The disappearance of local food in China

Traveling around some of the Chinese cities, you can see more and more restaurants signed with “providing the most orthodoxy local food”. However, it doesn’t mean the prosperity of local and traditional food; but instead, it’s the signal of the disappearance of local food in China.

I remember that when I was young, every family would store piles of Chinese cabbages in winter in Beijing. Since at that time, there was no wide- spread greenhouse and GMOs, and there were no enough vegetables in the freezing winter. Therefore, a special winter cuisine had gradually formed in this hundred-year tradition. We ate Chinese cabbage stir dish with tofu and meat, hotpot with Chinese cabbages, and the other various winter special dishes with Chinese cabbages. I think the dishes are more than food for stomach but food for our rich old-Beijing cooking culture and fun for children to carry and pile the cabbages. However, with the development of greenhouse vegetables and GMOs, you can eat vegetables from all seasons. Thus, the store of Chinese cabbages seemed not necessary after all it was a time-consuming work. Nowadays, although you still can see the restaurants’ menu with special Chinese cabbage dishes, but it will never be our local food anymore, in which not only the flavor has lost but also the original fun and deep culture accumulated by generations has disappeared.

Apparently, the disappearance of Beijing’s winter Chinese cabbage is not the only case. As I mentioned in the former blogs, the real bamboo rice of Dai minority and the “old and deep” vinegar in Shanxi province are also facing the vanishment. After the economic transition from the planned economy to the market-oriented economy in China in the 1980s, the real and pure house-made local food could no longer compete with the fake “local” food made by big food factories in the food market. The local food has been commercialized and became the attraction of local tourism and money maker. Lost the delicate making procedures and the deep meanings to the local families, the new “local” foods could never taste the same as before. Furthermore, the changes in traditional agriculture also lead to the disappearance of local food. For example, the famous fermented rice wine could no longer be tasted the same after the introduction of transgenic hybrid wheat in the south. I don’t know the specific scientific reasons for this case, but I do know it is the destruction of the indigenous agricultural structure that primarily dominates the disappearance.

I’m very sad about the disappearance of our local food which once brought me so much fun and unforgettable family memories. Food is key connection between the human society and the surrounding environment and is the sediment of thousands-year culture. We should protect them just as we protect the nature.

-By Yuting Ma