Taste and place of Nanxiong cuisine in South China: a regional analytical framework

ABSTRACT

Food taste should be considered in-place. This paper employs a regional analytical framework that is suggested by new regional geography to analyze relations between taste and place, and broadly, people and cuisine. We problematize fixed links between place and taste by asking how tastes are developed as rooted qualities of a place and its cuisine. Focusing on spicy taste as a cultural construct in China’s context, climate and landscape characteristics, geographical proximity, and inhabitants’ collective engagement are examined and identified as three factors that co-influence the construct of spicy taste, which we see as a vital shaper of the cuisine of Nanxiong in the mountainous north of China’s southern Guangdong Province. We build a spatial regional hierarchy centered on spicy taste and find a correct and meaningful scale – the region of Guangdong Province. In highlighting the importance of considering the flavor principle in place, we call for more efforts to adopt a regional perspective in exploring multi-scalar and place-bounded food and taste issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Taste and place
• flavor principle
• Chinese cuisine
• chili pepper/spicy taste
• region
• scale

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a China Scholarship Council scholarship. The authors would like to thank all participants in the fieldwork. They would like to express their particular appreciation to Professor David Bell, who worked on reading, commenting, and editing earlier versions of this paper. They would also like to thank Professor Bao Jigang for his support during the first author’s post-doctoral research. We appreciate the comments of the editors and anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [19wkpy71] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [42071178, 41671139].

Notes on contributors

Junfan Lin

Junfan Lin is a post-doctoral in Sun Yat-sen University and graduated from University of Leeds. He has a research interest in Chinese cuisine and culinary tourism.

Paul Waley

Paul Waley is a geographer whose research focuses on East Asian settings, particularly urban China and Japan. He has recently worked on urban restructuring projects in China and resultant gentrification.