Strengthening the National Identity Through A Bite of China: Collective Memory and Traditional Culture

ABSTRACT

A Bite of China is a Chinese documentary series about the country’s food culture and is broadcast by several China Central Television（CCTV）channels. It aims to fill the gaps between younger generations and tradition in China and help in strengthening their national identity. To achieve this, A Bite of China uses an “unmediated” strategy that includes “on the spot” authority of journalism and emotional immediacy of storytelling. Moreover, it emphasises the changes and continuity of Chinese culture, which is expressed as diversity and unity. Ultimately, the documentary series highlights a larger narrative about “the core socialist values,” on which stories of the tradition and culture are framed in terms of the ideology of the nation. Therefore, all these efforts to evoke people’s collective memory with the help of food culture might press history and tradition into the service of current purposes. This review examines both memory and cultural tradition can serve current aims in China through media, and provides a crucial understanding that how China will remove obstacles lay in its path to progress as a diverse country striving for unity.

KEYWORDS:

• A Bite of China
• collective memory
• national identity
• traditional culture
• the core socialist values

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Core Socialist Values is a set of official interpretations of Chinese socialism promoted at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. The 12 values, written in 24 Chinese characters, are the national values of “prosperity,” “democracy,” “civility,” and “harmony”; the social values of “freedom,” “equality,” “justice,” and the “rule of law”; and the individual values of “patriotism,” “dedication,” “integrity,” and “friendship.”