Events
Making Crayfish Local: A Study of Spicy Crayfish Dish in a Third-Tier City in China
7 Mar 2014
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Arts and Humanities HubG24, G/F, Fung King Hey Building
Professor Sidney C. H. CheungDepartment of Anthropology
Tel: 39437107
The talk examines the ethnography of crayfish (P. clarkii) farming from the socio-cultural perspective in the context of the fast changing food production and consumption scene in China today. This Louisiana crayfish was brought to Jiangsu province by the Japanese in the 1930s and was not welcomed by local people, as it did not bring benefits to the community but caused damage to crops. However, the situation changed while it was cooked in a dish called “Xuyi Thirteen Spices Little lobster”, which has brought business opportunities to a third/fourth-tier city since the 1990s; together with the establishment of the (International) Lobster Festival in 2000 and Lobster Museum in 2005, the project portrays our understanding of urban development in China’s third tier cities in various aspects. I have been visiting this city for several years and would like to share with colleagues findings from the study of crayfish from a cultural point of view.
