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ABSTRACT
This essay examines the emergence of crayfish and crayfish rice production in Chongzhou, Sichuan as a product of China’s agrarian transition and at the conjuncture of several forms of food anxiety. To earn revenue, the Chongzhou government has encouraged the cultivation of crayfish. Once a local peasant food, crayfish has been rebranded as a luxury item and made a centerpiece of local placemaking efforts. However, Chongzhou is also the site of an Agricultural Functional Zone, and is designated as a site for grain agriculture, in response to the Chinese state’s longstanding anxieties about grain self-sufficiency. Thus, rice is grown together with the crayfish. To make it appealing, crayfish rice is marketed as high quality and ecologically friendly, responding to the state’s biopolitical concerns about the “quality” of the population, as well as to middle class consumers’ sense of distinction and their pervasive consumer anxieties about food safety and environmental pollution.
Acknowledgments
We thank the farmers in Chongzhou who took time to speak with us. We also thank Ling Zhang and Mindi Schneider for convening the workshop that led to this special issue, and to them and all of the participants, particularly Shaohua Zhan, as well as an anonymous reviewer, for insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Ye, “Land Transfer.”
2. For just a few examples: Ye, “Land transfer”; Zhan, “Riding on self-sufficiency”; Zhang and Wu, “Political dynamics in land commodification”; Trappel, China’s Agrarian Transition; Zhang and Donaldson, “The rise of agrarian capitalism”; and Yan and Chen “Agrarian Capitalization without capitalism”.
3. Jackson, Anxious Appetites, 3
4. Ibid., 39.
5. Ibid., 47.
6. Zhan, “The Political Economy of Food Import”; and Zhang “Hungry Empire, Anxious State.”
7. Whiting et al., “A Long View of Resilience.”
8. Abramson, “Ancient and Current Resilience in the Chengdu Plain.”
9. Li, Zhao, and Yeh, “The locally managed agrarian transition.”
10. Here we focus only on grain in the AFZ.
11. 15 mu = 1 hectare.
12. Li, Zhao and Yeh, “The locally managed agrarian transition.” The committee consists of six departments (high-quality grain and oil development, planning and construction, industrial integration development, urban and rural integration development, investment promotion and financing promotion, and the integrated department) and a Rural Revitalization Research Center.
14. Zhan, “Riding on Self-Sufficiency”; Zhan and Huang, “Internal Spatial Fix.” and Zhan, “The Political Economy of Food Import.”
15. Zhang and Wu, “Political Dynamics in Land Commodification.”
16. Chen, Zinda, and Yeh, “Recasting the Rural.”
17. Fan et al., “Major Function Oriented Zone.”
18. Lü et al., “Redlines for the Greening of China.”
19. Zhan, “Riding on Self-Sufficiency”; Zhan and Huang, “Internal Spatial Fix.” and Zhan, “The Political Economy of Food Import.”
21. Rodenbiker, “Urban Ecological Enclosures.”
22. Zhan and Huang, “Internal Spatial Fix.”
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.; and Zhan, “Riding on Self-Sufficiency.”
25. GAIN, “China’s Annual Agricultural Policy Goals.”
26. Kipnis, “Suzhi: A Keywords Approach.”
27. Augustin-Jean, “An Approach to Food Quality in China”; and Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi).”
28. Jin, “From Shrimp to Fois Gras.”
29. Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)”; and Yan, “Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism.”
30. Zader, “Technologies of Quality”; and Zader, “Understanding Quality Food through Cultural Economy.”
31. Brown, “Of Bean’s Curd and Bird’s Nest.”
32. Zader, “Understanding Quality Food through Cultural Economy,” 58.
33. Zader, “Technologies of Quality.”
34. Ibid., 467.
35. Ibid.
36. Zader, “Understanding Quality Food through Cultural Economy,” 59.
37. Ibid.
38. Cheung, “From Cajun Crayfish to Spicy Little Lobster”; and Cheung, “The Social Life of American Crayfish in Asia.”
39. Cheung, “From Cajun Crayfish to Spicy Little Lobster”; and Wang et al., “Crayfish (Procambarus Clarkii) Cultivation in China.”
40. Harkell, “China’s Crayfish Craze a ‘headache’ for European Importers.”
41. Wang et al., “Crayfish (Procambarus Clarkii) Cultivation in China.”
42. http://www.moa.gov.cn/xw/zwdt/201908/t20190830_6326928.htm, China Crayfish Industry Development Report (2021).
43. Huang, “The Role of Crayfish”; Ge, “China’s Craving for Crayfish.”
44. “Crayfish announced as China’s favorite dish of 2017” China Daily. January 162018 https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/16/WS5a5dc396a3102c394518f9be.htm.
45. Wang etal., “Crayfish (Procambarus Clarkii) Cultivation in China.”
47. Cheung, “From Cajun Crayfish to Spicy Little Lobster”; and Wang et al., “Crayfish (Procambarus Clarkii) Cultivation in China.”
48. 360kuai.com “zhongguo chongzhou di er jie daotian xiaolongxiajie zai chongzhou yanjin he zhi zhou guangchang longzhong kaimu.”
49. Youtube.com/watch?v = K19Agx4Z8BE.
50. Shang and Jie, “Short-term effect, survival pressure.”
52. Yan, “Food Safety and Social Risk,” 706.
53. Ibid.
54. Si, Regnier-Davies, and Scott, “Food Safety in Urban China.”
55. Ibid.
56. Zhu et al, “Consumer anxieties about food grain safety in China.”
57. Merrifield, “Stewed Chicken and Long-Nosed Kings.”
58. Klein, “Everyday Approaches to Food Safety in Kunming”; Klein, “Eating Green”; and Si, Regnier-Davies, and Scott, “Food Safety in Urban China.”
59. Si, Regnier-Davies, and Scott, “Food Safety in Urban China.”
60. Klein, “Eating Green.”
61. Klein, “Everyday Approaches to Food Safety in Kunming.”
62. Klein, “Eating Green.”
63. Ibid., 243.
64. Zhang, “Hungry Empire.”
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Notes on contributors
Emily T. Yeh
Emily T. Yeh is a Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose research focuses on political ecology, cultural politics, and the political economy of development, mostly in China.
Fan Li
Fan Li is a doctoral student in Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder.