Thomas David DuBois, "China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Thomas David DuBois, "China in Seven Banquets: A Flavorful History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Host: Laura Goldberg
Date: December 28, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features a conversation between host Laura Goldberg and historian Thomas David DuBois about his new book, China in Seven Banquets: A Flavorful History. The discussion explores Chinese history and society through the lens of food, focusing on the role of banquets as reflections—and drivers—of cultural, political, and social change. DuBois illustrates how food history is both deeply human and profoundly influential in shaping communities, etiquette, class, and even national security.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Human Side of Chinese Food History

• DuBois set out to write a history that’s vivid, personal, and accessible, intentionally departing from the dense academic tone common in works by historians.
• The opening scene in his book—a kitchen worker killing frogs for a banquet—was chosen to convey the immediacy and tangibility of food experiences in China.

  "All of these little, you know, these little moments...the reason it sounds vivid is because my memory of it is so vivid. And I wanted to capture all of these as clearly and, you know, as vividly as I could." (Thomas David DuBois, 05:06)

2. Frogs, Regional Cuisine & Food Choices

• The prevalence of frog in Chinese cuisine reflects environmental and regional factors; the further south, the more common frogs (“water chickens”) are, since they are easier to raise in wetter climates.
• DuBois and Goldberg discuss how even mundane food choices stem from deep historical and regional logic.

3. Banquet as a Lens on Chinese Society

• Chinese banquets are much more than meals: they are complex rituals involving performance, hierarchy, and etiquette.
• The arrangement of seats, order of toasts, and sequence of dishes all convey social status and relationships, especially in regions like Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius.

  "You pick that up. If you go to China, you pick that up fairly quickly that you don't just grab a seat, you wait until you are told where to sit." (Thomas David DuBois, 10:09)

• These social rituals turn meals into aesthetic experiences that reveal historical and social order.
• The book includes varied banquets, from ancient texts, historical events, movies, and personal experiences, to showcase diversity over time and space.

4. Food History: Reflection and Driver of Change

• DuBois underscores that food history isn’t just reflective of societal changes—it drives them.
• He describes food as a universal human experience through which all kinds of social, economic, and moral meanings are expressed.

  "Any human division or any human grouping or any human emotion can be expressed through food, which means it can be expressed in food history." (Thomas David DuBois, 17:52)

5. Banquet 1: The Eight Treasures of Zhou & Confucian Ethics

• The first banquet draws on Confucian morality—banquet etiquette is deeply foundational in Chinese society, going back 3,000 years.
• Meat, especially prepared in specific ways, was a symbol of moral and political standing.
• The description of fermented meat sauces—akin to Roman garum—elicited both fascination and queasiness (24:08).
• DuBois includes recipes throughout the book, some of which have entered his own regular rotation; others (like the fermented meats) were less successful.

6. Changing Flavors and Ingredients

• Some historical flavors and spices, such as long pepper, have disappeared from Chinese cooking as chilies and other tastes rose to dominance.
• Globalization in food is not new—China has always incorporated foreign ingredients, changing dramatically with the arrival of New World crops. Corn and chilies fundamentally transformed agriculture and cuisine, enabling population growth and new regional habits.

  "Corn would be one of the...the sort of the life changing, the cultural transformations. One would be corn, another would be Chili's. I think those are the two big changes." (Thomas David DuBois, 32:33)

7. Sichuan Cuisine and the Dynamics of Authenticity

• Goldberg reflects on American fascination with spicy Sichuan food, while DuBois explains this “authentic” spicy style was historically associated with poverty and is in part a product of industrialization and tourism.
• The global and internal marketing of culinary “authenticity” shapes what is offered, even in China, sometimes erasing local diversity for tourist expectations.

8. Banquet 2: The Lavishness of Ancient Banqueting

• The Tang Dynasty banquet, influenced by Silk Road connections, featured extraordinary arrays of foods, including exotic meats and dairy, highlighting how official banquets served political ends and displayed imperial power.
• Practical preparation was the work of dedicated official bureaus, employing armies of cooks and servers.

9. The Culture and Role of Tea

• Tea occupies a central place in Chinese social and ceremonial life, akin to wine in the West, with terroir, connoisseurship, and even speculative bubbles (i.e. pu’er tea).

  "Giving tea as a present or showing the ability to recognize good tea is, very similar again to wine in the West. It's a sign of a cultured person." (Thomas David DuBois, 52:15)

10. Culinary Representation in Film: Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

• The book includes a banquet inspired by Ang Lee’s film, showing how contemporary media reflect—and shape—culinary traditions and generational conflicts.
• The film’s attention to food, family, and changing relationships resonates with themes of authenticity, heritage, and adaptation.

  "Food is the vehicle for human relationships and it's sort of paired with family relationships, it's paired with sex, but it always has that symbolic value." (Thomas David DuBois, 61:45)

11. Chinese Cuisine Abroad & Notions of Authenticity

• DuBois traces his own journey from eating Americanized Chinese food in suburban Illinois, expressing love for the so-called “inauthentic” because of its personal significance.
• He critiques the rigid pursuit of authenticity, noting that all food cultures are moving targets, constantly evolving.
• In modern China, processes like productive upscaling and centralized food production—mirroring trends in Western countries—are rapidly transforming culinary culture, raising issues around standardization and food security.

12. Food Security and Centralization

• The Chinese government’s focus on food self-sufficiency since 1949 has driven domestic production and resistance to import dependence.
• Rapid centralization and industrialization, especially visible in dairy and food processing, have led to tensions with consumers’ expectations for tradition and freshness.

13. Takeaways for Readers and Diners

• DuBois hopes readers will come away with an appreciation for the sheer depth, diversity, and cultural meaning of Chinese food—a world far beyond questions of mere authenticity or taste.

  "We're not even at the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is way over on the horizon. We haven't even seen the iceberg yet. There's so much depth to this. And even after having lived here for most of my adult life, it wasn't until I started researching this book that I properly understood how much, how deep and how rich this culture is." (Thomas David DuBois, 71:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Delightful is about the highest praise I think I could aspire to. So we've started off on a really good foot." (Thomas David DuBois, 03:13)
• "The further south you go, the more froggy you get. And that's...related to the...where the water is..." (Thomas David DuBois, 07:01)
• "Food history is fun. Food history is. I like to jug that as a historian, I'm sort of the universal donor of humanity's academia. I could talk to anybody." (Thomas David DuBois, 16:04)
• "Is it authentic, is it, you know, is this an invented tradition or what have you. The sources are there and the depth of the aesthetic is, you know, it's just plain to see." (Thomas David DuBois, 55:50)
• "Food is the vehicle for human relationships and it's...paired with family relationships, it's paired with sex, but it always has that symbolic value." (Thomas David DuBois, 61:45)
• "Authenticity is always going to be a moving target. What I find interesting about China's current culinary scene...is to see that it's not really so much, for example, American food coming to China. It's...China's experiencing the same processes that transformed American cuisine." (Thomas David DuBois, 63:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:13 — Tone and intent of the book
• 05:06 — The vivid frog banquet anecdote
• 09:10 — The banquet as a window into etiquette and societal values
• 15:25 — “Food history as a driver”—Why study food history?
• 19:48 — Breakdown and meaning of the Eight Treasures of Zhou
• 24:08 — Adventures with ancient fermented meat recipes
• 26:29 — Lost flavors and shifting ingredient dominance
• 29:06 — Globalization and food: Corn, chilies, and population
• 34:00 — How corn and chilies changed China
• 35:50 — Sichuan cuisine, authenticity, and class
• 41:43 — The impact of tourism and marketing on local food
• 44:21 — Tang dynasty banquets and the logistics of ancient feasts
• 51:20 — The place of tea in Chinese culinary and cultural life
• 56:10 — The iconic film “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” and food as metaphor
• 63:34 — Authenticity, adaptation, and Chinese food around the world
• 67:17 — Food centralization, security, and government policy
• 71:35 — Final takeaways: food’s depth beyond "real" or "tasty"

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Overall Tone and Language

DuBois is scholarly but warm, enthusiastic, and often humorous, blending deep expertise with personal anecdotes and accessible storytelling. Goldberg, a lover of Chinese food and experienced interviewer, brings an inquisitive, appreciative voice, drawing out both the cultural significance and practical realities of China’s food traditions.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode:

This episode is an engaging, wide-ranging tour through Chinese history, culture, and society via the banquet table. Whether you’re a student of history, a lover of Chinese food, or simply curious about how something as universal as eating can shape—and reflect—the human experience, this conversation is filled with surprising insights and rich, memorable detail.

Transcript

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[Thomas David Dubois]

1-800-Contacts. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Laura Goldberg]

Welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host today on the Food Channel, Laura Goldberg. You might know me from my blog, vittlesvamp.com Very happy today to welcome Thomas David Dubois. Actually coming to us from Beijing, China, where he's a professor at Beijing Normal, and he's here to talk about his book, China in Seven Banquets, A Flavorful History. Welcome to the show, Tom.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Hi, Laura. Great to be here.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, I gotta tell you, and I know I actually said it before we started recording, I was very surprised by your book. I made the assumption not necessarily making an ass out of you in terms of ass, you know, assume makes an ass out of you and me, but the truth is, I assumed you were a professor. And this is China and Seven Banquets. And I thought this was going to be a very heavy tome with a lot of Chinese names and, you know, things for me to almost feel like I needed to memorize and, you know, plow through in order to get to the historic bits. And instead, not that this didn't have a wonderful historical lens on Chinese culture and Chinese civilization, but it was also just kind of human. Very human and very delightful and joyous and curious and an absolute pleasure. So thank you. Thank you for writing it, and I look forward to unpacking a lot of it with you today.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Well, thank you. Delightful is about the highest praise I think I could aspire to. So we've started off on a really good foot.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay, well, that's good. I mean, you say it's a flavorful history, but, you know, I've gotta say, I love Chinese food. Now, mind you, I'm. I'm a Jew, you know, my last name is Goldberg, and so, you know, and Christmas is coming up, so, you know, I'll be hit, and I live in New York, so I'll be hitting Chinatown. It's just that simple. And actually, for my birthday, which just passed, one of my dear friends got us a walking tour, an walking and eating tour of Flushing, Queens. The Chinatown here, one of many Chinatowns in New York, which we're gonna be spending five hours eating. So really near and dear to my heart and certainly my gullet. So thank you, Tom, for letting me sort of start in early on diving into all the glory that is Chinese food. But I do need to ask you. You start this book with. How do I phrase this? It's really kind of a striking scene in which frogs are being prepared for a banquet. But it's really vivid. I mean, you've got this kitchen assistant literally taking frogs and throwing them against the wall to kill them, and then, you know, packaged them all up to be cooked. And I've got to admit, I've got a dear friend who came over. Now, mind you, we were making Cajun Creole and made frog's legs. And I can promise you he did not do that in my home. So I was wondering what led to that being the opening quote, unquote, scene of this book.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Well, this is my fourth book. As you noted, I'm a professional historian, and, you know, your first book. Few books, as a professional, have to be a certain tone. You know, they've got to be scholarly. They've got to be, you know, pack as much information as you can in a limited space. And now I've passed that point professionally, so I can write what I want to write and what I really wanted to do. You know, I've been in China since the early 90s on and off, and this story about the frog killing is actually something that I have seen. And all of these little, you know, these. These little moments of, you know, the reason it sounds vivid is because my Memory of it is so vivid. And I wanted to capture all of these as clearly and, you know, as vividly as I could. And that meant doing something that we historians don't get a chance to do very often, to cross from delivery of information into narrative. So I really wanted to start the book with a story like that. And, and again, 30 years later, this scene of the. And again, this is something that I, I saw when I was on vacation in the early 90s. This scene that struck, that stayed with me for 30 years. I thought, yeah, this is a, as good a, as good a starter as any.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, I will tell you, when I've gone to Chinatown, I've been in Flushing without the tour. But also, you know, there, there's several. Manhattan. There's one in Manhattan, there's one in Brooklyn. And you'll see buckets of frogs. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, they're, they're not just a delicacy, they are day to day eating.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Yes. And especially regionally.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay, how so? Like, you know, which regions are really all about the frogs.

[Thomas David Dubois]

The, the further south you go, the more froggy you get. And that's, you know, really just related to the, the big picture of where the water is, you know, So I live in North China. That's where I've spent most of my time in China. And it's, it's dry, it's cold, and it's, you know, it's, it's where you would raise some kind of crops, certain kind of animals, and that thousands of years later is what the cuisine is. And the frogs are in the south and there are a number of reasons why you eat frogs, besides them tasting good, but, but they're also really easy to raise. So they're called water chickens.

[Laura Goldberg]

Yeah, no, you said that in the book. And I'd never heard that term before. But you know, truthfully, I remember my friend Peter before he made these, these, you know, frogs legs for, for this dinner, he was like, oh, they're just going to taste like chicken. And I'm like, well, that doesn't complement the frog very much like you would think there'd be a little bit of difference. Tastes like chicken is a compliment, you.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Know, leading to the next question, then why don't we just have chicken? Yeah.

[Laura Goldberg]

Or why don't we have chicken? Or why do we have chicken at all? Why don't we have frogs to begin with?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Good point.

[Laura Goldberg]

It might just be for the eggs, I don't know. But so there's so much in here. Let me just start it with the main premise of the book, which is the banquet.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Right.

[Laura Goldberg]

And you talk about how it's not just about eating, that the banquet has a lot of levels, a lot of layers going into it. It's got performance and hierarchy and meaning. And you also talk about etiquette a great deal in this book. I was hoping that you could talk about why you felt banquets were a really powerful lens for understanding Chinese history, especially across such a long time span. And mind you, you've got a lot of variations on a theme in terms of banquets, and so I'd love you to talk a bit about that as well.

[Thomas David Dubois]

The. The banquet is the preeminent social occasion in China. If you're getting married, if you're getting buried, if you're having a political occasion, there is going to be a big meal. And you do so much more than eat. You eat? Yes, certainly you eat. Oh goodness, do you eat? But you do so much more than that. I'll give you one small example and then I'll go into the books. Banquets. The first place I lived in China is a province called Shandong province. And that's where Confucius came from. And it is still a very Confucian inflected province. It's very much this man's heartland, which means that ritual and etiquette are key. And relatively recently I was at my old university and we were having a big banquet to. I don't even remember what the occasion was. It's how traumatized I was by this experience. But with friends, this is the point. We were sitting around this giant table with about. I think this was about a 20 person table. So you really have to shout to talk to the person on the other end. And it's always at a round table. And why a round table? Because the seating is vital, is key. So you might know that the guest of honor and the host sit opposite the door. And there's always a space at the door that's called a tsaiko, that's where the food comes in. But you're basically descending in importance from those two seats that are opposite the door and in addition to where you sit. So you pick that up. If you go to China, you pick that up fairly quickly that you don't just grab a seat, you wait until you are told where to sit. And there's a lot of sort of ritual that goes into refusing. Oh no, I'm not the honored guest. Oh yes you are. Oh no, I'm not. And somebody grabs you by the shoulders and plonks you down in the seat of honor. You have to be forced into that seat and, you know, all the other seats. As you descend in importance, the rich bull becomes a little bit less important as well. But I was, you know, maybe in the second tier of importance, maybe three or four people away from the. The. The real center of. Of power. And in addition to where you sit, there's also a ritual of where you. Who toasts when. So you have a little tiny glass of hard liquor called baijiu. And of course, the host and the guest of honor, they're going to be the first ones to toast. And then it sort of goes almost like a clock around those two, and everybody has their place. And in most of China, it's not going to be so formal. You've got the first two people, and then it's kind of a free for all. But not in Shandong. Oh, no, in Shandong, this sort of pecking order of politeness continues down, you know, eight or nine people. And what I did, and this is after having lived in China for about 20 years, I toasted at the wrong time. I skipped the queue. And we're drinking. This is a drinking banquet with friends, you know, people that I've known for decades. And when I skipped Q, because I was so. I was just having such a good time, and I was so happy to see my friends, and I was so grateful for this banquet that I skipped Q. And I stood up with my little glass of wine. And these people that are fun and funky people, the look of horror on their face. Oh, Tom, stop that. And, you know, I. I had the sense to sort of like, oh, no, really, what I was doing, I was just going to the bathroom. Pardon me, and not taking my drink with me. But the point is. And then I whispered to my friends, like, don't ever let me do that again. You know, when. When it's my turn to toast, you poke me, you know, and I'm not talking until then. But until I'm toast. Yeah, I. I will not drink until I. Well, I will. Will not speak until I impose. And the point about this is that there was delicious food and there were good friends and everything you would associate with a meal. But that element of etiquette that just permeates everything. When does food come out? What order does it come out? How long do you fight over the bill, et cetera, et cetera. That's an art, and that's an art that you appreciate in an aesthetic sense. So that when. If you spent any time in China and then you Go to a place where people are splitting the bill or just casually sitting down, you. You feel like the flavor has been taken out of the occasion. So, you know, you really come to appreciate and sort of put up with at first these. These rules of etiquette, the social occasion of a banquet, but then you really do come to love it. And. And that's where I am, and that's what I wanted to capture in the book, is that all of these historic banquets that. That we're talking about in the book, they have a history and they have a point, and they have an aesthetic, and they have a society that revolves around them or that is revealed through the event. So just briefly, the ones that we talk about, there's one from a book, there's one from a historical source, there's one from a movie, there's one from my own life. You know, that it really sort of. I wanted to show historically the progress, but I also wanted to show the range of these events in addition to what's on the table.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, you know, you also say in the introduction, and I thought this was interesting because, I mean, obviously I don't think all the listeners here have necessarily completely are familiar with food history and looking at history through the lens of food. And, you know, you really talk about how it's a reflection of society, but it's more than that, that it's actually one of the driving forces. And throughout the book, you talk about that. And I'm just curious, you know, for those who are new to food history, you know, what does it mean to take that claim seriously?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Food history is fun. Food history is. I like to jug that as a historian. I'm sort of the universal donor of humanity's academia. I could talk to anybody. That's what's nice about being a historian. We don't fence ourselves in. If it happened. It's. It's. It's history. And food history is fairly similar in that sense that every class, every society, every grouping of two people, when they sit down to eat, they're performing a social act. And that social act falls under the umbrella of food history. So because it's so big and because it's so broad and because it's so universally relatable, you can take a number of approaches to it. So the. The background that I come from academically has, you know, the. The sort of the hard history topics, things like commodity trade and commodity prices. This is how I got into food history was looking at sort of cattle trade and soybean trade and, you know, these heavy academic topics. But you very quickly realize that you're missing the point. And particularly in a place like China, where every social occasion, including the ones in the historic sources, has a food element. And the meanings of food are so broad that you know that just counting, literally counting beans in, in the case of my soybean project, you're, you're really missing the point in a. In a fundamental sense. And food history was really good training for that because I teach food history here in Beijing, among the other things that I teach. I'm a historian, but I'm in a. A folklore studies program. So I want to show the students here. So I, you know, for example, I'll bring examples from the US in, in my teaching. I'll show my students here that what food can mean to a community or what food can mean to an individual, where the range is just endless. You know, there's, there's health, there's sort of community, the mythology that we build around our communities. There's a moral element. There's, of course, class division. Any human division or any human grouping or any human emotion can be expressed through food, which means it can be expressed in food history.

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[Laura Goldberg]

Well, let's dive into banquet number one. I believe that's the Eight Treasures of Zhou. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Yes, you are.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, great. You know, you talked about morality, and that banquet you said from the get go was really deeply tied to Confucian morality and proper conduct. So that's sort of like the big etiquette lesson you kicked it off with. And what I found fascinating was you were talking about how especially meat, became a powerful ethical and political symbol, you know, during that period of time. And if you could talk a bit about that and explain that a bit more, I'd love it.

[Thomas David Dubois]

This was the first thing, you know, when we started in our first class on our first day learning about China as an undergrad back at the University of Chicago. We started with Confucianism and etiquette. And this is, you know, a book that was written by a French archaeologist hundreds or a hundred or so years ago. And it seemed so sort of weird and exotic. But again, this is. This is the. The ethic that goes into this banquet. Being a proper host is deeply foundational in Chinese culture. When I say deeply foundational, it is traceable back to about 3,000 years ago. And that is the essence of Confucianism. The essence of Confucianism is really knowing your place in whatever exchange you are. So if you're a parent, act like a parent. If you're a child, act like a child, on and on. And that particularly applies to being a host or a guest. So if you are receiving guests, it's very. I don't want to say rote, but there are rules about how you receive a guest. And these are in these Confucian sources. When you have a guest, know, sort of imagine an embassy banquet, if you have a guest of a certain status, you serve a certain number of dishes, and they're of a certain quality. And these are laid out in the early Confucian texts. And as you said, meat is particularly important. So, you know, it's not a cookbook, but the Confucian classics will say that when this prince received, this other prince, this, you know, dignitary from another country, from another kingdom, because this is before China is unified. So it's. It's all different kingdoms that he laid out eight dishes or he laid out a certain number of. Of dishes, and they would be divided between raw meat and cooked meat. And again, this is not because we're going to eat raw meat, but because we're satisfying these ritual, these sort of rules that we have that when you receive a guest, you receive them in a certain way, and that relates to the number of dishes. So the Eight Treasures banquet is something that does show up in the Confucian sources. It's a mythical banquet. So Confucius is always talking about how people used to be so much better than they are now. And he gives the example of somebody who would have lived, you know, hundreds of years before his time. And he says, so he's Recounting this thing that happened in the distant past, saying that when this person had guests, he would lay out these eight dishes and they're described briefly in the sources. But if you then match those brief descriptions up against what we know, for example, from archeology, we can put together a pretty good picture of what he was describing. And that would all be different preparations of meat. So there are grilled meats. There are. One of the really interesting ones is fermented meat.

[Laura Goldberg]

I was going to ask you about that because I've got to tell you, when I started reading about the fermented meat sauces, my stomach definitely turned, which.

[Thomas David Dubois]

You were lucky you were not in my kitchen at the time that I was writing that book. Because of course, you know, how are you going to write about these things? You have to try to make them. And I mean, really what it is, is garum, the, the Roman, the, the Roman fermented meat that would be a condiment at the time. And it's, it's a very. I was not successful in making fermented meat. Let's start with that.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay, so it's not a taste, a delight. It's not going to be sweeping the international culinary scene anytime soon.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Not the one that I make, that's for sure.

[Laura Goldberg]

But. Okay. I just want to tell listeners, Tom actually includes recipes throughout this book. And actually, you did not just this recipe. Throughout this book, there are tons of recipes and you really took a crack at trying to make all of a lot of these, you know, kinds of far out there archaeological, you know, discoveries, you know, in terms of, you know, the Martha Stewarts of their day, so to speak.

[Thomas David Dubois]

A lot of them have made their way into my regular rotation.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, really?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Like some of the ones from the, from the qing dynasty, the 18th century. These are, these are just good with a capital G. I should also add that I, before I started writing this book, I also did go to cooking school and that helped a great deal.

[Laura Goldberg]

I can imagine. It's just, I mean, I will say I used to handle press for Archeology magazine and at one point, I don't know if you know the book and movie Julie and Julia. Yeah, the woman, Julie Powell, actually wrote a book and I went to her apartment because she made these ancient recipes, you know, going through different, like, you know, Roman scrolls and Greece and like, some of the ingredients she had to pull. And it sounded like this wasn't too dissimilar from your experience. Some of these ingredients you had to find, some of them don't really exist. Some of them you had to come up with substitutes for. If I'm not incorrect, I was really.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Amazed at the number of flavors that don't exist or are not easy to find or are not associated with cuisine anymore.

[Laura Goldberg]

Like what?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Like, for example, there's a spice called long pepper that is very prominent in medieval Chinese cuisine. And then we just forget about it. And I think one of the reasons is that chilies have overwhelmed a lot of these more subtle spices. And chilies came in much later, but the idea of spicy food did exist. So long pepper is a Southeast Asian pepper. It has a sort of a piney taste. And of course, it, you know, I did get my hands on some, and I. I still do have them in my kitchen, but where did I get them? From a medicine store. A lot of these foods, because food is medicine. That's a phrase in Chinese. A lot of these foods are still available, but they're no longer associated with something that you would use in the kitchen. But, you know, this. This sort of range of historical tastes. In a lot of cases, what I found, you know, you. We. We would naturally, I think, assume that tastes become more complicated as the world gets smaller. You know, as we can trade commodities from all over the world. In many cases, it's the opposite. In many cases, we have one taste that just comes to dominate, and it pushes all the other, you know, more subtle tastes off of the table. And that was a. Again, that was a surprise.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, you. You also, going back to the introduction right now, one of the things you started talking about in there was, you know, how different foods from around the world start. When does. Do they come into the scene? When do they impact? And you asked whether or not an 18th century cook had ever seen a tomato that is an 18th century cook in China. And, you know, it's a simple question, but at the end of the day, it's a really important one. I mean, you know, when was China first introduced tomatoes? What does that moment mean? And, you know, when does globalization really impact, you know, or any kind of. I mean, the Silk Road. You talk about the Silk Road a great deal when you get to banquet number two. And, you know, I know we just talked about fermentation, but we talk about dairy fermentation in that chapter. I'm just curious, you know, how quickly, you know, did you start seeing globalization of some sort or impacts from other culture really impacting Chinese cuisine?

