eating his way around China, Beijing-based historian Thomas David DuBois explains why culinary fashions come and go, and recreates dozens of historical recipes in a modern kitchen. From fermented elk to absinthe cocktails, this is Chinese food as you’ve never seen it before.