Message from yreynoso

[Anonymous]

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/3.%20Road%20to%20Multicultural%20Gastronomy%20(1).pdf

This story on Food, Power and Identity by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka describes a period in history where trading was flourishing between western and Asian countries. At this time, according to the story Westerners demonstrated evident resistance to Japanese and Chinese food, even though the choices available were mainly based on tea, rice, and vegetables, which were far more nutritive than the so called western food based on lard, meat, poultry, and bread. However and throughout means of international trading, foods, adaptations to the Japanese gastronomy was slowly adopted even though resistance from both cultures had some clashing moments. Some foreigners described Japanese /Chinese food as fishy, and abominable tasteless..", which only worsened their misery when their "delicious European food" was not available in the local markets for months.

I really would like to plan a lesson on Asian gastronomy where my students could observe and analyze how during the 1800s western food was scarce in Japan and China; they should be able to discriminate how during these years of transition between both cultures, a lot of changes had to occur for the British and other investors in order to flourish as business people. My students should be able to appreciate through research, videos, and geography, how the ports of Yokohama, Nagasaki, and others, grew as the main sites for international trading. Students will identify the social and economical factors that catapulted the development of the restaurant and hotels industry that generated the economical and cultural expansion of western and Asian as a byproduct of international trading in Asia.

This topic is so rich that will require various days to explore and understand how the evolution of Japanese and Chinese food took several years to be accepted and digested by westerners. This would open a discussion session where a multi-cultural culinary appreciation will take place in small groups. I will assign a each group with some countries in East Asia to investigate the story of typical dishes and to present their outcomes to the class. Another day, they should bring the ingredients to prepare a meal in class, and have an Asian food festival. As a variation, I would take them into a field trip to a Chinese or Japanese restaurant/ or as a homework assignment to observe the menu, explore foods, tastes, table manners, in order to identify and report differences and similarities between own native culture and Asian foods, and table manners.