[Thomas David Dubois]

There are very few things that I would say are sort of deeply, deeply Chinese. China has always been in contact with other places. So the Things that are really, truly, truly Chinese. Tea would be one of those. Fermentation, obviously a lot of places are going to develop that independently, but that is there from the very beginning. The idea of cooking wet grains, you know, as opposed to baking, this is one of the big divides. Southwest Asia is baking bread because it mills their grains south, or pardon me, East Asia is cooking wet grains. So the, the way you would cook rice or millet or these other grains, that is, those are all there from the absolute, absolute beginning. Everything else comes in later. You know, later maybe means three, 4,000 years ago, but it still has a date that it came into China. I would say the big momentous changes. And this is again from a historian's point of view because, you know, in my, in my other work when I'm publishing, sort of, you know, more academic stuff is things like number of calories you need to support a population. In the 18th century, for example, China's population tripled, and that's in a hundred years. This happened really fast. And the reason it could happen really fast is because people were able to live in places they could not live before. I. E. Mountains. Particularly going from the, you know, the area around Shanghai today, which is, you know, the, the center of agriculture, they moved to the Southwest. Now why didn't they move there before? Because you couldn't live in the Southwest. You couldn't make enough calories to support a population. Why could you do it now? Corn. And I say that as a proud Hoosier. Maize. You can grow maize anywhere and you can grow it on mountains. You don't need a lot of water, on and on and on. And so that allowed Chinese, you know, Chinese population to move from high calorie producing lowlands up to anywhere you could possibly imagine. And even now there are large areas of the country that consume more maize than any other grain. When I did my, my doctoral research in the, in the late 90s, I lived in a village. This is not on food history, this is on religious history. But I lived in a village for about a year and every meal was corn, corn mush for breakfast and corn mush for dinner. And you would be surprised how quickly you learn to appreciate a diet of cornbrush. It's, you know, it's, it's plain, it's unflavored, but it, you know, it, it, it grows on you. And you know, when, when I go to a village, say in North China at this time of year of winter, what's visually striking is every house has a little hopper of their crop of corn. You know, this golden dried corn that then ground up into cornmeal and then eaten. And it just, you know, it's one of the sites of the North China countryside that is just so visually striking. It's really beautiful. But corn would be one of the, you know, the sort of the life changing, the cultural transformations. One would be corn, another would be Chili's. I think those are the two big changes.

[Laura Goldberg]

And where did chili's, how did they enter into the, the agricultural fabric?

[Thomas David Dubois]

And then chilies came from the Americas. So you know, they were, they were eaten in pre Columbian north and South America. They came via the Pacific and just, just like corn actually corn came via the Pacific to the Philippines. And then from the Philippines they got to the Chinese coast by Fujianese traders. From Fujian, the province, and then they just spread to the, to the interior. Now corn was attractive, they came the same route. Corn was attractive because it was good for animal feed and so it spread very quickly. Chilies were attractive not so much for the taste, but because they could be a substitute for salt in terms of, you know, in, in, in terms of the taste but also in terms of Chinese medicine. So they, all of the foods that are presented, they all have a medicinal use. And if you talk about people moving up into the mountains, they don't have a good source of salt. And salt is also taxed. So even if you do have a good source, you might not want to pay for it. So using a little bit of salt to make a chili paste or to make a fermented paste. Chilies were initially what they were really valued for was as a salt extender. And because of that they're associated with poverty. And so when you look at even places like Sichuan now, you know, if you talk about spicy food, probably the first place you're going to think of is Sichuan. But you know, I've got a, a fancy menu from about 120 years ago talking about the, you know, the, the, the high class cuisine of Chengdu. And there is not a single spicy dish mentioned. So if you are a fancy individual in CIPLAN 120 years ago, you are eating dried seafood from the coast, you are eating what we would associate, I think broadly with Cantonese cuisine because that is considered a much more elite diet.

[Laura Goldberg]

Chili delicacies.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Exactly. Chilies are for the poor.

[Laura Goldberg]

It's so interesting because, you know, in the U.S. you know, especially in urban areas, I would say Sichuan and really spicy Chinese food is definitely in vogue. And you know, it's what we consider to be. Oh, that's the best. And I've never gone to, you know, a Chinese restaurant and I think I told you earlier, I've been to China. I don't think I had a dish with corn in it.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Right, right. Well, you would eat it as a grain rather than as a vegetable. The way we'd, you know, the way we eat it in the US like corn on the cob. You would, you would see it as a vegetable, for example, in soups. But really where it made its mark was in all sorts of cakes. And you know, what you would think of sort pan breads, this kind of thing steamed in. Where I lived the first time in China, there's a dish called watau. And you can get these made with flour. You can also, as I had them, get them made with corn. They look sort of like lollipops because it's corn meal around a little ball and then it's steamed. So, you know, just very bland. You know, delivery of grain, delivery of calories, essentially. But the separation of the, the grain, which is unflavored, and the Thai, which are the dishes, again, that's seen everywhere. Not just with corn, but also with flour, with rice, with any kind of. Of grain that it's by itself. That's the aesthetic of it, with purity. I, I don't think it's so much pure. It's just habit. And again, you know, it's, it's the way, you know, we think if you're going to have rice, it should be fried rice, it should be flavored rice, it should be made in some kind of pilaf. And that has been seen historically in China, particularly when China is connected to Central Asia. And that happened in the Tang dynasty. So that's the table burning banquet happened in the Yuan dynasty, which is the Mongol dynasty. So when you connect to Central Asia, you bring in their foodstuff, but you also bring in some of their tastes. And that's, you know, a lot of the food that I saw from the Yuan dynasty, from the, from the Mongol dynasty looked very Middle Eastern to me. And, you know, that included things like flavored pilafs, which are pretty foreign to most of Chinese cuisine. The grain is by itself. But in terms of the tastes, there is a. There's something called the five phases, and it's dividing everything up into fives, and that includes flavors. So there are five flavors. There's hot, sour, salty, bitter and sweet. And hot spicy would be traditionally taken care of with various types of peppercorns, including prickly ash, which is known as Sichuan peppercorn But after chilies came in, that became the definition of hot. So we've taken a very complex idea of hot and kind of smoothed it out in this one ingredient. The higher class of taste comes from what we would now call umami xian. And the best source of umami is dried seafood. So you could see the class differences in a place like Sichuan. You can also see the power of marketing and the power of industrial production. Because when I first went to Chengdu in the early 90s, I went there with my mother and I went there with my sister on one of these, you know, much older style of trains. So it took us two days to get there. And it was a very diverse culinary landscape, but it was very elite because Chengdu in Sichuan has always been a very elite city. So lots of tiny cakes, lots of tiny dishes, smoked duck, dried fish, this kind of thing, everything on small plates. When I went back there about seven years ago to go to cooking school, what I noticed was all of these tiny dishes had been kind of phased out, and now everything was what we would associate with Sichuan cuisine. Red chili, oil, hot pot. And, you know, the. Especially on the tourist areas. And the reason is that the tourist trade, so people come to Chengdu to eat. That is really what Chengdu lives off of as far as tourism. And the tourists have expectations. They know what they want to eat. And the local restaurant scene then rises to meet that expectation.

