Globalization of Sichuan hot pot in the “new era”

Abstract

This paper explores the transformation of the Sichuan hot pot from a regional Chinese food to a global cuisine. It first analyzes how Sichuan food businesses had been “gentrified” by rigorous state regulation and control. With a series state-led food standardization and industrialization programs, hot pot restaurants quickly developed a franchising business model. In the late 2010s, several famous hot pot brands have established in different locations in the bustling cities in the United States. Challenging the taste buds of world food consumers, the hot and numbing sensation of the Sichuan hot pot is part of the national trajectory that aims to enhance China’s soft power. The paper argues that unlike the previous waves of Chinese food globalization brought by the earlier migrants from China, the globalizing hot pot is a different kind of Chinese food globalization developed within a political and economic context that witnesses China’s rise to global power.

Keywords:

• Sichuan hot pot
• Chinese food globalization
• culinary soft power
• culinary politics

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Asian Anthropology’s anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For the purposes of this paper, hot pot restaurants that mainly offer a distinctive mala-flavored broth will be considered Sichuan hot pot. The municipality of Chongqing also has claims to the name of the regional hot pot, Chongqing hot pot. Until 1997, Chongqing was a part of Sichuan province, and its cuisine falls under the rubric of Sichuan cuisine based on its flavors and cooking styles (Ren 2018). Some Chongqing hot pot restaurants stress a spicier broth as the Chongqing style in order to distinguish from the Chengdu style. Some hot pot brands market themselves on these distinctions, while others blur them. Shuzhen Laohuoguo, for example, brands its Sichuan and Chongqing locations as chuanyu川渝 hot pot, meaning a Sichuan-Chongqing style without any distinctions made between them (see Shuzhen Laohuoguo).

2 The ban on treated Sichuan peppercorns was lifted in 2005 and untreated Sichuan peppercorns in 2018.

3 For example, the Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century had brought large numbers of Chinese workers to California (see Hayford 2011).

4 The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had aimed at limiting the population of Chinese in America; other measures were also put in place to control the movement of Chinese migrants, restricting them in ghettoized Chinatowns (Chen 2014).

5 Chow mein is a mix of vegetable, egg, and meat served with stirred fried noodles.

6 Baba are local born Chinese whose ancestors moved to Malaya since the fifteenth century, and the Nyonya cuisine has produced many hybridized dishes characterized by a combination of Chinese and Malay culinary traditions.

7 The eight types include the cuisines from Shandong, Guangdong, Hunan, Anhui, Suzhou, Sichuan, Zhejiang, and Fujian.

8 The restaurant has developed a total of 15 locations in Chengdu and another 15 restaurants in Chongqing since the 2000s.

9 China’s “Go Global” strategy emerged in 1999 when the Beijing authorities announced a national strategic “go out” policy, aiming at increasing outbound investments and developing overseas markets. It was a bold initiative that significantly departed from the previous socialist policies and ideologies that focused on self-sufficiency and closed-door policies. The initiative also marked China’s ambitions to rise globally and to assume a place in world leadership. After the first-phase efforts in the 2000s under the Hu-Wen regime, the Go Global strategy entered a phase 2, “Go Global 2.0,” under the leadership of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang (see China Policy 2017).

10 It was reported that about 70 percent of the hotpot restaurants in China buy their soup base from processing plants (Huang 2016).

11 “A bite of China” is the name of a Chinese documentary television series featuring various kinds of Chinese food traditions and culinary cultures. It was produced and aired in the 2010s and was a popular program promoting the variety of good tastes from China and its culinary soft power.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James I. McDougall

James I. McDougall is an associate professor of Humanities and Writing at the Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute. His current research examines transpacific cultures, histories, foods, and identities.