The global travels of the food culture in Taiwan
Thursday, May 18, 2023
First part (in person and remote)
3:30 pm to 5:00 pm PDT
For participants in Irvine: UCI Humanities Gateway 1800
Zoom Meeting link: https://uci.zoom.us/j/96814899669
(Meeting ID: 968 1489 9669)
Second part (online only)
8:30 pm PDT
(May 19 at 11:30 am Taiwan Time)
Zoom Meeting link: https://uci.zoom.us/j/95157409093
(Meeting ID: 951 5740 9093)
Like other cuisines, Chinese food has continue to transform and reinvent itself as a result of socioeconomic changes and immigration. The Chinese diaspora has provided a fertile ground for Chinese food to evolve and interact with local culinary traditions. After WWII, Taiwan has become an important point of convergence, where different regional cuisines of China, such as Sichuan, Hunan and Shandong, flourished and interacted with local food traditions and other culinary traditions. This has enabled Taiwan to become an exciting place for culinary innovation. After the 1970s, as the economy of Taiwan took off, and after the United States reformed its immigration policy, the food culture of Taiwan started to travel to the United States. In the United States, it has significantly expanded the country’s Chinese restaurant industry and the meaning of Chinese food. This conference brings scholars and students from the US and Asia to discuss the historical background of this development and explore how specific foods and beverages were transplanted in the United States.
Sponsored by UCI Humanities Center and UCI Illuminations.
PingChen Hsiung
Authenticity Abroad? Perspectives on the Global Vitality of Taiwanese Tastes
Hsiung Ping-chen (BA Taiwan U; MA/PhD History, Brown; SM Public Health, Harvard) is Secretary General, International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), and CIPSH Chair on “New Humanities”, UC Irvine, and UNESCO Co-Chair on “Global Asia and Humanities” at McGill University. She is also Distinguished Professor in Residence and Co-Director in Global Humanities Initiatives at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, and Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Mu-chou Poo
Food for the gods: The logic of food offering in Taiwanese popular religion and its overseas transformations
Mu-chou Poo is Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He had worked as a Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taipei, from 1984-2009, and taught at various places, including Columbia, UCLA, and Grinnell College. Research interests include religion and society in ancient Egypt and China.
Yong Chen
From Chop Suey to the boba: the changing meaning of Chinese food
Yong Chen received his PhD at Cornell University and is now professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as Associate Dean in the School of Humanities. His publications include Chinese San Francisco: A Transnational Community, 1850-1943 and Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America, which received honorable mention in the 2015 PROSE Awards in the category of American History. He and Ping-chen Hsiung have received a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange to study the global travels of Taiwan’s food culture.
Valerie Cheng
The Effect on the Boba Industry
Valerie Cheng is a rising junior from Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, California. Valerie has been baking since she was in elementary school, which allows her to understand the cultural and social aspects of food.
Jessica VanRoo
The practice
Jessica VanRoo is an Executive Chef at Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. Fluent in Chinese and knowledge about Chinese food and food culture in Taiwan. She has played a critical role in the development of cooking events at UCI.
Miranda Brown
Orange Chicken: On the Gourmet Taiwanese Roots of an American Chinese Classic
Miranda Brown is a Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures who has taught Chinese history at the University of Michigan since 2002. In old age, she has discovered her true passion: Chinese food. She is now writing a book on the history of Chinese food In her free time.
Michelle T. King
What She Put On the Table: Fu Pei-mei and the Transformation Taiwanese Culinary Identity
Michelle T. King is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in modern Chinese gender and food history. Her latest research project focuses on the career of Taiwan’s noted cookbook author and television celebrity, Fu Pei-mei (1931-2004) (forthcoming, W. W. Norton).
Tsung-Yi Pan
Eating in Foreign Lands: Food Memories and Changing Identities in the Oversea Dietary Writings in Postwar Taiwan
Tsung-Yi Pan received his Ph.D degree in History from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is now an associate professor at the Department of History, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. His research interests include memory studies, dietary culture and historical games.
Whei-ming Chou
The Development of Taiwanese cuisine after 1949
1995-2021 Professor, Dept. of History, Cheng-chi University, Taipei
2021- Part time Professor, Dept. of History, Cheng-chi University, Taipei