[Laura Goldberg]

Is. Is it rising to the occasion or. Or deferring? You know, in some ways, because I. I feel like. Like I was saying before, you know, I. I would love to have something authentic. And yet I'm thinking that American tastes probably, you know, influence what they're actually serving at the end of the day, as opposed to, you're in China and it's. It's, you know, Chinese taste.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that was certainly in Chengdu, although the tourists are overwhelmingly Chinese tourists.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay, so is it that they're from an area where this is just what they're used to?

[Thomas David Dubois]

I think it's really the tour now, now with social media. But even before social media, there are ways to create a sort of consumer buzz around a population or around a location, the tourist location. So, you know, I think I'm trying to think of a good analogy for Americans traveling abroad. But the change to Chengdu's culinary scene started with Chinese tourists. So foreign tourists are a very, very small part of this. But the Chinese tourists know that you are supposed to have hot pot. That hot pot is supposed to have this layer of incredibly Spicy red oil on the top. So this is in magazines, this is on TV shows and now in social media. So when they go, this is. They're going to eat and they know what they're going to get. And, you know, then that taste. So it's not really an authentic inauthentic or, you know, just serving the tourists, but that taste, then I don't want to say in facts affect local tastes. So, you know, you can be at some. Exactly. You could be at some little. Little neighborhood very far away from the big tourist streets and they're serving those dishes. So there's a. There's a back and forth between, you know, and. And this is one of the big themes of the book. Cuisine is always evolving.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, can we go backwards just a little bit? And I know we don't have enough time to actually hit all seven banquets, but I want to talk about the second banquet a bit, because that one was absolutely overwhelming in terms of. I mean, there was a staggering number of dishes. What was it, 52, 59 dishes?

[Thomas David Dubois]

I think. So, yeah, I'm looking at it right now.

[Laura Goldberg]

Just practically. How long did that take to prepare? How many people did it take? And, you know, how long would it have even taken to eat it? I mean, you know, and last but not least, how did you approach trying to even make some of these dishes? And how did you, you know, choose which ones you were going to try to make?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Well, the second one, this is from the Tang Dynasty. And the Tang Dynasty is again, it's. It's the Silk Road. So it's China reaching out, especially to Central Asia. This one is the one that I have the least information on. It's from the year 709. So it's very early medieval by our reckoning. And it shows how much China has been influenced by Central Asia, by South Asia, and in particular by Buddhism. So it's got things that you would not see any other time in history. It's got just piles and piles of meat. You know, it's the whole butcher shop and exotic meats. Because it's not just Central Asia, it's also the sort of the forest steps that we would associate now with Mongolian Manchuria. So you've got deer, you've got. You've got all kinds of dairy. And that's related to the, to the political situation of the Tang, you know, that they were connected to Central Asia. But loads of butter, loads of oil, loads of exotic animals, including things like bear paw. These are, you know, it's a very cosmopolitan sort of banquet, but it's also just an orgy of meat, which you don't see any other times in China, not, not in that same way. Now, we don't know much about that particular banquet, but we can look at other official banquets from a little bit later. So there's something called the Manchuanxi, which is the complete Manchu and Han banquet. Now, the reason I bring this one up, even though it's from a thousand years later, is it shows you how an official menu worked. Now, this also, this later one also had a big, expansive menu, and it had really clear rules about what menu would be served on what particular occasion. And so what that means is because these menus were set that when you would have an envoy from this or that place or you would have an occasion like a royal wedding or a royal funeral, you knew exactly what was going to be on the table. And in this case, it's 108 dishes. So this, you know, it does go on. And the, the, the palace was set up to make this at, you know, whatever notice they would have to give. But it's a set occasion, and that sort of turns the occasion on its head in a sense. You're, you're actually not that far from the Confucian ethic. We have this occasion. We have to fill up this immense banquet table full of food. Doesn't matter if anybody wants it. This is our diplomatic responsibility. We have to serve propriety, which means we have to serve these dishes. And so it's well beyond what any human collection of people could consume, but we still have to make them because that is what the occasion demands. And you even, you know, with these, you know, I'm looking at the menu and we've got these sausages and we've got these meat soups. You've got all of these different kinds of duck and clam and seafood, Dragon in Phoenix, you know, all of these different dishes. What we know about this one, we know the names, and we know just from the names. We know that, you know, we can guess some of what they were because this is the very old one, the one from the 8th century. But we do know that it was.

[Laura Goldberg]

Lavish, to say the least. I mean, my goodness, I just, I love throwing dinner parties. And, you know, I'll do these five course menus, and I think that's pretty good. I took one look at that and I'm like, okay, I'm officially put to shame.

[Thomas David Dubois]

All of these one thing that you, when you find the sources, they're always associated with a. So Going to the question of how many people were needed to produce these. They're always connected to an official bureau. You know, the. Essentially something along the lines of the Bureau of Banqueting, which means you have an army of people that are sourcing and cooking and serving. One of the very, very early ones, I think I remember having seen a number that was in the thousands for the entire. Not just for one particular occasion, but that would be serving and quartermastering the royal house. So this was a very big piece of the, of the official bureaucracy.

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[Laura Goldberg]

Well, okay. I feel better about my dinner parties now. Just me. So I. I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I. I do have a bunch more questions, one of which I. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about, because you do mention it in the book, but it's something that I think Americans in particular, or at least Westerners, really identify with China and Chinese food and, and certainly in terms of ceremony and banquets, which is tea. And, you know, when I was in China and I was in Beijing, I was taken to some of these tea malls, which I found just gobsmacking how important tea is to the culture now. And I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how tea became part of the culture and where it fits into banquet and ceremony and etiquette.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Tea really, in a certain way, fits where wine would fit into the Western overall, just culinary universe. There's the stuff you drink every day and then you can go up from there, and the sky is truly the limit. So, you know, we have terroir. You know, we have the. The idea that certain types of tea are only growable in certain soil, with certain water, with certain climactic. Conditions. And it's similar to Napa Valley. You can divide these parcels of land into really tiny slivers because they are that important, because the product that is grown there is so highly valued. And you see it in the southeast coast, which is one of the big tea growing areas. You see it in Yunnan, which is in the far southwest, where they have a kind of tea called puar and puar tea, it's a fermented tea. It's a semi fermented tea. So you can have green teas, you can have the teas that come out brown or red. The latter is fermented. That's where the color comes from. But puar tea is unique in that it can be aged. And in fact, it's better if it's aged. So you take the tea, you ferment it, and then you compress it into sort of a wheel that looks kind of like a steering wheel on a car or little balls or what have you, and they continue to ferment in that dried state. So the idea is the longer this tea sits, it ages. It's one of the few teas that can age, the more valuable it is. So, you know, parallel to wine is. Is. Is even more direct in the case of this kind of tea. And a few years ago, there was just an immense bubble of puarti where the. The value, because the value can go up. There was a speculation bubble about this. And, you know, the. The land that this tea was growing on, it just became incredibly valuable. And then we realize that we have warehouses full of this stuff. And, you know, the bubble pops. But it, it shows how important tea is. Not just the connoisseurship of tea, but also the social value of tea. Because, you know, where I sit in my office, I'm. I'm at my university, I can see from my chair 1, 2, 3, 4 bags, you know, sort of small suitcase style bags of tea. And they were gifted to me from people. And I'm a pretty big tea drinker, but I've still got four little suitcases of the stuff sitting in my office because I receive it faster than I can drink it. I emphasize, I do drink it pretty fast. Giving tea as a present or showing the ability to recognize good tea is, you know, very similar again to wine in the West. It's a sign of a cultured person. And so tea ceremony, very different from Japanese tea ceremony, but tea ceremony, tea connoisseurship, particularly in certain parts of the country, they are, you know, they. They are similar to having a Bookshelf full of books. It's just a visible sign of your cultured status. And this has gone back. This is one of the nice things about approaching this as a historian. You can see people writing poems about tea, painting pictures. You know, the. The culture of tea is so deep. And you could see something from 1500 years ago. For example, a poem where somebody goes up to the mountains and he. He drinks this tea in this natural setting and then he has to go back into the city and he's so depressed about that. This is something that you can relate to. It's a 1500 year old poem, but you can absolutely relate to it as a modern reader. So this is something that, again, I found so refreshing about approaching this as a historian that you don't have to worry about is it authentic, is it, you know, is this an invented tradition or what have you. The sources are there and the depth of the aesthetic is, you know, it's just plain to see.

[Laura Goldberg]

The love, the absolute love of food and flavor is clear. It's absolutely clear. And I mean, as a huge foodie myself, you know, and cook, I admire seeing it through a historian's eyes. And you know, I'm gonna now I went backwards, I'm gonna go forwards now in your book, all the way to Banquet five. Because one of the things that just made me literally clap was that you talk about one of my favorite movies in this chapter. It's Eat, Drink Man Woman, and it's the story of a chef in Taiwan in Taipei and his daughters. And it's seen through the table in many ways. And you know, I'm just curious. You looked at that and, you know, considering the political sensibilities these days. You know, I also wanted to see it in terms of the food history. I mean, is there in the food of Taiwan a distinct historical and political experience in those dishes that you wanted to talk about.

[Thomas David Dubois]

It? Not really in those dishes in particular. There are a lot of things in Taiwan that. Because Taiwan was settled by people from the coast, from Fujian. So you could see in, you know, in every aspect of Taiwanese society, you could see that that bridge just over the Straits of Taiwan, I wanted to make sure that I brought in Taiwan as well as to the degree that I could oversee Chinese, to show that these traditions are not a straight line from sort of ancient to modern, that they, they branch out and they do evolve, not just in Taiwan, but going to the northeast, going to the southwest. But Taiwan in particular was an area that I wanted to bring in because on the one hand, it Shows the traditions, for example, of Fujian on the other, it influenced and Hong Kong as well, particularly in the 80s and 90s, really influenced the mainland because it became sort of an avatar of style, of good taste. So Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. That movie was immensely popular in the mainland, even though it was made in Taiwan. You know, it was very easy to, to see and, and get copies of this movie on the mainland. And people to this day will argue about what precisely was on the table. And so for this banquet, you know, I had to, to go with Internet stills. I had to go with, you know, these sort of quick shots of the man of the chef, the father cooking, and try to piece together exactly what was he making. And this is what people would have done at the time because you can see, for example, you know, with, with different dishes, you just a really quick glance at what he's doing. Okay, he's, he's cutting something or he's blowing air into a duck or, you know, what have you. And then we just see very quickly on the table the completed dish. So this would have been sort of not really a test, but this would have been speaking code to the viewers that were as food oriented as the father, because he is, he is making classic dishes for each of these. I mean, he's a classically trained chef in the movie that people would have known. The people who are insiders, the people who are really looking at this would have said, oh my goodness, he, he, he has filled up the table with this, this, this and this. And then of course, the, the, it fits into the narrative is that nobody cares. So he's made this table full of classic dishes and it all goes to waste.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, also, you know, there's another component to the story which, you know, I, it, it, you find out in the very beginning, but this chef has lost his ability to taste. So the food doesn't taste right is my understanding, if I recall correctly. So I think that's also why his, his daughters don't end up eating the food. I don't think it's because they don't respect the history and what it means, but because their father has lost his, his taste.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Right? I mean, he has. Everybody has a relationship with food in the movie. And in, in some ways it's a relationship with the father, in some ways it's a relationship with the family in some ways. So the eldest daughter finds her future husband and they bond over cooking and over eating. And so I, I think that sort of spectrum of relationships because some people just do not care at all.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, I, I agree. They're what I call spam eaters. Not to insult those that have taken spam to a higher form in, in, in Hawaii and elsewhere.

[Thomas David Dubois]

But, but I mean, it's, you know, food has, it's, it's, it's not subtle. It's not meant to be subtle. Food is the vehicle for human relationships and it's sort of paired with family relationships, it's paired with sex, but it, it always has that symbolic value. And you, you know, in a sense, you either get it or you don't for the different characters in the movie, different people in the movie, or you're brought around to getting it. So I, you know, I remember one scene in the movie that they're trying to fix up the father with a new wife because his wife has died. And the woman they bring around, he prepares some food for them. And they have the formal dinner with the big round table, and she puts out her cigarette and a plate of food. And this is a pretty clear indication that she is not going to fit into this family.

[Laura Goldberg]

No. And certainly won't appreciate this food. That's, that's for sure. And I'm not gonna give away what happens later, but it's a marvelous film and, and, and I highly recommend. But I, I want to ask you now, I mean, you're, you're from Indiana, you're a Hoosier, and I'm wondering about your introduction to Chinese food and, you know, looking at, at how Chinese food across the world has been interpreted, reinterpreted. And then I'm curious, living in the middle of Beijing right now, how you've seen China and China's culture reinterpret other cuisines.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Well, that Chinese cuisine, going to the world, that's my new project. You didn't know that you've hit it? I really did. And that's what I'm working on now. But how did I get, you know, I come from a small town in the Chicago suburbs, and we had like any small town, we had a small Chinese restaurant. And it was next to my father's office. My father was a lawyer, so we would go to his office and then for lunch we would go to this restaurant. And, you know, everybody was on a first name basis. And this is what started me on the road to Chinese studies. And I still have a very strong affection for foods that are clearly not going to be available in China. You know, so they're Americanized Chinese food. Things like, you know, Singapore, Chao mai. This does not exist in, in China, but I love it to the depths of my soul, because it's what brought me here. And the. The idea, the question that I have. A lot of people would approach this from the question of, is it real? Is it authentic? Is it real? Chinese food, where I work now in Beijing Normal University, we're very connected to intangible cultural heritage. Ich. And that is very heavily premised on authenticity and defining authenticity and tying, you know, both food or any kind of cultural expression, dance, singing, what have you to a community, and then finding that in the past. So as a historian, I, you know, have. Have very little confidence in finding authenticity because things are always changing, so authenticity is always going to be a moving target. What I find interesting about China's current culinary scene, and this is something where I do get to experience it heavily, not just as a consumer, but also with the scholarly community here. There's an immense number of people who are studying Chinese culinary history, and I. I get to go to their activities and interact with them, is to see that it's not really so much, for example, American food coming to China. It's more the same that China's experiencing the same processes that transformed American cuisine. And that's things like productive upscaling. That's things like, you know, everybody talks about how in the US now, 1/3 of the restaurant catering comes from Cisco. So you're getting your jalapeno poppers from one giant factory in Alabama.

[Laura Goldberg]

Yeah. And it's all.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Doesn't matter who fries them. They're gonna taste the same because they are the same thing. You know, China's facing the same thing.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, then there's also. And you bring this up in the book, you know, food security issues when you start talking about that kind of mass production.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Right, right. And this is something that is really pushed by the government. The Chinese government came from a. You know, they. They came from a military occupation back in the 1930s and 40s, and they are still very heavily focused on food security. They do not want to be dependent on. Now, the US in particular. This is why they're not buying.

[Laura Goldberg]

Understandably so.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Yeah. Well, soybeans are our biggest export in the U.S. particularly the Midwest. They do not want to buy our soybeans because they don't want to be dependent on.

[Laura Goldberg]

And look at the tariff situation. I mean, come on.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Exactly. Even without tariffs, you know, the idea that the market could just swing in a way that is unfavorable to China. So China has, since 1949, since, you know, the. The People's Republic was founded, they have been Very heavily focused on food security. And food security really means making anything you can at home or having a substitute. So back in the 60s, every province was supposed to be self sufficient in grain. Now that's a very hard thing to do when half of these provinces are in the mountains. But it just shows you how much the government emphasizes this and pushing centralized production, for example. And you see it where you see it really well is in dairy, you know, or, or, you know, a lot of these food areas, these sectors that are heavily dependent on processing that when you can process, you do so. And again, this is something that the market, you know, because you can make your product cheaper, but it's also sudden. The government really pushes. So you have both of these pushing in one direction. You know what, you can do it, you can do it cheaply. You can also get government support for doing this. And so you look at something like dairy. It used to be who had a cow would produce for a market that would be literally walking distance. And over the course of 40 years, this is a very short time, China has become an immensely centralized. You know, they could compete with somebody like Walmart for the degree of market centralization and efficiency, for upscaling. All of those things that, you know, are very 21st century phenomena. They, they took place over 100, 150 years in the US or in Europe. In China, they took place in 20 years. And it's no idea that this maybe is a good thing. So what that does to cuisine is all of the things that we see in the US with centralized processing, they are happening very quickly here in China and a lot of consumers are not happy about it. So there was a big row in social media about a restaurant chain that claimed to be making everything from scratch. Now if you look at where they have their restaurants, they're in places like malls, there's absolutely no way they could be making their things from scratch. But any. Anyway, that's the claim that they made. And it was discovered that no, they're bringing in stuff frozen and, you know, they're microwaved or steamed or what have you. And their response, the restaurant chain's response was, no, no, no, we make them fresh in a factory and then they're reheated or, you know, prepared here at the outlet. But the damage was done. And the huge national chain just suddenly just got a big red X on it for hundreds of millions of consumers. But that is clearly the future. And you see it in Beijing, where all of these things are, are much more advanced than they would be in A smaller city. This is. This is the future of Fu in China. It's not necessarily something that I'm looking forward to.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna finish off here with something that I hope sounds a lot more hopeful and tasty, to be perfectly honest. You know, but you. This book, I mean, you obviously also in your career, throughout, you spend a lot of time thinking about food and history, meaning, flavor, where it all intertwines. What do you hope readers walk away with and notice the next time they sit at a table?

[Thomas David Dubois]

I think what I would like them to see is just how deep this culture is and how meaningful it is and how there's so much more than these. You know, we can put food on an accent, on an axis. Is it real and is it tasty? And those are two important parameters. But there's a whole world of culture that goes beyond those two very basic parameters. That would be one thing. The other thing would be the sheer diversity of food in China, the food itself, and also the food culture that we're dealing with. A very old, very diverse and deeply passionate culture. So the question is, you know, this. This food that I'm getting in an American Chinese restaurant, is it real or not? We're not even at the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is way over on the horizon. We haven't even seen the iceberg yet. There's so much depth to this. And even after having lived here for most of my adult life, it wasn't until I started researching this book that I properly understood how much, how deep and how rich this culture is.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, Tom, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation, and it's really quite a journey. In the book China in Seven Banquets, A Flavorful History by Thomas David dubois. Tom, thank you so much for joining.

[Thomas David Dubois]

Thank you for the chance to chat. And, Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.

[Laura Goldberg]

Is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[Thomas David Dubois]

Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.